MELVILLE DAVISSON POST – The Sleuth of St. James’s Square

D. Appleton & Co., New York & London, hardcover, 1920.

   The sleuth who lives in a large house in St. James’s Square, London, is Sir Henry Marquis, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. He also owns a country mansion and a villa on the French Riviera and internal evidence suggests he was educated at Rugby’s famous public school and Oxford University. He previously ran the English secret service in the India-Burma border area and had also been busy in unspecified places in Asia, although there is reason to suppose he is familiar with Mongolia. Sir Henry belongs to the Empire Club in Piccadilly and apparently goes to the opera now and then.

   He is enthusiastic about scientific methods for solving crimes, mentioning dactyloscopic (fingerprint) bureaus and photographie mitrique in particular, but also laments lack of “intuitive impulse” in the men under his command. However, not all the cases in this collection of short stories are solved by deduction or even intuitive impulse, and indeed one or two end in triumph for those on the wrong side of the law. Oddly enough, although Sir Henry is the titular sleuth, in some stories he is not directly involved and in a couple he is referred to only in passing.

   Shall we begin?

   “The Thing On The Hearth” is blamed for the death of Mr Rodman, a scientist who invented a process to make precious gems. He is found dead in a locked room guarded by an Oriental servant and his death involves what appears to be a visitor from … somewhere else. Sir Henry visit Rodman’s New England mansion to investigate the matter.

   In the next tale, Sir Henry has been looking over the memoirs of Captain Walker, head of the US Secret Service. In their ensuing discussion Walker tells him the tale of an inebriate hobo, who, when everyone else had failed, was instrumental in locating a number of stolen plates for war bonds, thus earning “The Reward.”

   The following adventure involves a large sum of money Madame Barras is foolishly carrying on an unaccompanied two mile journey through the forest lying between the home of an old school friend and the village hotel in which madame is staying. Sir Henry is also a hotel guest and helps search for “The Lost Lady.”

   The titled parents of a young man fighting at the front in France are extremely distressed. His fiancee has been staying out half the night motoring all over the landscape with Mr Meadows, and even admits to having deliberately picked him up! But when Mr Meadows obligingly gives a lift to Sir Henry, who is on his way to investigate a murder, footprints from “The Cambered Foot,” not to mention other clews, turn out to be not at all what they seem.

   In the next story, an Englishman, an American, and an Italian are *not* sitting in a bar but rather are chatting about the justice systems of their respective countries at Sir Henry’s villa. The Italian count relates how it was legally possible for “The Man In The Green Hat,” proved without a shadow of doubt to have been guilty of premeditated murder, to escape the death penalty.

   Sir Henry owns a diary kept by the daughter of his ancestor Mr Pendleton, a justice of the peace in colonial Virginia. The diary describes cases in which Pendleton was involved and this one concerns dissolute Lucian Morrow’s wish to buy a beautiful Hispanic girl from Mr Zindorf, whose ownership of her is dubious to say the least. However “The Wrong Sign” turns out to be right for saving the innocent.

   Another Pendleton story follows. Peyton Marshall’s will favouring Englishman Anthony Gosford has gone missing, and it transpires Marshall’s son has hidden it for what appears to be good reason. But can the lad’s unsupported claims be proved, allowing him to inherit what his father promised him? “The Fortune Teller” will reveal the answer.

   The next tale relates a third case involving Sir Henry’s ancestor. Pendleton meets a girl wandering about in despair. This is not surprising given her uncle, with whom she had been living, has just kicked her out of his house after informing her that her father was a rogue who robbed him and absconded. “The Hole In The Mahogany Panel” bears mute witness to the truth.

   After the war is over, the traitoress Lady Muriel is in desperate financial straits as she can no longer sell British secrets. She overhears a conversation that ultimately leads to her to commit murder in order to steal an explorer’s watercolour of, and map showing the route to, a lake in the French Congo where treasure lies at “The End Of The Road.”

   In “The Last Adventure” explorer Charlie Taylor has been trying to find the ancient route of gold-bearing caravans crossing Mongolia in order to salvage the precious metal from those that foundered. After he returns to America with only a few months to live, his friend Barclay undertakes to sell Taylor’s map to the location of a heap o’ gold to Nute Hardman, a man who had previously cheated Taylor.

   Continuing onward, jewel dealer Douglas Hargrave meets Sir Henry at their London club. Sir Henry is puzzling over an advertisement run in papers in three European capitals, trying to deduce what “The American Horses” represent in an obviously coded message. Then Hargrave meets a lady who wants to buy a large lot of valuable gems from a Rumanian who demands payment in cash….

   Lisa Lewis, American Ambassadoress, relates next a curious tale at a dinner party at Sir Henry’s house. “The Dominion Railroad Company” has experienced a number of terrible accidents and fears numerous reports alleging negligence will lead to its bankruptcy. Yet despite all possible precautions the Montreal Express derails because of “The Spread Rails.” Lisa’s friend Marion Warfield, who has revised a highly praised textbook on circumstantial evidence, solves the mystery.

   At the same dinner party Sir Henry describes the case of the hardhearted lawyer who demands more money to represent a butler on trial for murdering his employer. The money cannot be found and the accused’s wife wanders the streets in despair. A wealthy opera singer takes pity on her, treats her to a meal, and listens to her story. Is she a fairy godmother in the modern equivalent of “The Pumpkin Coach,” and can she help the man on trial?

   In the case following, Miss Carstair is having doubts about her marriage to diplomat Lord Eckhart despite her fiance’s gift of a stunning ruby necklace, for she is extremely troubled by gossip he is the worst ne’er do well in London. While she is pondering the matter Dr Tsan-Sgam, who has been dining with Sir Henry, arrives with news of the death of her father in the Gobi Desert, ultimately learning of its connection to “The Yellow Flower.”

   Up next, a post-war story narrated next by a weekend guest at Sir Henry’s country house. Sir Henry reveals the true story of an incident on a hospital ship boarded by Prussian submarine commander Plutonberg. Wounded St Alban defies him with the fighting words “Don’t threaten, fire if you like!”, becoming an instant hero to the British. But there’s a lot more to it than that, and a situation as bitter as the rolling waves is revealed in “A Satire of the Sea.”

   In the final yarn, the uncle of narrator Robin tries to put him off visiting him, but the envelope in which the letter arrives has a hastily scrawled appeal to ignore the contents and come to The House By The Loch. Will his uncle’s labours to cast a perfect Buddha ever be successful? Who is the highlander sitting knitting while talking about the Ten Commandments and taking a great deal of interest in the movements of Robin’s uncle?

   My verdict: A first rate collection with several stories having a O. Henryesque twist or two and catching the reader by surprise. My favourites were “The Last Adventure,” a wonderful biter-bit yarn, and “A Satire of the Sea,” with its psychological underpinnings. An author’s note for “The Man In The Green Hat” cites a specific case and readers may like to know it was heard by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in 1913.

    Etext: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

Original story appearances [taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

   Palmer’s last Hollywood film Step by Step (1946), is an entertaining comedy espionage-thriller. Palmer scripted, from George Callahan’s story. The tale has some elements in common with Palmer’s prose mysteries:

   One wonders if “B-13,” part of the spy code, is Palmer’s homage to John Dickson Carr’s radio play, “Cabin B-13” (1943).

   The other members of the creative team also have personal elements in Step by Step. George Callahan’s use of electronic bugs by the spies recalls the even more unusual television jukebox in The Shanghai Cobra, for which he also wrote the story.

   Director Phil Rosen was reduced in 1946 to low budget B-movies like Step by Step, but during the silent era he had worked on major films like The Young Rajah (1922).

THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN. Hemdale/Hemisphere, UK, 1972. Laurence Naismith, Lynne Frederick, Garry Miller, Rosalyn Landor, Marc Granger, Diana Dors. Based on the novel The Ghosts by Antonia Barber. Directed by Lionel Jeffries.

   Am I stretching things to include this not-really-so-spooky children’s movie about ghosts and time-travel – apparently a staple on British television every Easter morning for years – as a mystery movie?

   Well, no, not really, according to my standards. This is, after all, a murder of two young children to be solved – no, I’ll take that back. There is the murder of two young children to be undone. We know who committed the murder – their uncle’s in-laws, of whom one (Diana Dors) you probably wouldn’t recognize even under duress.

   To start from the top. In the year 1916 or so, a family without a father is visited by an aged lawyer (Mr. Blunden, played by Laurence Naismith) who saves them from a wretched life in a basement hovel, giving them a new home in the caretaker’s cottage for a manor in which the two children perished in a fire 100 years before.

   When the two dead children appear (in solid ghostly form) to Lucy and Jaime, it is to take them into the past, where it is hoped, the past can be undone, and redeem Mr. Blunden’s error at the time in not taking the children’s warning more seriously. (Lucy is played by Lynne Frederick at 18, she being the future Mrs. Peter Sellers, five years later.)

   The DVD print I viewed was not very good, as if it were taken from an indifferent video tape, but if re-processed properly, this would be quite a period spectacle for the eye indeed – two periods of British history, as a matter of fact. As it is, it’s charming, warm-hearted and delightful and – I hate to mention it – flawed.

   In terms of time-travel and logic going together, maybe they’re totally incompatible, and maybe not, but this one has a gigantic gaff in it that’s easy enough to ignore, simply because you want to, but it still needs a mention, even by the most sympathetic reviewer. Such as the one you have here.

MATT STUART – Edge of the Desert

Lancer 72-117, paperback original, May 1966. 2nd printing, Lancer 73-635, as Lady of Battle Mountain, July 1967; 3rd printing, Lancer 73-833, as Edge of the Desert, April 1969.

   I can find covers of the first and third printings, but not of the second, which itself is very difficult to find. The only two copies which surfaced on a recent Internet search were on Amazon, and nowhere else.

   But please forgive me. Is this a western? You’re asking, and the answer is yes. I’ve never read westerns as often as I have mysteries, but I started reading them in the 1950s – I remember buying a copy of King Colt by Luke Short when I was 14 and thinking it was terrific — and I’ve never quite stopped.

   And whether or not they’re included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV – Al generally says no unless there’s a leading character who’s actually a detective and involved in solving a case – I have no compunction about reviewing them here. Almost every western has a crime component of some kind, and if they don’t, I probably don’t read them. Rustling, gunfighting, horse thievery, burning out homesteaders, it’s all against the law, and therefore – when written up in book form – crime fiction.

   To tell you the truth, though, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, the crime component in this book is rather small. But it’s the book I started while taking a short leave of absence from the rather long mystery novel I was otherwise involved with, finishing it in a couple of evenings’ worth of reading time, and here it is.

   But first, worth a mention, I think, is that the author, Matt Stuart, was also better known (to western readers of the 60s and 70s) as L. P. Holmes (1895-1988), who began by writing for the pulp magazines in 1925. His first book appeared in 1935, but the bulk of his career as a novel writer – about 50 of them in all – came between 1949 and 1975.

   I daren’t try to generalize too much from Edge of the Desert, however, as what kind of writer he was, as I think the book is rather unusual – a western in which a woman plays the leading role, and a woman from the East, at that.

   Sherry Gault never knew her uncle very well, having met him only once when she was very young, but when he died and left her his ranch out West, she thought she owed it too him at least to visit it, even though his lawyer had passed on to her a very generous offer for her new inheritance.

   Not so. The lawyer’s a crook, and so is the powerful cattle baron who made the offer, not to mention the local sheriff, who’s solidly in the pocket of the latter. The foreman of the ranch, who meets her off the train, and the other hands – her newly gained employees – are on her side, however, all but one, and together they eventually prevail.

   A very slim story, with every potentially interesting twist of the plot into other directions never quite followed up on. But in its own way, with a manifest love of the open sky and wide open country apparent at every turn of the page, as Sherry finds herself more and more at home on Clear Creek ranch, it’s difficult to speak more badly of the tale than that. The ending is as homespun and corny as you can very well imagine, or at least that’s what I’d thought too if it hadn’t come straight from the heart.

   I’m guessing, therefore, if I dare, but I’m going to say that the rest of L. P. Holmes’s western fiction is going to be very much in this same traditional vein, if not as solidly romantic as this one.

DORIS MILES DISNEY – Room for Murder

Macfadden 75-448; paperback, 2nd printing, October 1971; 1st printing, Macfadden 60-392, April 1969. First Edition: Doubleday/Crime Club, 1955.

   Explain this to me, if you can. Doris Miles Disney, while very popular in her day – and I’ll get back to that in a minute – and I haven’t checked to see how true this is for her other books, but at least the one I have here in my hand has all but vanished from the Internet marketplace. I find only six copies for sale, including none of the hardcover edition, ranging in price from $16.81, including shipping, to $34.49. The cheapest one, by the way, will be coming from the UK, if you were to order it.

    I don’t know whether it’s low supply or high demand, but what on earth is going on? It’s a good book, but by no stretch of the imagination is it a great one. It’s also very much not typical of books being written today, and that’s something else I’ve have to get back to.

   But in terms of describing Mrs. Disney’s popularity, here’s a list of her books, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

    Did you spot the book from Putnam in there? I don’t know how or why that happened. It otherwise seems like a long and production relationship with Doubleday, one that lasted for nearly 35 years.

    For some basic biographical data, one online source says briefly of the author:

Doris Miles Disney (22 Dec 1907-9 Mar 1976) insurance employee, social agency publicist.

   For the long version, you can learn more here. (This webpage comes from doing a search in Google books, so you may have to repeat the search.) If you were to have gathered from the locale of many of her stories that she may have been from Connecticut, you would have been correct. She was born in Glastonbury, two towns over from me.

   Of her series characters, Jim O’Neill is a Connecticut county detective; Jeff DiMarco is an insurance investigator; and David Madden is a US postal inspector. From all accounts, Mrs. Disney began her career writing traditional detective stories, but began writing suspense thrillers that grew progressively darker as the years went on. Even so, a dose of comedy could often be found in her mysteries as well.

   Case in point, the book in hand, the only one of the above that I’ve read in, say, 30 years or so, making it the only one I can talk about with more than vague generalities. I won’t say I laughed out loud while reading it, but if intermittent chuckling counts, this is a funny book. There are some noirish qualities to it as well – by which I do not mean to say hard-boiled in any way, shape or form – far from it – but behind the walls of the rooming house where the book is centered there’s a definite sense of uneasiness that never quite goes away.

   Running the rooming house are two spinster sisters named Aggie and Kate, Irish through and through, and who argue and quarrel with each other nearly all day long, or at least whenever they’re in the same room together. Nonetheless, having spent their lives together so far, the reader can tell that they could never live apart. Their niece Teresa has lived with the two women for most of her life and is now of marriageable age, but to her aunts’ ever growing frustration, she shows no signs of finding a suitable man to marry, or wishing to.

   There are other relatives, and of course there are the boarders, some of them long-term and some relatively new, and all have their own particular eccentricities, shall we say. It is one of the more recent roomers who is found dead after coming home after what appears to have been a long night of drinking. Suicide is the verdict of the local (Somerset, Connecticut) police department. Aggie, who reads true crime magazines, is not so sure, and surprisingly enough, ventures out on a long trip from home alone to prove it.

    I have not mentioned Dennis Callahan yet. He is one of the policeman called to the scene of the roomer’s death, and while he is there, he and Teresa immediately catch each other’s eye, much to the two sister’s displeasure. A mere policeman, he is, even though he has a solid Irish name – and there’s a story behind that as well.

   The case itself is complicated, and unfortunately, to my own personal regret, most of the detection takes place offstage. On the other hand, Mrs. Disney doesn’t pull any punches. As cozy and light as the banter in the rooming house is, there is a villain that is as nasty as any you will find in many other much tougher venues. It’s a clever mix that I found both unusual and, well, delightful.

LAWRENCE BLOCK – Lucky at Cards

Hard Case Crime; paperback reprint, Feb 2007. First published as The Sex Shuffle, by Sheldon Lord; Beacon B757x, paperback original, 1964.

   Here’s a crackerjack of a crime novel published in 1964 that has been a loosely kept secret, not even appearing in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV until now, which is when the folks at Hard Case Crime have essentially let the entire world know about it. Everyone, that is, but a small handful of diehard collectors who delve into and devour what are called the “sleaze” books in the trade, Beacon being one of the better and more well known providers of the same.

   Not that the “sex scenes” in Beacon’s output are anything near torrid, given today’s standards, and The Sex Shuffle, if anything, is tamer than most. On the other hand, if you believe the quality of the writing in the Beacon books is anything like that of The Sex Shuffle, you’d be fairly well mistaken. They were written quickly for the most part, mostly by men who had one eye on the market and other on their landlord, whenever the rent was due — sometimes with hidden talent but far more often, what you read was what you got.

   Nor do I think searching out Sheldon Lord’s books in general would necessarily be a worthwhile pursuit, unless you are one of those aforementioned diehard collectors, or this book persuades you to become one. An article in Books Are Everything, which I have not seen, is reported to have stated that Block was “the first user of the Sheldon Lord pseudonym, followed by Hal Dresner, followed by Milo Perichitch.” There are also claims that say that Donald Westlake was one of the writers behind Sheldon Lord, but since this statement seems to have been questioned immediately by others, you’d better not rely very much on my saying so.

   In any case, what you have here, whatever its lineage may have been, is a near perfect low-level novel of crime and lust and greed and comeuppance and all of the other noir-related themes you can think of, written so smoothly that its 220 pages can be read in an hour, without once coming up for air.

   Story: a professional cardshark is stuck in a two-bit town while recuperating from his last scrape with — not the law — but with real gamblers in a real game and of course there was a woman at the root of it. Quoting from page 19:

   Thus beginning the book with this pair of introductory lines:

   The town isn’t mentioned, or if it is, I missed it, and even so I’d rather think of it as one of those typical small Midwestern towns of the sixties that was still living in the fifties at the time, with small town businesses and small town businessmen and small town wives…

   Except for one of them. From page 27, and an even longer quote this time. The dentist has invited Bill Maynard to a friendly small town poker game:

   This is one of those moments when the clock simply stops ticking, in other words. Her name is Joyce, and it turns out that she has a sharp eye out for a man who’s (too) good at cards. One thing leads to another, as things like this happen to do, and the husband is in the way. Bill Maynard has a plan, an outrageous plan, and even when you read it for the first time, it sounds outrageous but you go along with it, simply because Bill Maynard knows his plan will work.

   It doesn’t involve murder, not quite, or maybe it does, in a way, and of course it doesn’t work. Not at least, the way that Bill Maynard thinks it will. Did I mention that there is also a “good girl” in this story, a grade school teacher named Barbara who thinks that maybe she wants a bad man? Bill thinks she deserves a house and kids, and says good-bye. She’s not in the plan.

   What is the plan, how is it supposed to work, why doesn’t it work, and what it is with women who are attracted to bad men? Read the book, and you will learn.

   It does go a little over the top — a small misstep once or twice somewhere near the end — but all in all, it is the truth: about bad men (and bad women, for that matter) and life in small towns and a small chunk of our past, all in an hour’s reading. I kid you not.

A. WHATOFF ALLEN – Exit an Admiral

Sampson Low; hardcover. No date stated, but given as 1938 in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   And the above seems to be the sum total knowledge of Mr. Allen and his single work of detective fiction, unless you include an Internet obituary of one David Whatoff Allen, BA, 22 May 1997; commoner 1936-39. Aged 79. Perhaps a relative?     [See also the FOLLOWUP below.]

   In terms of other general information about the family, in this country (US) there was (presumably) a family of Whatoffs in Oklahoma, five members of which died between 1987 and 1993. [From Social Security records.] In the UK there is a Whatoff Lodge Farm in (I belive) Leicestershire where camping sites are available.

    Using Google, even though it’s an uncommon name, there are other references to Whatoff to be found, so perhaps if one wanted, the author could be traced, given a little more persistence, ingenuity and luck.

    And you may need the same (persistence, ingenuity and luck) if you were to try to find a copy of this book. I obtained mine on eBay, a winning bid taken purely as a shot in the dark, as I had no idea what kind of crime fiction the book might turn out to be. There are no copies available on the Internet, for example, at the present time. (Right now my book searching website of choice is addall.com. The results on bookfinder.com are organized better, but since ABE took them over, they seem to miss a lot of books that addall finds.)

    But I digress. As a detective novel, Exit an Admiral leaves a certain amount to be desired, but it is also crammed full of clues, derring-do, more clues (a house full of them), mistaken identities, false trails, even more evidence and other clues, and I tell you up front, this was an extreme pleasure to read. (Not to mention the sinister satisfaction that one sometimes feels when one knows one is reading a book that no one else has in over 50 years perhaps — or am I deluding myself with this? — nor perhaps no one else will in another 50 years.)

    I do tell you this. If you do see a copy for sale anywhere, make sure you grab it up immediately. If I can’t persuade you to read it, and I am about to do my best, you can consider this: that I will have persuaded someone else that they desperately want to read it, and they will pay almost anything for the opportunity.

    In Chapter I we meet Ivor Duke, young barrister and a well-known amateur sleuth of the type that England was filled with in 1938. His assistant (major domo), a former boxer named Pug Jordan, is with him in a car, and the story of how they met is told.

    In Chapter II Duke stops along the highway, rather deserted, to come to the aid of young woman standing next to a car with a decidedly flat tyre. She resists his assistance, he allows her to resist, but persists long enough to see a man in the back seat who looks decidedly dead. She holds a revolver on him, and that is when the lights go out, as someone has snuck up on him from behind. (Pug remains asleep in Duke’s car throughout the incident.)

   Next day. In Chapter III Duke is visited by Inspector Jenner at home and is told about the mysterious murder of a retired admiral in his home, the same night and in the (totally coincidentally) same area as Duke’s own strange encounter. Not the same dead man, however, much to Duke’s surprise.

    But two bodies in the same evening and in the same vicinity? Are the cases connected? Apparently not, but we (the reader) know better, and in spite of some doubts along the way, so does Duke.

    Here’s a quote from the beginning of Chapter III, however, describing Duke on the morning after, and before the visit from Inspector Jenner:

   Here’s where you and I may go our separate ways, if I were to tell you that this is my kind of writing and it happens not to be yours. And at least in the early going, the author is making it abundantly clear what sort of approach he plans to take with the story.

   What the paragraph above also makes clear is that this is not Duke’s first brush with strange events occurring at two o’clock in the morning, which is reinforced with some suitably appropriate banter soon thereafter with Jenner about how, when Scotland Yard is baffled, they come along to see Ivor Duke.

    Now this was in 1938, and in 1938, whether true in real life or not, amateur assistants to Scotland Yard in detective fiction were allowed to examine the premises where the dead man’s body was found, picking up clues and other evidence, sometimes revealing what they find to the reader, and sometimes not, carelessly forgetting to do so until such time when a careful exposition is more likely to impress the reader with their various reasonings and conclusions.

   One can easily forgive Mr. Allen for merely going along with the trend. Here’s a quote from page 101 which will describe what Ivor Duke soon finds himself up to his waist in, immediately after interviewing an elderly gent named Huggett, whose horse and buggy were nearly run off the road on the same night as the murder, but by another car altogether:

   There is also a host of strange and mysterious coincidences that are, I confess, exceeding frustrating, coincidences being the primary means of support for many a weaker detective fiction writer, but do not despair, all is explained, as well as the even stranger behavior of the dead man’s daughter on page 112.

    While this is a thoroughly solid detective story, once one gets over some of the shakier parts, it ends in a sudden burst of activity found in only the best thrillers of the day, followed by the revelations suggested above in which all is marvelously and beautifully explained.

    One is also left with the hope of another detective thriller from the pen or typewriter of A. Whatoff Allen, but for whatever reason, alas, such a one was not to be.

FOLLOWUP. I did hear from one fellow twice by email in one evening who told me he was a relative of the author and passed along some interesting pieces of information about him. I’ve not heard back from this fellow, though, and posting this review of Exit an Admiral here on the blog is serving as a reminder to me that perhaps I should try getting in touch again. More, when I learn more, as always.

RANDALL PARRISH – The Case and the Girl

Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1922. A. L. Burt, hc reprint, n.d. Paul (UK), hc, 1923.

   Captain Matthew West has just been honourably discharged after twice being wounded during World War I. Feeling restless and not yet ready to return to civilian work, while browsing the newspaper at his club he decides to answer a personal ad running thus

   “Wanted: Young man of education and daring for service involving some personal peril. Good pay, and unusual reward if successful. May have to leave city. Purpose disclosed only in personal interview.”

   Instructed to bring his evening clothes — and a good job he has them! — he is soon off to a rendezvous with orphaned heiress Natalie Coolidge. She does not explain what task she requires him to undertake but Captain West agrees to help her even so, and is whirled off to the family mansion, where he is astonished to be introduced to the house party as her fiance. One of the guests is Natalie’s uncle and guardian Percival Coolidge. The two men dislike each other on sight – in fact, Uncle Percy accuses West of being a fortune hunter, the cad.

   Next morning the gallant captain has a private chat with Natalie and learns someone is impersonating her. However, nobody believes her because the responsible party looks so like her she fools even Natalie’s friends, not to mention the servants and bank clerks who know her well.

   Is Natalie telling the truth, mistaken, or demented? Despite doubts at times, West agrees to try to solve the mystery. There are a couple of odd happenings, statements made don’t quite check out, and then a death occurs and West is plunged into an adventure with enough twists and turns to make a scriptwriter swoon. The detective work is partly deductive and partly wearing out shoe leather and when it comes to action, West usually wipes the floor with his opponents, yet in a manner showing he is not a super hero.

   My verdict: Apart from the occasionally annoying fact that Captain West is a bit slow on the uptake at times, this was a rollicking read and keeps the interest to the end. I particularly admired a sequence in which West and Natalie are trapped in…but no, I will not ruin the suspense, although I will say it gave me the creeping heeby jeebies.

      Etext: http://www.gutenberg.org

RANDALL PARRISH (1858-1923) – A Partial Bibliography

● Crime Fiction  (Thanks to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.)

● Titles available online, including non-mystery fiction:

* Beth Norvell: A Romance of the West

* Bob Hampton of Placer
* The Case and the Girl
* The Devil’s Own: A Romance of the Black Hawk War
* Gordon Craig: Soldier of Fortune
* Keith of the Border
* Love under Fire
* Molly McDonald: A Tale of the Old Frontier
* My Lady of Doubt
* My Lady of the North
* Prisoners of Chance: The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, through His Love for a Lady of France
* The Strange Case of Cavendish
* When Wilderness Was King: A Tale of the Illinois Country

* Wolves of the Sea: Being a Tale of the Colonies from the Manuscript of One Geoffry Carlyle, Seaman, Narrating Certain Strange Adventures Which Befell Him Aboard the Pirate Craft “Namur”

● Shorter fiction:   (Thanks to The FictionMags Index.)

● Three of his novels and stories have been adapted into film:   (Thanks to IMBD.)

A BUCKET OF BLOOD. American International, 1959. Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Julian Burton, Judy Bamber, Ed Nelson, Bert Convy. Producer/director: Roger Corbin.

   I went to the local library sale twice last weekend. On Friday night it cost $5 to get in, and I spend $70. On Sunday afternoon they charged $5 a bag, and I bought four bags. Do you know how many paperbacks you can get into an ordinary plastic shopping bag? Even more amazing, do you know how many DVDs you can get into one? DVDs that sat there at four dollars apiece for two days and nobody wanted them until I came along on Sunday and took four shelves full in one swell foop? Well, four foops.

   This is one of them, and more than that, this the second half of a double feature DVD, the prime attraction being George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), which I saw once and probably never again. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be too hasty. The version I saw I am sure was colorized, the worst idea that the ladies and gents in Hollywood ever had. The lighting is always wrong and the computers don’t really get it right anyway, what with swatches of color hovering over everything on the screen trying to match what the ladies and gents think is the right color, but (in my opinion) probably almost never is.

   But I digress. A Bucket of Blood was also filmed in black-and-white, and the DVD version is also in black-and-white, and very sharp black-and-white it was also. It was also filmed, or so I’m told, in five days. A small budget film, and of course it shows. It is also quietly hilarious, and somewhat to my relief, intentionally so, since one of the posters I’ve seen for this film says at the top: “You’ll be sick, sick, sick – from LAUGHING!”

   Unless they took a look at the film when they were done filming and decided to accept the inevitable: a bad movie that they could market only if they made everyone believe that that is the way it was done on purpose. But I don’t think so.

   Dick Miller, in probably the only starring role he ever had, but not the only one he played a fellow named Walter Paisley, is a busboy in a beatnik hangout who has a social problem. He’s laughed at, which of course is even worse than being ignored. He’s not only inept but two or three magazines short of a rack, and Dick Miller nails the role perfectly.

   The Yellow Door, where Paisley works, is one those places, by the way, where poets recite their wares to the sound of a single saxophone (uncredited jazz artist Paul Horn) along the lines of “Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art,” to quote Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton), or “Where are John, Joe, Jake, Jim, jerk? Dead, dead, dead! They were not born, before they were born, they were not born. Where are Leonardo, Rembrandt, Ludwig? Alive! Alive! Alive! They were born!”

Maxwell Brock is perfect in the part. So is Barboura Morris as Carla, the girl that Walter loves but doesn’t have a chance with until he becomes an acclaimed artist. By mistake. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, hiding in a wall, Walter covers the dead animal with clay. A masterpiece, it is praised. One must only smile.

   And of course Walter is not content to be a one-shot wonder. Perhaps you can picture what comes next. If you remember The House of Wax with Vincent Price (1953), I am sure you will. There is, of course, a gag like this (literally) can last much more than an hour, and no, it doesn’t, clocking in at a mere 66 minutes. Just about perfect.

   Not to mention the other starring attraction, besides Alice the model’s nude back (Judy Bamber), that being, of course, an (uncredited) stage appearance of guitarist-folksinger Alex Hassilev at just about the same time he was becoming one of the founding members of The Limeliters. A good career move, that.

SARAH ANDREWS – Dead Dry

St. Martin’s, paperback reprint; 1st printing, September 2006. Hardcover: St. Martin’s Press, November 2005.

   Em Hansen, the detective of record in Dead Dry, is the new forensic geologist for the state of Utah, and while she’s had nine previous adventures on record, this is the first case of murder that’s come her way since taking the new position. I’d tell you more about some of her earlier cases, but as it happens, as I so often have to admit, this is the first one of the ten that I’ve happened to read.

    For the record, expanded from her entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here are the previous nine (plus this one, her tenth, along with the one that’s in the works) in chronological order, beginning with her earliest:

   Tensleep. Otto Penzler Books, hc, June 1994 [Wyoming]
      Signet, pb, December 1995
   A Fall in Denver. Scribner, hc, December 1995. [Colorado]
      Signet, pb, December 1996
   Mother Nature. St. Martin’s, hc, June 1997 [California]
      St. Martin’s; pb, July 1998
   Only Flesh and Bones. St. Martin’s, hc, May 1998 [Wyoming]
      St. Martin’s; ; pb, August 1999
   Bone Hunter. St. Martin’s, hc, September 1999 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, September 2000
   An Eye for Gold. St. Martin’s, hc, September 2000 [Nevada]
      St. Martin’s; pb, Decmber 2001
   Fault Line. St. Martin’s, hc, January 2002 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, January 2003
   Killer Dust. St. Martin’s, hc, February 2003 [Florida]
      St. Martin’s; pb, March 2004
   Earth Colors. St. Martin’s, hc, March 2004 [Pennsylvania]
      St. Martin’s; pb, December 2004
   Dead Dry. St. Martin’s, hc, November 2005 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, September 2006
   In Cold Pursuit. St. Martin’s, hc, Spring 2007 [Antarctica]

   For a photo of the author is the controls of her plane while researching her latest book, go to her website. You’ll also find a biography of the author there. Short version: “A geologist who writes mystery novels about a geologist.” For the long version, I’ll suggest you simply check out her website. It’s definitely worth a visit.

   While researching the publication dates of the books above, mostly on Amazon, I happened to glimpse some of the reviews, and unfortunately, some of them matched my opinion almost completely. Long discourses on matters geological, many of them, too little plot.

    In Dead Dry, for example, we (the reader) are given mini-lectures (some not so mini-) on the lack of water in Colorado, along with water resources (and ecology) in general. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, because it’s important, but when it becomes noticeable, as it does here, then maybe (just maybe) it’s overdone, at least in a (mere?) mystery novel.

   Which, in the case at hand, involves the death of an old colleague of Em’s, an eccentric geological consultant named Afton McWain, buried in a suspicious quarry wall collapse. Was he the victim of a horrific accident, or is this a case of murder? It is the latter, and the connection with the above-mentioned water resources in Colorado (or lack thereof) has a great deal to do with it.

   Besides working all over the western part of the US (see the settings as listed above), Em also seems to have a romantic interest in every book. Whether new ones or not, I do not know, but Fritz (in this one) seems to be rather new, while Ray seems to have been part of her past for some time longer, and it appears that he will stay there.

   Now you may have noticed that I have left the detective work involved until after discussing the romantic aspects of the book, mostly because, well, I found the detective work of a rather, um, perfunctory nature. Something invariably seemed lacking. On more than one occasion, I found myself commenting to myself – I almost always write notes to myself while I’m reading – that Em simply wasn’t asking the right questions, if she was asking questions at all.

    But she’s a character whose lively, animated outlook on life is definitely worth following – a series wouldn’t last as long as this has if that weren’t true – and it all turns out well in the end. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that the book is considerably better than the one that I see (looking back) that I have described so far. But (still looking back) I don’t see anything I’ve said that I would change, so I won’t.