ELMORE LEONARD – The Switch.

Paperback original: Bantam, 1978. First UK and only hardcover edition: Secker & Warburg, 1979. Many paperback reprint editions.

   Two ex-cons named Ordell and Louis, obviously too refined to be winners in a Cheech and Chong look-alike contest, kidnap a suburban Detroit housewife, a tennis mother named Mickey, whose husband Frank is a crooked contractor and secretly planning on leaving her and skipping off to the Caribbean.

   Not surprisingly, he quite happily ignores the ransom demands, sending their dreams of a cool million disappearing upwards in clouds of thin, billowing smoke.

   Detroit’s not a very nice city, and Leonard knows it and tells it. But while the ending of his story comes as a subtle sort of surprise, the looseness with which he establishes it pretty much undermines the effect. The tale’s as shaky as the Dawsons’ marriage from the start.

[UPDATE] 05-26-09. When I began checking out the bibliographic data for this book, it caught me by surprise, as it may have you too, but I’d forgotten that many of Elmore Leonard’s earliest books were published as paperback originals. In fact, unless I’m badly mistaken, The Switch has never appeared as a US hardcover, as I said above.

    Back in 1978 I was still adding a “letter grade” at the end of the reviews I wrote. I assigned a “C plus” to this one, which makes it above average, but not by much. If I were to read it again, I don’t know whether I’d be so tough on the book now, or if it really is one of Leonard’s lesser works. If so, perhaps that’s the reason for the lack of a hardcover.

    Or a movie, for that matter. Based only on my description of it, it sounds to me as though Hollywood ought to have snatched The Switch up long before now.

THOMAS W. HANSHEW – The Man of the Forty Faces. Cassell, UK, hardcover, 1910. US title: Cleek, the Master Detective. Doubleday Page, 1918.

    Sleuth Hamilton Cleek made his debut in the short story collection, The Man of the Forty Faces. The Cleek mysteries by the Hanshews [Mary E. Hanshew later collaborated with her husband in writing them], which often feature impossible crimes, were favorite childhood reading of John Dickson Carr.

    Ellery Queen‘s somewhat satiric comments on the tales focused on the campier aspects of the Cleek saga, with the detective Hamilton Cleek being a Balkan Prince caught up in Ruritanian romance.

    One that I have read for the first time, “The Riddle of the 5:28”, I find far more of a straightforward mystery tale than I had imagined. It is not at all campy in tone, the Prince works closely and normally with Scotland Yard, and a fair play impossible crime story is spun out, entertainingly if somewhat implausibly in solution.

    There are signs of trying to appeal to a (male) juvenile audience in the stories: the Prince employs a Cockney lad (19 years old) as an assistant, he being a character with whom boys might identify; the prose tries to create a thrilling tone, complete with dramatic climaxes; and there is a great deal of attention paid to trains, automobiles and other machinery, something that boys of all ages love. By contrast there is a great deal of grown up romance, including a villainous character who engages in adulterous affairs.

    The tone of the story over all matches that of Arthur B. Reeve‘s Craig Kennedy stories to come, with its stalwart, highly intelligent hero; a cast of characters involved in the corrupter aspects of the era’s high life and all under suspicion, with the characters all assembled at the end for the revelation of the guilty party by the detective; the emphasis on dramatic writing; the focus on technology and machinery; and a setting more of public life than of pure domesticity.

    The Man of the Forty Faces appeared in book form in 1910, however, the year before Reeve started writing his Craig Kennedy tales in 1911.

    Some of the other tales in The Man of the Forty Faces also involve scientific mysteries. “The Riddle of the Ninth Finger”, “The Lion’s Smile”, and “The Divided House” are all about mysterious illnesses or afflictions, that seem to have no known cause. Cleek eventually provides medical, science-based explanations for the afflictions.

    “The Divided House” is the best of these, the one where the solution is cleverest, and also most plausible. “The Riddle of the Ninth Finger” is the poorest, with the circus melodrama “The Lion’s Smile” somewhere in the middle. These stories perhaps influenced Agatha Christie, for example, in “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb” and “The Tragedy at Marsden Manor”, in Poirot Investigates.

    “The Riddle of the Rainbow Pearl” has a full-fledged background of Ruritanian romance. It is well done and entertaining escapist storytelling. It combines this with a mystery plot about a search for a hidden object, in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Purloined Letter” (1845). Some of the intrigue also reminds one of Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891). The mystery solution is more science-oriented than either Poe or Doyle, however, in keeping with the scientific detection aspect of Hanshew.

    Other of the tales also look for hidden objects: “The Riddle of the Sacred Son”, “The Riddle of the Siva Stones”. “The Riddle of the Sacred Son” has some good storytelling, as well as a clever solution. Just as “The Riddle of the Rainbow Pearl” has a delirious melodrama in a Balkan kingdom, so does “The Riddle of the Sacred Son” invoke an Oriental extravaganza.

    Unfortunately, the tale’s complete lack of realism about Asian countries, and its nonsensical depiction of Asian religion, are in a mode that has become dated, and are now likely to offend. Hanshew went to great efforts to depict the Asian priest in the tale as a man of dignity, intelligence and high moral character.

    He was clearly trying to write a story that would be non-racist, and which would form a contrast to the racist tales of Oriental villains that were then so popular. This is all to his credit. However, non-realism about Balkan kingdoms, as in “The Riddle of the Rainbow Pearl”, is now just considered campy fun. Non-realism about Asia, a place with an ugly history of being exploited by European Colonialism, is still a matter of concern.

    Two tales involve disappearances. Such a vanishing inevitably brings up that favorite question of R. Austin Freeman: the disposal of the body. Both “The Caliph’s Daughter” and “The Wizard’s Belt” have some original ideas on the subject, in their solutions.

    Unfortunately, neither is really gripping as a work of storytelling. Considering their early date, one wonders if Freeman influenced Hanshew, or Hanshew influenced Freeman, or whether their common interest in the disposal of the body was merely part of the zeitgeist. Elements of “The Caliph’s Daughter” anticipate such Freeman novels as The Eye of Osiris (1911) and The Jacob Street Mystery (1941).

    “The Problem of the Red Crawl” is a thriller, without real elements of mystery. It exploits Cleek’s ability to impersonate seemingly any other person. Cleek anticipates later heroes with similar gifts, such as Ellery Queen’s detective Drury Lane (1932-1933), and 1940’s comic book characters such as The King and The Chameleon.

    The real mystery stories in The Man of the Forty Faces do not use this ability. Instead, when Cleek disguises himself in these tales, it is as an imaginary person, a new made-up persona. “The Problem of the Red Crawl” is a fairly entertaining melodrama. The red crawl of the title is vivid.

EDITORIAL COMMENT.   This review has been reprinted from Mike’s website, A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection, which is exactly what the title says. I was prompted in doing so because of David Vineyard’s recent post which also mentioned both Hanshew and Freeman.

    The links in the review above point back to Mike’s commentary on each of the authors so designated. Go visit his site at your own risk. If you’re a fan of traditional detective stories, you may stay a while.

THE UNHOLY GARDEN. Goldwyn, 1931. Ronald Colman, Fay Wray, Estelle Taylor, Warren Hymer, Tully Marshall, Lawrence Grant, Ullrich Haupt, Henry Armetta, Misha Auer. Screenplay: Ben Hecht, based on his novel. [See comments.] Co-screenwriter: Charles MacArthur; director: George Fitzmaurice.

    “A GREAT STAR’S GREATER ACHIEVEMENT! Here is the Colman you knew in CONDEMNED … The Colman who startled you in BULLDOG DRUMMOND … Now giving you the thrill of a lifetime in a sensational story of sinners, sirens and strange adventure.”

    For once the publicity department wasn’t kidding. Here is a wild one that is too little known and features a great cast in a grand old fashioned romantic adventure. Colman is ruthless gentleman crook Barrington Hunt, who with his pal Smiley Corbin (Warren Hymer), is on the run from the police of several continents.

    He’s heard a tale of a hotel in the Sahara owned by a Baron de Jonghe (veteran character actor Tully Marshall) and his daughter Camille (Fay Wray), where crooks and exiles can hide from the law. Better yet there is a hidden treasure belonging to the Baron to be had by the first man smart enough to find it.

    Well, Colman didn’t play Bulldog Drummond, Beau Geste (silent), Francois Villon, and Raffles for nothing; obviously he will romance Wray, outwit the other crooks, and try for the treasure. Murder, sand storms, and melodrama abound in this cheeky little film that at 75 minutes moves like an express. Of course Colman will fall for Wray and end up battling the other crooks, and because this was pre-code he might just well get away with both.

    Wray is always delightful in this sort of thing, and it’s not hard to imagine why Colman falls for her, while Estelle Taylor (Eliza Mowbray) is a wonderful femme fatale, though it takes a bit to get used to her voice. Grant (as Dr. Shayne), Haupt (as Count von Axt), Armetta (as Nick the Goose) and Auer (as Prince Polakoff) could play villains with the best of them, always with an undercurrent of humor, and Hymer is well cast as Colman’s stooge pal.

    There’s an air of adventure and romance about the film and the crisp dialogue by Ben Hecht (based on his novel) and Charles MacArthur (Front Page, Gunga Din, …) adds to the film’s effect. The sets were designed by illustrator Willy Pogany, and the Moorish hotel in the desert is splendid.

    All in all it is a superior entertainment, gorgeous to look at, lush, and moves at a gallop. Colman is completely at ease in nonsense like this and carries the audience and other actors along with him.

    The cinematography by George Barnes is imaginative, and the film has few of the defects of many early talkies. For sheer entertainment you couldn’t do much better. The action is well handled and the cast of villains formidable.

    Yes, it is high romantic nonsense, it could as easily have come out of a serial in Adventure or Argosy as it did Hecht’s novel, and save for Colman, everyone’s performances are a little over the top, but that hardly matters in a film that looks this good and plays this well.

    In many ways this is a better film than either Colman’s set-bound Raffles or the more primitive Bulldog Drummond (for which he won an Oscar nomination in 1929), a grand fantasy that doesn’t care a whit it we believe a minute of it so long as we sign on for the duration.

    Colman is dashing and handsome, Wray and Taylor look wonderful in slinky, and the rest of the cast is colorful and on cue. This little picture is better than any number of bigger productions from the same era, and thanks to the never-never land aspect of the desert hotel holds up better than many similar films in more mundane settings.

    Frankly I could listen to Colman read the phone book, and when he has good dialogue and a role tailored to his style and charm, it is a real pleasure just to watch him run with the bit in his teeth.

    Unholy Garden is an old fashioned movie movie, and well worth repeated watchings. You can’t help but think that it must have been as much fun to make as to watch.

BLAST OF SILENCE. Universal Pictures, 1961. Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker. Screenwriter & director: Allen Baron.

   Before it appeared on Turner Classic Movies last week, I’d never heard of this movie. Totally obscure, I would have thought. Not so.

   It turns out that this is an authentic Cult Classic, and it’s out on DVD from Criterion. I wouldn’t have guessed, but you can look it up, and if you keep looking, you can find any number of reviewers who will gladly tell you how wonderful this low, low budget movie is — a black-and-white film, a throwback to the noir era that was all but over in 1961, and (really!) a transition into the brand new “New Wave” age of movie-making.

   As for me, I wouldn’t go that far. Or would I?

   If you were to analyze only the story itself, I have a hunch that you might not go that far either.

   A hit man from Chicago by the name of Frankie Bono (Allen Baron) and a loner by profession, comes to New York to take out a two-bit hoodlum, only to get sidetracked, if only temporarily, by Lori (Molly McCarthy), a girl he once knew.

   The only other major character is Big Ralph (Larry Tucker), an obese and grotesquely sleazy kind of fellow (or vice versa) who lives in an apartment filled with pet rats in cages and whom Bono needs to provide him with the equipment he needs to do his job (complete with silencer).

   Things do not go well with either Lori (based on a huge misconception of her actions on Frankie’s part) or Big Ralph (an even bigger misconception on Big Ralph’s part).

   This is all to the good, and you should take me at my word on this, but there are only perhaps about 15 to 20 minutes of action, if that’s what you’re looking for. Much of the rest of the 77 minutes or so of this movie consists of watching Frank make his way around New York City, both on foot and behind the wheel of a car, stony-faced and doing his utmost to appear professional behind the anonymous voice of Lionel Stander who narrates the tale, often in rather poetic terms, as if he’s taken up residence inside Bono’s head, much as The Whistler did with the many guilty protagonists in his long-running Old-Time Radio series.

   Samples follow:

    “Remembering out of the black silence, you were born in pain.

    “You’re alone. But you don’t mind that. You’re a loner. That’s the way it should be. You’ve always been alone. By now it’s your trademark. You like it that way.”

    “If you want a woman, buy one. In the dark, so she won’t remember your face.”

    “‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ they said. Maybe he is on your side, the way it all worked out. Remembering other Christmases, wishing for something, something important, something special. And this is it, baby boy Frankie Bono. You’re alone now. All alone. The scream is dead. There’s no pain. You’re home again, back in the cold, black silence.”

   The jazzy score, early 60s style, matches the narration perfectly, and the action, when it occurs, is usually dispassionate and ugly. It’s also terrific to see the streets of Manhattan as they actually were in the 1960s: the stores, the pedestrians on the streets, and the actors whose single appearance in a film was Blast of Silence.

   Once caught up in the tale, you’ll stay hooked, even if Frankie’s so-called professionalism seems far too cursory. The devil’s in the details. No hit man worth his pay would be as careless in his career as Frankie is and survive to take another paycheck. That’s one side of the story.

   And perhaps one should not complain. If there’d been the money to do this movie right, it wouldn’t have come out as right as it did. I think that the reviewers who rave about the film do so for one large reason. Once you watch it, you’re not likely to forget it.

ROSS THOMAS – The Cold War Swap. William Morrow, 1966. Paperback reprints include: Avon, 1967; Pocket, 1976; Perennial Library, 1984,1986; Mysterious Press, 1992.

   Mac’s Place is a bar located in Bonn, West Germany. It is run by McCorkle and Padillo, two expatriate Americans. The only trouble is that Padillo, from time to time, has to assume his other role as an undercover agent, take a leave of absence from the bar business, and travel to some country or another on some mission or another. Padilla never tells McCorkle where he’s going or what he’s up to, and that’s the way they both want it.

   However, in this story, that arrangement begins to come unraveled. Padillo is off on another trip (nothing new there), but just as he is leaving, there is a killing in the bar that seems somehow related to his departure. And just as the furor over the killing is beginning to die down, there is an urgent message for McCorkle — a message from Padilla, trapped in East Germany and asking for Mac’s help.

   This is the first of several fine international adventure/ espionage novels from Ross Thomas, and with each successive book he has established himself more and more firmly as a master of the genre. His stories, moving at a fast and intricate pace, are peopled with an amazing array — some critics might say an almost distracting array — of characters.

   A typical Thomas protagonist is seldom young; rather, he is flirting with middle age, is a little world-weary but still able to take care of himself, and should know better than to get involved in the situation that confronts him. But, for personal and/or professional reasons, he does become involved.

   And indeed, McCorkle does become involved. He travels to East Germany to be met by betrayal, a certain amount of failure, and a certain amount of success. The scenes that take place during his stay behind the Iron Curtain are especially palpable and nerve-racking.

   Other novels featuring McCorkle and Padillo are Cast a Yellow Shadow (1967) and The Backup Man (1971).

         ———
   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.

ROSS THOMAS – The Cold War Swap. William Morrow, 1966. Paperback reprints include: Avon, 1967; Pocket, 1976; Perennial Library, 1984,1986; Mysterious Press, 1992.

   Awed by the reputation of its author and his Edgar-winning first novel, I have made three attempts to get through Ross Thomas’s The Cold War Swap. The third, and most recent, try, in a reprint from Perennial Library, was not the charm, and I gave up at page seventy.

   This spy story, set on both sides of Germany’s wall, shows patches of good writing but is basically contrived with cynical, uninteresting characters caught in the usual web of international treachery.

   Seemingly to pad the book, Thomas has his characters consume an incredible amount of alcohol. If it were possible to get cirrhosis from reading a book, I would now have liver disease. Instead, I merely acquired a case of acute boredom.

[UPDATE] 05-23-09. I asked Marv if by chance he’d had a change of heart about his review of The Cold War Swap since he wrote the review above. It’s over 20 years old, after all. His reply was, “No change in my opinion of that book. Three times is enough, so go ahead and print what I wrote.”

   I’ll be pairing Marv’s comments off with the review that appeared in 1001 Midnights. It will be coming up next, or it will very soon. Look for it in another five to ten minutes.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, père – Joseph Balsamo. (Mémoires d’un médecin: Joseph Balsamo, 1846–1848, a.k.a. Memoirs of a Physician, Cagliostro, Madame Dubarry, The Countess Dubarry, or The Elixir of Life.)

    By the way, Small’s movie (Black Magic, in the previous post) opens with a framing sequence of Dumas père (Barry Kroeger) kvetching to Dumas fils (Raymond Burr!) about how hard it is to write a book about Cagliostro and the Queen’s Necklace. Well, it just so happened I had that book on my TBR shelf, so I took it down and read Dumas’s 1843 thriller Joseph Balsamo.

    It’s quite good, actually, Better, I think, than the ballyhooed The Last Cavalier. Balsamo creates up an intriguing cast of characters — most of them figures from history — sets them at odds against each other, then lets them develop real personalities.

    The result is pleasant melodrama and fascinating history. There’s an extended sub-plot-line of Madame DuBarry getting herself formally presented at court over the objections of Marie Antoinette that I found more exciting than any of the sword-fights and tiger hunts in Cavalier. And Dumas’ portrait of Louis XV (That “martyr to boredom” whose dimness and self-absorption were equaled in modern times only by George W. Bush) is humorous, unflinching, and oddly engaging.

    Unfortunately, as I got further and further into the 575 pages that make up this tome, I began to realize not much was happening with Cagliostro and the Queen’s Necklace. And as I got towards the end, I found Joseph Balsamo was only one of four hefty volumes Dumas spent spinning out this tale.

    Damn.

    I’ve said it before: when I read a book, I want to read a book; not make a down-payment on a mortgage. So you can well imagine my disappointment. Still, the writing here was good enough, the characters real enough, that I might try another installment….

BLACK MAGIC. Edward Small Productions/United Artists, 1949. Orson Welles, Nancy Guild, Akim Tamiroff, Frank Latimore, Valentina Cortese, Margot Grahame, Berry Kroeger, Raymond Burr. Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas père. Director: Gregory Ratoff.

   Call me nostalgic to the point of narcissism, but I enjoy revisiting from time to time the things that thrilled me as a kid, and at the tender age of Fourteen or so, I was convinced that Black Magic was the greatest film ever made.

   Well, the intervening forty-four years have dimmed its splendor somewhat, but This is still an enjoyably campy comic book of a movie, purportedly based on Alexandre Dumas’ tale of Cagliostro (Orson Welles) and the affair of the Queen’s necklace.

   The script is corny, Welles is hammy, and the direction (There are the usual rumors that Welles himself took a hand) over-emphatic, but it’s still fun, with swordfights, gypsy curses, hypnotic spells and lord-knows-what-all jamming its brief running time.

   Producer Edward Small made an industry (Not a cottage industry; a real celluloid-and-press-book industry) out of adapting Dumas, whose works were in public domain, on the screen (with varying degrees of faithfulness) a passion that started with The Count of Monte Cristo in 1934, right up to Black Magic in ’49, with a stop along the way for James Whale’s The Man in the Iron Mask.

   Small moved on to other projects, such as Witness for the Prosecution and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, until he at last turned to popcorn fantasy and finished his career with The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, which at last gave us Elke Sommer naked.

   For Black Magic, he seems to have stuffed ten pounds of Publicity into a Five-Pound-Bag, with outlandish posters, breathless trailers and even a tie-in with Superman comics, a feat of dubious artistry maybe, but executed with a modicum of wit.

BURN NOTICE. Pilot episode for the USA cable network series of the same name; first telecast on 28 June 2007. Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless, with David Zayas, Ray Wise, Dan Martin, China Chow, Chance Kelly.

   Since the third season of this series will soon be beginning, you aren’t likely to need this review of the pilot episode to tell you whether or not you should be watching it. But if you’re a fan of humorous spy comedies, with a bit of Private Eye work thrown in, and if you were to ask me, I’d have to say I think you should.

   If I weren’t being a bit hypocritical about it, that is, because I watched this first episode when it first was shown and never watched another one. I recently bought the DVD set of the first season, though, so there you go. Commercials and I have given up on each other. I don’t watch them, and they don’t care.

   But just in case you’ve never seen (or heard) of the series, here’s a quick recap. Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan, whom I’ve never seen anywhere else, but he’s been around) is either a CIA agent or an independent operative who works with the CIA is abruptly — and I mean abruptly — issued a burn notice; that is to say, he’s out of a job for no stated reason, his friends won’t talk to him, his financial assets are frozen, and he’s dumped in Miami where he’s allowed to roam freely, but he’s followed and watched constantly, and he’s unable to leave.

   That’s the overall picture. Figuring out who’s behind it and why he’s in this fix, that’s the story that’s the basis for the series. In the meantime, to make a living, he’s forced to work as a strictly unofficial private eye, assisted by his ex-girl friend Fiona Glenanne (the diminutive but utterly glamorous Gabrielle Anwar), sporting a wonderful Irish accent, and a pensioned-off rogue of a buddy named Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell, who’s really been around).

   Westen’s exasperation with his situation is played as much for laughs as it is for a story line, and I haven’t even mentioned the funniest part. Miami is where his mother lives (Sharon Gless) who wonders if this is the year her son will be home for Christmas, among other worries that a mother always has, even if her son works for the CIA.

   Says Westen in voiceover mode: “Thirty years of karate, combat experience on five continents, a rating with every weapon that shoots a bullet or holds an edge… still haven’t found any defense against Mom crying into my shirt.”

   In this, the pilot episode, Westen agrees to help a Cuban groundskeeper who’s suspected of stealing several valuable works of art from the home of the wealthy collector he works for, along with getting his life sorted out and set up for the rest of the series. A simple but effective story.

   I could do without the mother, and I would have liked to have seen more of the ex-girl friend, who thinks violence is a form of foreplay, but she’s in all the ads for the show, so I assume her part is a major one. Westen himself is a little too smug for my tastes, but maybe not yours. It’s a good show, and if it weren’t for the commercials, I would have told you so long before now.

   Says Westen, channeling a chap named MacGyver in a similar vein: “Once somebody sends a guy with a gun after you, things are only going to get worse. But like it or not, you’ve got work to do. For a job like getting rid of the drug dealer next door, I’ll take a hardware store over a gun any day.

    “Guns make you stupid. Better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart… Every decent punk has a bulletproof door. But people forget walls are just plaster. Hopefully you get him with the first shot. Or the second… Now he’s down and waiting for you to come through the front door. So you don’t come through the front door.”

MIKE ROSCOE – One Tear for My Grave.

Crown, hardcover, 1955. Paperback reprints: Signet #1358, November 1956, cover: Robert Maguire; G2432, 1964.

   Mike Roscoe’s tough Kansas City private eye Johnny April appeared in five novels between 1951 and 1958. Although the first four went through various printings and editions, neither Roscoe nor April is much remembered today.

   Both are due for revival and reassessment, as the handful of Johnny April stories are among the best produced in the wave of hard-hitting PI fiction that followed the big splash made by Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.

   One Tear for my Grave finds April in the presence of millionaire Avery J. Castleman and a corpse. This prologue (“The 23rd Hour”) is followed by a flashback (“The First 22 Hours”) that comprises the bulk of the book.

   The lure of a fat retainer coaxes April out of bed at two in the morning to aid bookie Eddie Norris and his moll, Nicky, who have a corpse on their hands — or, actually, in their back seat. Norris claims innocence — somebody dumped this stiff in his car, says the bookie. From the cops April learns the corpse is a society type named David Matthews.

   Over the coming hours, various bookies — all of them owed money by Matthews — begin to die, and not of natural causes. Among them is Norris. April bumps heads with one particularly nasty bookie named Carbone, who trashes April’s office to convince him to “lay off” this case, which only serves to enrage the detective.

   April then meets with Ginny Castleman, the delicate, sympathy-arousing society girl engaged to the late Matthews; he also meets her mysterious Oriental servant, whose quiet concern for his mistress seems strangely obsessive. While bobbing and weaving between bookies and their thugs, April encounters Carbone’s moll, Lola, and a love/hate relationship blossoms.

   Eventually he finds that Matthews had paid off all the bookies before their deaths; and at the Castleman mansion, April has a final confrontation with Carbone as the convoluted, ultimately tragic mystery unravels. An epilogue (“The 24th Hour”) brings the book full circle.

   What sets such Roscoe mysteries as One Tear for My Grave apart from the crowd of would-be Spillanes is a studiously spare style. The novel is stripped for speed, consisting mostly of crisp dialogue and one- and two-sentence paragraphs.

   Despite this, the language is often vivid and evocative; witness the four opening lines (and four opening paragraphs) of the novel:

         There are two times when a man will lie very still.

         When he is finished making love with a woman.

         When he is finished with life.

         The man on the floor lay still with death.

   Roscoe was two men — Michael Ruso and John Roscoe — who were real private eyes, employed by Hargrave’s Detective Agency in Kansas City.

   The team’s first three books — Death Is a Round Black Ball (1952), Riddle Me This (1953), and Slice of Hell (1954) — are also excellent.

   The last Johnny April novel, The Midnight Eye, did not appear till 1958, half an Ace Double. While some of the poetic touches were still present, this marked a dropping off in quality over the first four, and a near absence of the dialogue/short paragraph approach.

   Perhaps the team had broken up and only one of them recorded this last Johnny April case.

         ———
   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.