STUART BROCK – Bring Back Her Body

Ace Double D-23; paperback original; 1st printing, 1953. Published back-to-back with Passing Strange, by Richard Sale.

   Stuart Brock, as all vintage paperback collectors know, especially those who collect mystery fiction also, was the pen name of Louis Trimble, who started his career writing hardcover detective novels for Phoenix Press in the early 1940s. Eventually he ended up writing westerns and science fiction novels for Donald A. Wollheim, first at Ace, then (SF only) at DAW, which would have been in the mid-1970s.

   Trimble also wrote westerns as Stuart Brock, but here, taken from Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, is a list of all four mysteries he wrote under that name:

   BROCK, STUART; pseudonym of Louis Trimble, (1917-1988)

      Death Is My Lover. M. S. Mill Co., hc, 1948. Readers Choice Library #38, pb, 1952 (abridged).

      Just Around the Coroner. M. S. Mill Co., hc, 1948. Dell 337, mapback, 1949.

      Bring Back Her Body. Ace Double D-23, pbo, 1953.

      Killer’s Choice. Graphic #136, pbo, 1956.

   The detective in the latter book is a private eye named Bert Norden. I apologize to say that I don’t know who did the sleuthing in the first two books, but I’m sure that all four books are in the same deep pure pulp tradition as Bring Back Her Body, in which the detective work is done by a gent named Abel Cain. I don’t really think he ever had another case to solve, and if he did, it would be hard to imagine one more, well, remarkable than this one.

   Cain’s father was, according to page 9, a renegade minister and had given his son his name as a joke, along with “a somewhat agnostic realism that Cain found to be incompatible with modern civilization.” He had been a bootlegger and a commercial fisherman, the latter which he still was when he needed the money, but mostly his time is his own, except when he acts as an unpaid, unlicensed private eye.

   Which he is in this case, hired by a rich businessman to keep an eye out for his stepdaughter Paula, who has disappeared and who also just happens to have enough stock in her possession to worry her stepfather when important business deals come along, which as the book opens, will be soon.

   Paula’s stepsister, Honor Ryerson, hangs out with the much older Abel Cain, and whew, is she a handful. She is an ardent believer in both astronomy and nudism, often at the same time, and is also obsessed with Cain as a would-be lover. He thinks she is a child, and she thinks not. In the course of hunting for her sister, Cain finds another woman whom he finds himself falling for, the threesome making for an odd, well, threesome, although not in the sense that may come immediately to mind.

   On page 35 comes a staggering discovery, an unveiling (or unlidding, in this case) held as the climax to what you might consider a wholly decadent party: “Stretched out in the coffin, clad in a shroud, was the still, pale form of Paula Ryerson.”

   As I said earlier, pure pulp, and perhaps even more risque. Well, no “perhaps” about it. It is risque to the point of edginess. There is more to the story than the last line of the previous paragraph suggests, but you will have to read the story for yourself to learn what I mean. There are certain things that I cannot begin to tell you in the context of a review without telling you too much.

   Once the story begins, so does the action, and the action never lets up for the entire 142 pages of the story, which begins humorously and ends with a couple of tough, chilling scenes that are also rather shocking, mostly because … I can’t tell you.

   It ends happily enough, however, as did most of the stories in the old pulp magazines. No exception here.

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – The Shadow of the Wolf.

Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1925. House of Stratus, UK, softcover, 2001. Dodd Mead & Co, US, hardcover, 1925. Included in R. Austin Omnibus Volume 3 : Helen Vardon’s Confession;The Cat’s Eye;The Mystery of Angelina Frood;The Shadow of the Wolf , Battered Silicon Box, US, hardcover, 1999.

   One of the Psalms speaks of those who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, but such ventures usually do not involve murder. However, this very crime occurs in The Shadow of the Wolf. The reader knows whodunit and why right away and so the novel relates how Dr Thorndyke reasons out the solution to the case.

   Messrs Varney and Purcell, old school and college chums now engaged in forging banknotes, quarrel while sailing in the English Channel. Varney wants to end their joint venture but Purcell will not agree. To make matters worse, Purcell married Margaret Haygarth, the woman Varney loved, while the latter was engaged in the dangerous business of passing forged banknotes abroad. A thick fog descends and Varney takes advantage of its concealment to murder Purcell, weight the body, and toss it overboard near the Wolf Rock lighthouse. Once ashore, Varney cleverly lays a false trail giving the impression Purcell has absconded.

   The Rodney brothers, medical practitioner Philip and solicitor Jack, own the small yacht borrowed for the fatal voyage, being friends of Varney and the Purcells. They are puzzled by Purcell’s apparent abandonment of his wife, and Varney plays along by pretending to investigate possible sightings of Purcell. In due course Dr Thorndyke is engaged to find the missing man since Mrs Purcell wishes to obtain her freedom either by having her husband legally declared dead or obtaining a divorce, for she suspects he has left her for another woman. Then a mysterious tenant disappears from chambers in Clifford’s Inn, almost on Thorndyke’s doorstep, and this event provides Thorndyke with certain information that ultimately leads to the cracking of the case.

   My verdict: A good book for a quiet evening’s read, being slower paced than some Thorndyke novels. Nevertheless the reader’s interest remains engaged while following Thorndyke’s reasoning of the circumstances of the case and how he obtains and confirms the necessary evidence. As a bonus they’ll also learn something about methods of forgery!

   Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/

   Here is a case where, if you weren’t convinced already, having an etext you can read online is going to be a big, big money saver. The least expensive copy of the Dodd Mead edition that I spotted moments ago on Abebooks will set you back you $60. (It’s not the same one, but it is the Dodd edition that you see to the left.) The asking price for the Battered Silicon Box edition is $65, and the cheapest Hodder & Stoughton edition will cost you around $80, including postage from England.

   I can’t tell you why, but the Stratus reprint is going for $200. Surprisingly enough, though, you can obtain a copy of the Hodder edition in dust jacket for around $120. At that price, it’s probably a bargain.

JOHN CREASEY – The Toff Among the Millions. Walker & Co., US, hardcover, 1976. First Edition: John Long Ltd., UK, 1943; paperback reprints, UK: Panther, 1964; Corgi, revised edition, 1972.

   The title could be taken in two ways, I guess. What begins with Richard Rollinson’s determined attempt to throw ice cold water on a friend’s summer romance leads not unexpectedly to a case of murder, perhaps of a missing industrialist supposedly worth a good many pounds. Rumors being what they are, this could also have been called The Toff and the Stock Market.

   Of course, as either protagonist or antagonist, the Toff is “one in a million,” so there you are. If you’ve never been properly introduced, the best description I could give might be that he’s a foppish sort of imitation of the Saint, complete with a devoted valet named Jolly, This particular book shows its age rather badly, however, and it’s not at all recommended for beginners. Just as in all too many bad radio dramas, the mystery is applied in layer upon layer of confusion and clod-pated characterization, so that at any stage the problem for the reader really becomes figuring out exactly what it is that’s going on.    (C minus)

[UPDATE] 07-21-07.  Ouch. I’m afraid that at the time I didn’t care very much for this one, did I? My general impression of the books in the Toff series has been that they’re very uneven, and perhaps the same might be said about Mr. Creasey’s work in general. This could have been one of the Toff’s lower spots, or perhaps it was I who might have been having a better day.

   Or? Here’s another possibility. Creasey first wrote the book in 1943, and at least by 1972, if not earlier, it had been revised for the Corgi edition. I’m not sure how much rewriting might have been involved, but maybe it just didn’t work –the book was written in one era for one audience, and then revamped for another, more sophisticated one. In any case, here’s a book I’d like to have another chance at. Maybe someday.

   Whenever anyone stops by where I live and asks me if I’ve “read all of these books,” my answer is always, “some of them more than once.”

PAUL MALMONT – The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

Simon & Schuster; hardcover. First Edition: May 2006. Trade paperback: June 2007.

   In 1937, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. For entertainment there was no television, only radio, the movies and – the pulps. The newsstands were filled with magazines made of cheap paper with lurid covers. Two of the best of these were The Shadow and Doc Savage, written by Walter Gibson and Lester Dent, respectively, although the general public knew them only by their pseudonyms, Maxwell Grant and Kenneth Robeson.

   What Paul Malmont proposes in this almost hoot of a novel is that Gibson, Dent, and a gent named L. Ron Hubbard combined forces to solve the murder of a fellow writer, one H. P. Lovecraft, and to track down at the same time a fellow from China trying to give his country a step up on Japan in those desperate days before World War II.

   Other real names which can be spotted in the narrative are Robert Heinlein, Chester Himes, Louis L’Amour and more than a few others. There is only one problem. No pulp novel ever took more than 150 pages to get started, as this book does.

   The author seems to feel that many readers will need a long expository history of the pulp magazines before he can begin, along with the life stories of each of the primary protagonists. Those who do not require this information will be bored, I fear – unless they enjoy quibbling about the details – expecting a faster pace by far. As for the uninitiated for whom the background would be useful, I wonder how many of them will ever get past the background.

   But when the book finally does take off, it’s hang-on-to-your-seatbelt time, there’s no doubt about it!

   Note: This review appeared earlier in Historical Novels Review.

ADAM BLISS – The Camden Ruby Murder

Grosset & Dunlap; hardcover reprint, no date stated. First edition: Barse & Co., hardcover, 1931.

   According to the increasingly indispensable Crime Fiction IV, Adam Bliss was the pseudonym of Robert F. Burkhardt & Eve Burkhardt, husband and wife, as we shall see in a moment. They wrote three books under this pen name, to whit:

      The Camden Ruby Murder, Barse, 1931. Grosset hc reprint.
      Murder Upstairs, Macrae-Smith, 1934. Grosset hc reprint.
      Four Times a Widower, Macrae-Smith, 1936.

   The leading character in each of the last two is someone named Alice Penny, about whom I know nothing at the moment, but since I own one of the two books, present whereabouts unknown, I will tell you more about her, eventually, as soon as I locate the box I know that it is in. And read it. The book, that is, not the box.

   The Burkhardts also wrote books as Rob Eden; there are five entries for them in CFIV under this name. And ordinarily, this is about all you might expect to learn about an obscure pair or writers like these, but no, the Internet does say more. With a judicious use of Google, I discovered a website devoted to events in 1947. What particular connection the Burkhardts have with 1947, I have not yet discerned, but I quote:

   The works of Rob Eden, as taken from the website above, are the following. No claim is made (by me) as to completeness. [Those marked with a * are entries in CFIV; one marked with a ** perhaps should be.]

      Always in Her Heart
      Blond Trouble
      Dancing Feet
      Fickle
      The Girl With Red Hair
      Golden Goddess
      Heartbreak Girl
      Her Dream Prince
      Her Fondest Hope
      In Love With a T-Man **   [ Listed for sale elsewhere with this description: “Secretary falls in love with her Treasury Agent boss. Intrigue, romance.” ]
      * Jennifer Hale
      Kathie the First
      * Loot
      Love Blind
      Love Came Late
      * Love Comes Flying
      Love or Money
      Love Wings
      The Lovely Liar
      Lucky Lady
      Men at Her Feet
      Modern Marriage
      Moon Over the Water
      The Mountain Lodge
      * A New Friend
      Pay Check
      Second Choice
      * Short Skirts: A Story of Modern Youth
      Step-Child
      This Man Is Yours
      Trapped By Love
      $20 a Week

   One other website indicates that the authors also wrote as Rex Jardin. If so, this may be a case of a missing entry in CFIV, as the one title found under this byline certainly sounds as though it may be crime-related: The Devil’s Mansion, Fiction League, 1931; Jacobsen, 1931?; Paperback Library, pb, 1966, as a gothic romance with the following blurb on the cover: “Janet was forced to escape the eerie old house or become the bride of the Devil himself!”

   As for The Camden Ruby Murder itself, the good news is, to some of us – should I make that “most of us?” – is that this is a locked-room mystery. I’ll get to the (relatively) bad news in a minute. To set the scene first of all, the narrator, Gary Maughan; his host, Van Every, owner of the newly acquired (and priceless) Camden Ruby;and Maughan’s long-time acquaintance (and once his lover) stage star Margalo Younger, are in Van Every’s home, listening to him expound on the curse that has been placed upon the gem. When the story is completed, with its gory details, Margalo, who has apparently fainted, is discovered by the two men instead to be dead. Murdered by means of a poisoned needle found at the base of her brain.

   Mitigating circumstances: The door to the room was open, and a number of household members (and close friends) are eventually learned to have passed by, which seems to make matters less complicated, until (as time goes on) it is also learned that none of them could have committed the crime, more or less. Which is too bad, because none of them really did do it. In the hands of an author like John Dickson Carr, the flummery would have kept pace with the investigation, if not kept tantalizingly out in front instead of lagging behind, as it does here, which to my mind, at least, was a large disappointment, as the flummery itself is top-notch and worthy of, as I suggested above, better hands.

   This book was written back in the day where the mystery, the murder, the crime, the investigation and the questioning were the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. Not much time is spent on personal matters, unless and until they had a bearing on the case at hand. Maughan quickly gains the confidence of the investigating officer, one Captain Keyes, which (fortunately for the reader) gives Maughan, as the narrator, total and complete access to the entire investigation. He is therefore able to view it from every side and angle and than back inside out again.

   Not that this amounts to more than a hill of peapods later on, at a key juncture of the story when Maughan, tired from slogging across town one time too many in the rain, turns down an opportunity for someone to tell him something important, something so important it would have solved the case then and there – halfway through the book – only for that person offering him the aforesaid opportunity, but denied, to become the second of the killer’s victims. (I am not telling you anything you should not know, for as Maughan himself says, immediately after turning said person away, “I would have given anything if only I … had listened…”)

   Any weaknesses or problematic passages aside, I enjoyed reading this book, and if you are still with me in reading my comments thus far, I am somewhat of the opinion that you would too.

[UPDATE] 07-21-07. Al Hubin has agreed with me about the book by Rob Eden which I suggested be included in CFIV. You will find it under that author’s name in the ongoing online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   As for the book by Rex Jardin mentioned above, Al has informed me that it was included in Crime Fiction II. He removed it from later editions on the advice it was not criminous in nature. Any confirmation or factual information to the contrary would be welcome.

[UPDATE] 07-24-07. Jamie Sturgeon has found two more titles by Rob Eden, and Al Hubin has agreed that both of them warrant inclusion in CFIV. Details can be found in this later blog entry.

JOHN R. L. ANDERSON – Death in the Channel

Stein & Day, hardcover, 1976. Reprint paperback: Stein & Day 88112, 1985. Detective Book Club [3-in-1 edition], hardcover, Jan-Feb, 1977. First published in England as Redundancy Pay,by J. R. L. Anderson: Victor Gollancz, hardcover,1976.

   A young London accountant loses his job in a takeover by a larger firm, loses his wife to the joys and pleasures that only wealth can bring, and sick and tired of the continual chase for paper money, he heads back to his boyhood home to see whether or not livings can still be made from the sea.

   In Finmouth he gets a job with lobster pots, is suspected for a while of stealing a priceless chalice left unguarded in a church vestry, but then discovers the connection between the crime and some divers searching for sunken treasure out in the English Channel.

   It doesn’t take a mathematician to put together the correct equations and solve them, but it is exactly that sort of old-fashioned story that’s put together in just so precise a manner. The pacing bothered me a little, and there is a surprisingly large flaw in the logic at one point, but overall Anderson will strike you, I’m sure, as a writer who is reliably competent and solid. And decent.    (C plus)

[UPDATE] 07-20-07. I’ve not been able to come up with a cover image for either US edition of this book. According to my records, I may no longer even own a copy. If I do, it’s nowhere it can be easily located. Thanks to British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon, though, what you see is the cover of Gollancz edition. Not as interesting as it might have been, but it’s still good to have.

   In Crime Fiction IV, Allen Hubin indicates that Major Peter Blair, one of Anderson’s two major series characters is in this book, but Jamie has reassured me that he does not. Until I received an email from Jamie this afternoon, I was surprised to think that Blair was in the book and somehow I hadn’t managed to mention it in the review.

    I don’t remember ever reading one of Major Blair’s exploits, but I could be wrong. For the sake of completeness, Anderson’s other detective character was Inspector Piet Deventer, one of whose cases I remember not caring for as much as I did Death in the Channel, but which one it was, I can no longer recall.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS – Average Jones.

Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1911. Story collection.

   As an assiduous reader of personal advertisements — and if you won’t admit to doing the same, I think you’ll agree they are important plot points in a number of detective novels – I warmed instantly to Adrian Van Reypen Egerton Jones, nicknamed Average Jones for obvious reasons.

   A highly intelligent, very rich, and terribly bored young man, as the first yarn opens he is wondering what to do with himself. His friend Mr Waldemar, owner of The Universal, an important New York City paper, suggests Jones set up as a kind of one man consumer protection wallah, giving advice, as Jones’s business card will later declare, “upon all matters connected with Advertising.” As a bonus, Jones will pass on discoveries about various swindles perpetrated through ads to Waldemar, thus keeping the paper’s lengthy advertising columns “clean.”

   Jones gives it a whirl and soon becomes engrossed in the work to the extent of setting up an agency to handle the more humdrum requests for advice while he looks into ads that grab his attention, particularly those hinting at criminal activity. Average Jones relates the cases he investigates.

    “The B-Flat Trombone” is a locked room mystery. By what method was mayoral candidate William Linder blown up in a locked room on the third floor of his mansion on Kennard Street in Brooklyn?

    After three unsuccessful attempts on his life, Malcolm Dorr keeps two guard dogs. Both are killed yet neither were shot or poisoned. Then there is a rash of canine deaths in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Is there any connection between these events and the mysterious “Red Dot”?

    Where is young rakehell Roderick Hoff? His father engages Jones to find him. Jones follows an “Open Trail” to do so and then outfoxes Hoff’s swindling father when he tries to wiggle out of paying the reward money.

    “Mercy Sign” is a dark story rooted in a real historical tragedy. Jones and his friend Robert Bertram look into a strange affair involving a missing academic assistant, a wrecked houseboat, and a dead foreign dignitary.

    Jewels nicknamed the “Blue Fires” form a beautiful necklace, a gift from Mr Kirby to his fiancee Edna Hale. Their disappearance means their wedding is postponed. What do a torn curtain and broken-off bed knob have to do with the matter?

    Anonymous letters of a particularly nasty sort are written out in “Pin-Pricks” on junk advertising mail sent to William Robinson. What is the purpose of these communications and who could be responsible?

    Bailey, the son of rural minister Rev’d Peter Prentice, is missing after a meteor lands on a New England barn and sets it alight. An ad appears revealing he is alive but not where, but a certain bit of “Big Print” aids Jones in tracing the lost boy.

    Enderby Livius is “The Man Who Spoke Latin,” claiming he cannot speak English. Livius is up to no good in bibliophile Colonel Ridgway Graeme’s chaotic library, and to find out what it is Jones poses as a mute classical scholar.

    “The One Best Bet” begins with a man committing suicide because he arrives too late to amend his personal ad, having had second thoughts about its content – as well he might, since it reveals a plot to murder the governor. Can the crime be prevented?

    “The Million-Dollar Dog” involves one of those odd wills beloved by the rich in detective fiction. Judge Hawley Ackroyd’s advertisement seeking l0,000 black beetles puts Jones on the trail of an attempt to gain a fortune by underhanded means.

    My verdict: What an inventive way to introduce a detective to cases in all levels of society! I enjoyed this collection a great deal and recommend it to readers who like slightly offbeat and very clever stories. Now I’m off to read the personal ads in today’s papers….

Etext: www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/vrjns10.txt

    Besides being a novelist with several works of mystery and detective fiction to his credit, Samuel Hopkins Adams was also a well-known “muckraker” and investigative reporter. For more information on his life and career, a good place to start looking would be his Wikipedia entry.

   From Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

ADAMS, SAMUEL HOPKINS (1871-1958); see pseudonym Warner Fabian.
    * Average Jones (Bobbs, 1911, hc) [Average Jones] Palmer, 1911.
    * The Flying Death (McClure, 1908, hc) [Long Island, NY]
    * _The Mystery (with Stewart Edward White) See entry under Stewart Edward White.
    * _The President’s Mystery Story [as by Franklin D. Roosevelt] See entry under Franklin D. Roosevelt
    * The Secret of Lonesome Cove (Bobbs, 1912, hc) [New England] Hodder, 1913.

FABIAN, WARNER; pseudonym of Samuel Hopkins Adams.
    * -The Men in Her Life (Sears, 1930, hc) Film: Columbia, 1931 (scw: Robert Riskin, Dorothy Howell; dir: William Beaudine).

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD
    * The Mystery (with Samuel Hopkins Adams) (McClure, 1907, hc) [Percy Darrow; Ship] Hodder, 1907.

ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN
    * The President’s Mystery Story [by Anthony Abbot, Samuel Hopkins Adams, John Erskine, Rupert Hughes, S. S. Van Dine & Rita Weiman] (Farrar, 1935, hc) Lane, 1936. Revised edition: Prentice-Hall, 1967, as The President’s Murder Plot. A mystery novel suggested by Roosevelt and written, a chapter each, by seven mystery writers. Film: Republic, 1936, as The President’s Mystery; also released as One for All (scw: Lester Cole, Nathaniel West; dir: Phil Rosen).

NICOLAS FREELING – Sabine.

Harper & Row, hardcover, 1976. Paperback reprint: Vintage V-553, 1980. First published in England as Lake Isle, William Heinemann Ltd., hardcover, 1976; Penguin, paperback, 1980.

   The sights and sounds of small-town France are put on display as provincial policeman Henri Castang investigates the untimely death of an elderly poetess who had earlier come to him with some uneasy feelings concerning her adopted son and only heir. An intellectual affair, in fine Gallic tradition, as we’re shown how political and judicial pressures influence everyday policework, and not at all for the action-minded among us. (C)

      – From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979. This review also appeared earlier in the Hartford Courant.

[UPDATE] 07-18-07. When I was writing for the Courant, I was usually working under severe space restrictions, so some of my reviews were a whole lot shorter than they are today. I don’t believe I’ve ever read another book by Freeling, I regret to say, neither the Castang books nor the cases given to Inspector Van Der Valk to solve.

   Thanks to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of the Henry Castang books. I do have many of these in paperback editions, and just in case you were wondering, I do plan to read them. I don’t keep anything I don’t intend to read.

BRIAN BALL – Death of a Low-Handicap Man.

Arthur Barker Ltd., UK, hardcover, 1974. Walker & Co., hardcover, US, 1978. Paperback reprint: Walker 3063, 1984. Trade paperback: Wildside Press, 2003.

   When a golfer that not everyone’s overly fond of is found whacked to death near the clubhouse, the only question the bartender asks is: “How many strokes?” On the other hand, the investigation that follows is painfully and stolidly slow, hampered in part by an unspoken procedural conflict between the village bobby and the superintendent from the C.I.D. Nor is it quite a “locked room” mystery either, but it is difficult to explain how nothing suspicious was noticed, even though the thicket in which the dead man was found had been under close observation throughout the match, and from all sides. Although it’s not really necessary, a love of the silly game of golf will help tremendously in the enjoyment you’ll get from this one. (C)

      – From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979. This review also appeared earlier in the Hartford Courant.

[UPDATE] 07-18-07. Brian Ball has six books listed in CFIV, as follows:

      Death of a Low-Handicap Man (n.) Barker 1974; Walker, 1978.
      Montenegrin Gold (n.) Barker 1974; Walker, 1978.
      Keegan: The No-Option Contract (n.) Barker, 1975.

      Keegan: The One-Way Deal (n.) Barker, 1976.
      Witchfinder: The Evil at Monteine (n.) Mayflower, pb, 1977.
      The Baker Street Boys (co.) BBC, 1983. Series character: Arnold Wiggins. [Two novelettes based on the BBC television series.]

   He’s probably much better known, however, as science fiction writer Brian N. Ball. For a list of all of his books, this website seems to be the place to look.

   Keegan appears to have been a reluctant spy for British Intelligence. The book based on “The Baker Street Boys”sounds intriguing, as does the TV series itself. The link will lead to the IMDB entry for it. There was one other book in the “Witchfinder” series:

      Witchfinder: The Mark of the Beast. (n.) Mayflower, pb, 1976.

   While this may be a book wrongly omitted from CFIV, it may be a straight horror novel with no criminous aspects to it.

   As for the mystery novel reviewed above, I seem to have neglected to include the name of either of the two sleuths involved, not that either apparently made another appearance. Nevertheless, I’d still like to know who they might have been. If you happen to have a copy handy, would check it out and pass the word along to me?

   The “locked room” aspect doesn’t seem to have been strong enough for the book to be included in Bob Adey’s Locked Room Murders, but once again, my bringing it up at all makes me wish I’d taken better notes at the time. Even though I gave this one a letter grade of only a “C”, if I come across it again any time soon, I think that a re-reading might very well be in order.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Terrified Typist

Pocket 6108, paperback reprint; 1st printing, November 1961. Hardcover edition: William Morrow, January 1956. Detective Book Club [3-in-1 edition], February 1956. Other paperback editions: Pocket Cardinal C-275, August 1958. Pocket, 1967, October 1975. Ballantine, March 1987, July 1999. Other editions are likely.

   There are certain authors who are so well known that there is very little chance that a review of one of their books is going to convince a would-be reader to read that author or not, even if that would-be reader has never even read that author. Sometimes one’s mind is made up, and there’s nothing that I could say that could change their opinion, either one way or the other.

   Case in point: Erle Stanley Gardner, and in particular the Perry Mason stories that he is known around the world for writing. In an unusal split in personality, fiction-wise, a number of people say that they like Gardner in his guise as A. A. Fair, but not when he’s writing under his own name, but stylistically, they read the same to me.

   I recognize, of course, the various reasons why someone might not care for Gardner’s books. Maybe you (well, not necessarily you) don’t like courtroom dramas, especially those that you know pretty much when the courtroom scenes are going to take place, soon after about halfway through, with a break in the action while the courtroom’s in recess while Perry calls on his stalwart private eye Paul Drake to dig up the necessary evidence he suddenly realizes that he needs.

   Those readers who like their detective figures to have personal lives have little to look forward to in the Perry Mason books. What do Perry and his faithful secretary do after their frequent dinners out together? It was never said, and it never will be. Gardner’s narratives and the dialogue from the mouths of his characters are of one piece, wooden, for the most part, and I suspect, repetitive in cadence and phrasing from book to book.

   I recognize all of the above, and groan sometimes when an especially awkward bit of repartee between Perry, Paul and Della takes place, and sometimes — believe it or not — the clueing is not entirely is as seamless and tidied up as completely at the end as it should be. But once started one of the Perry Mason books, I simply cannot stop.

   They usually begin with some strange, unusual occurrence that somehow happens to Perry or catches his eye in the newspaper or from his incoming mail, and The Case of the Terrified Typist is certainly no exception. Needing an ultra-efficient typist for some reason, Perry’s office is expecting one from an employment agency. When she arrives, she is very nervous, but she also proves to be one of the best typists they’ve ever had — until she disappears.

   Until another office — a jewel importing firm — in the same building is found to have been vandalized. Until a wad of gum under the typist’s table is found to be concealing two diamonds. Until Perry is hired by the firm’s head office to represent one of the two men in charge of the local branch — he’s accused of killing the smuggler who brought the gems into the country but whose body has never been found.

   Twist after new revelation after twist occurs, and trying to keep track of all of the participants and who’s telling the truth and who’s not will simply make one’s head swim. I know. It did mine. This is also one of the few cases in which Perry’s client is found guilty, until of course, the final twist and the final revelation that I guarantee you no one — no one, I tell you — no one will see coming, unless they just happen to have had their eyes fixed on the shell that contains the pea all along.

   That is to say, one of the participants is telling the truth and the whole truth, and maybe if you identify which one of them it is, you will have a chance of pulling this one out. As for me, I never came close.

[PostScript] It was a coincidence only, but I’d just finished writing this review and was in the process of editing it when I saw on Bill Crider’s blog that today’s the 118th anniversary of Erle Stanley Gardner’s date of birth. He was born on this day in 1889.

   So the review was rushed into (electronic) print, with some of the rough edges still showing, since smoothed away, I hope. For a fine overview of Gardner’s career as well as that of Perry Mason, you could do no better than visit The Rap Sheet, where Jeff Pierce discusses in great detail Ken Corning, Mason’s early counterpart in Black Mask magazine; the 1930s movies Mason was in; and above all, the superb choice made in casting Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, and in doing so, transforming the character into one of the immortals in the history of detective fiction.