MICHAEL Z. LEWIN – Night Cover

Detective Book Club; reprint hardcover, three-in-one edition. First edition hardcover: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Paperback reprints: Berkley, January 1980; Perennial Library, 1984; Foul Play Press, September 1995.

   For those who are interested, there is a slew of information about Michael Z. Lewin on his website, located at www.michaelzlewin.com. The first of his novels that I remember reading was one of the first three cases tackled by his private eye character, Albert Samson. I enjoyed them, and maybe I read all three, but the particulars? Right now, I couldn’t tell you.

      Ask the Right Question. Putnam, 1971.
      The Way We Die Now. Putnam, 1973.   [Note: My review appears in the preceding post.]
      The Enemies Within. Knopf, 1974

   A gap of few years was filled in by the book I just read (1976), followed by five other Samson novels, with a hiatus of 13 years between the last two:

      The Silent Salesman. Knopf, 1978.
      Missing Woman. Knopf, 1981.
      Out of Season. Morrow, 1984.
      Called by a Panther. Mysterious Press, 1991.
      Eye Opener. Five Star, 2004.

   As for the aforementioned book in hand, it’s the first title in Lewin’s Lt. Roy (Leroy) Powder series:

      Night Cover. Knopf, 1976.
      Hard Line. Morrow, 1982.
      Late Payments. Morrow, 1986.

   In addition to his own series, however, Samson also makes a small but significant appearance in Night Cover. Al Hubin, in Crime Fiction IV, does not mention Samson as having any role in the other two books, so with no first-hand knowledge of my own, it may be safe to assume that he does not.

   But on the other hand, maybe not. Not only does (Mrs.) Adele Buffington, a probation officer, appear in Night Cover, but she has a solo adventure of her own:

      And Baby Will Fall. Morrow, 1988.

      And not only that, a description I found of this book suggests that in it Adele is Samson’s girl friend, which puts a totally different light on something I was going to mention when I got to the review itself. Now that I think about it, I will anyway, but in any case, some further investigation is going to be needed. What I would like to know is simple. Which series characters are in which books?    [See the UPDATE below.]

   All three are in Night Cover, that much I do know, but there is no doubt that this is Powder’s book. He’s the lieutenant in charge of the Indianapolis police squad’s night squad (Homicide and Robbery), and I confess that I had him pegged wrong from the start. Powder is loud and obnoxious, his private life is a mess (married but not divorced), bullies his subordinates with exactitude, and only occasionally does he allow a hint of solicitude to creep in. Tough love? Maybe. As for civilians, watch out. They’re on their own when they deal with him.

   I also pictured him as somewhat obese, with a sagging belly, caused by too many doughnuts from being out on the streets on too many cases on too many nights.

   And yet. He’s fit enough to be attracted to the aforementioned Adele Buffington, the probation officer for the missing teen-aged girl that Powder is (in desultory fashion) looking for. And (more importantly) she to him.

   You can credit author Michael Z. Lewin for this. Looking back over the first couple of chapters, I can find no reference to Powder’s outward appearance. We learn about him only through what he says and what he does. Which is plenty. Up close and personal – but no physical description.

   In this book he meets private eye Albert Samson for the first time, and they definitely do not get along. If – and this is a big if – if Adele is Samson’s girl friend at the time – it is not so revealed, so I could easily be way out on a limb here, even in bringing it up – it puts a completely different slant on their later interactions, Samson, Powder and Adele. A twist in the plot that only those in the know would know about, if indeed there is anything to know.

   But surely I digress. When a Mao-quoting teen-aged boy comes in with a complaint about his teacher and his (questionable) grading policies, Powder indulges him (surprisingly) for a while. When the boy mentions a girl he knows who seems to have disappeared, Powder asks around and shunts him off to Samson.

   As a police procedural, which is what Night Cover is, there are a small multitude of other cases to be investigated and solved. Powder’s intuition on cases far exceeds those who work under him, to his great disappointment and frustration. Besides the missing girl, a sequence of murders suggests a copy-cat killer at work, requiring a vigorous search through back records to uncover patterns before the culprit(s) is/are nabbed.

   There are parts of this tale which are amusing, if not at times laugh-out-loud funny. Lewin has a knack for understated humor, a wry look at the world that you should experience for yourself. But there’s a serious side of the story as well. As Powder’s life story becomes more and more clear, he finds himself looking at himself and his career with a greater intensity than he ever has before.

   Being able to keep track of series characters in their daily life as they go from book to book is rather common in mystery fiction published today. Watching one change before one’s eyes from the beginning of one book to the end is not so common, neither now nor thirty years ago, when this book was first written.

[UPDATE] November 2005.    I forwarded the review to Mr. Lewin, and received the following replies, interrupted by a question from me:

    “Thanks for letting me know about the review you did of Night Cover, and for paying attention to such a venerable volume.

    “As for your questions, Powder was not in the first three Samson books, but he has appeared in the five later Samson books including the current one, Eye Opener (Five Star, 2004).

    “Adele appeared in Samson’s first seven novels as his woman friend – so she was in her relationship with Samson during Night Cover. I doubt I mentioned it. That was her issue and the book was Powder’s.

    “In the new book Adele appears, but she is no longer Samson’s amour. She also had her own book, And Baby Will Fall (Child Proof in the UK). I think Samson was in that; Powder may have been mentioned.

    “The subsequent Powder novels have included Samson but not, as far as I recall, Adele. Powder has also appeared in another Indianapolis novel, Underdog (Mysterious Press, 1993), and two short stories published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine – “Night Shift” and “911.” The latter was earlier this year.

    “Mind you, I haven’t exactly read the books lately, so if I’ve gotten details wrong here and there, I won’t faint.”

    “As I said earlier, Adele was Samson’s woman friend from the beginning and through the first seven novels. Your concern is that she got close to Powder briefly. Well, Samson might have been upset, at least for a while, if he’d ever known about it, but she would never have told him, and neither would Powder. Adele’s subsequent relationship with and affection for Samson was unchanged; how she handled it or justified it was her business.

    “I might have gone into that more if I’d ever written more books about her but, for various reasons, that didn’t happen and is unlikely to happen now. Depending, of course, on the size of the check you’re offering me to write them. I think it would have to be pretty large…”

MICHAEL Z. LEWIN – The Way We Die Now.

Putnam’s, hardcover, 1973. Paperback reprints: Berkley, 1979; Harper Perennial, 1984; Mysterious Press, June 1991.

   Albert Samson is a rather sensitive soul to be a private detective. Not only that, but the only reason that he gets this case is because he’s the cheapest one listed in the Indianapolis telephone directory.

   No wisecracks, please. The key word here is “sensitive”, not “cheap,” and Indianapolis has enough crimes and other divorce work to keep more than a couple of private eyes on the street. This isn’t a divorce case, however. A troubled Viet Nam veteran with a history of psychiatric treatment is in jail, accused of murder. Samson, hired in quiet desperation by the man’s wife, has only one question: With his past record, why was this innocent Childe Ralph hired as an armed guard?

   I liked the homey Midwestern atmosphere, and I liked Albert Samson. However, it seems only fair to point out that his slow, casual approach to the investigation can be awfully frustrating to a reader who has a lot of unanswered questions. Still, it’s the police who are guilty of taking the simple explanation, while Samson’s appraisal of Ralph Tomanek as one of the children of the world convinces both himself and the reader very early on that the job he took as a watchman was but a part of a much broader scheme.

   In short, good characters nicely scaled down to earth, in a plot stretched precariously thin.    [B minus]

  [UPDATE] 09-10-07. I didn’t happen to mention that this was Samson’s second case, the first being Ask the Right Question (Putnam’s, 1971), which was also Lewin’s first mystery novel. Reading through the review right now, almost thirty years later, I can’t say that the story comes back to me any more than what’s there and with no more insight than you can gather for yourself. The phrase “homey Midwestern atmosphere” evokes more feeling in me than any of the specific details. That must mean something, I’ve been telling myself, and I’m sure it does.

   I’ll have more to say about the author, Michael Z. Lewin, in a review I wrote much more recently. If you don’t see it here next, it’ll show up soon.

HUGH CLEVELY – The Case of the Criminal’s Daughter

Sexton Blake Library #323; The Amalgamated Press. Paperback. No date given.

   As it says, this slim (if not flimsy) 64-page digest-sized paperback comes with no bibliographic information, but luckily for those with Internet access, help is just a few keystrokes away. There is a website devoted to all things Sexton Blakian, and where the link will take you, you will discover that this is #323 of the Third Series of the Sexton Blake Library. The stories appeared monthly; this is the one that came out in November, 1954. And the illustrator responsible for the cover art was none other than Reginald (Heade) Webb.

   This being only the first Sexton Blake novel I’ve read in some 20 years, and the second overall, there’s no way I will talk in any general way about the character, nor should I, except to say that he, Sexton Blake, appeared as a character in over 3000 stories written by some 200 authors over a period of well over a century.

   As for Hugh Clevely, well, first of all, he was one of the 200 authors who wrote stories about Sexton Blake, but of course you knew that, or you should have. According to Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, however, he only wrote 10 other Sexton Blakes, at least in novel form. His overall writing career spanned the years from 1928 to 1955 and includes a list of 35 novels under his own name, one co-written with Edgar Jepson. Only four of these novels have been published in the US.

   As Tod Claymore, he wrote another eight mysteries, all with a series character named Tod Claymore. According to W. O. G. Lofts and Derek Adley’s website The Crime Fighters, “He [Claymore] had been a Wimbledon tennis player and a wing commander during the war, then switched to writing, with detection as a hobby.” Some of these books were imported or published in this country as Penguin paperbacks, the green ones.

   Returning to the books Clevely wrote under his own name, the series characters that appeared in them were Chief Inspector Williams, Maxwell Archer, J. D. Peters, and John Martinson. According to a New York Times review of a film based on one of the Maxwell Archer books, the latter was a “famed fictional private detective whose greatest pleasure in life is to second guess Scotland Yard…” The occupations of the other series characters remain either unknown or quite guessable.

   So Clevely was an experienced mystery writer when he started doing the Sexton Blake books, which were all written toward the end of his career. All eleven of them appeared in the four-year period from1952 to 1955. Does the experience show? It does and as the saying goes, it doesn’t.

   The plot of the case in point, that is to say the book in hand, is a complicated one, and the pace is a lively one, but there’s a considerable amount of what is generically called sloppiness in the details, making you wonder if it were written too fast for a market that didn’t offer very much in compensation.

   The criminal in the title is a circus performer (billed as The Great Costello) who once spent some time in jail, but who now is worth a considerable amount of legitimate money. His brother is a ne’er-do-well who is currently in a jam with some British style hoodlums. Add in the fact that Pat Costello, the acrobat, does not know he has an American daughter, but after his death by misadventure – deliberate – the fact of her existence – and that she is on a schoolgirls’ trip in Europe – means a lot to everyone who’s involved. There is also a not-so-small matter of some missing diamonds, and there (without going into further details) you have the basis for a decent if not overly rousing mystery for private enquiry agent Sexton Blake, his assistant Tinker, and Inspector Fosdyke to solve.

   The details that the author works into the story, a rather pulp-like yarn, help to make the story more of a something than it is, along with a few twists in the tale that I frankly didn’t see coming. It was more than enough for me to start searching out more of the entries in Sexton Blake’s long history, but –

   – some of the details don’t fit, or they clash with other ones. The conversation that Blake has with newspaper journalist Peter Grayson on page 26, for example, makes it seem that he had never heard of the girl Josie Benson before, whereas on page 23 the same two gentleman had a long conversation about the very same girl, and what Grayson should do to contrive to meet her. On page 53 Grayson and the girl are being held captive in a Martello Tower, he in a handcuff that severely restricts his range of motion – yes, that’s the kind of thriller this is – but the handcuff is never mentioned again, nor is there any restriction on his range of motion, when it comes time to attempt an escape.

   And yes, of course, such a point in time does come, and not too soon at that.

GILBERT CHESTER – The Man Who Wouldn’t Quit.

Sexton Blake Library #74; Amalgamated Press. Paperback. No date stated.

   Once again the Sexton Blake website comes galloping to the rescue. This is #74 of the Third Series, published in June, 1944. The date being in the midst of World War II, and by some reckoning among the darkest days of the war, I wondered how scarce this book (thin, digest-sized, but 100 pages long) might be. I was right. There are no other copies to be found anywhere on the Internet, and while I do apologize, mine’s not for sale.

   Gilbert Chester was the pseudonym of one H. H. Clifford Gibbons (1888-1958), whose total criminous output totaled approximately 100 novels, all but a handful of them Sexton Blakes, either anonymously or under his pen name, beginning in 1923 and continuing on through 1949.

   And if I knew more, I’d tell you, but I don’t, so I’ll get right to the story this time. And what a great first chapter this story has! It’s one that’s designed to grab the reader right in from the start, or maybe I’m just a sucker for stories taking place on trains, beginning with a frightened girl who enters Fenton’s compartment just as the train is leaving the station. She hurriedly tells him that she’s going to bale out before the next stop and furthermore requests that if he’s ever asked, he should say that never saw her.

   From page 4:

       “Forget you’ve ever seen me.”

       “I’m not the type to quit, I assure you.”

       “Then you’re asking for trouble, sure enough. Well, are you going to play up?”

   She jumps, and so (without much hesitation) does he. And of course he has no idea where they are or into what kind of trouble he’s leapt into.

   Chapter Two can hardly compete with this, but it nearly does. Dropped off by the mysterious girl at Professor Barton’s home (where he had been heading) after a short hike and a longish drive in the dark, Fenton (a research scientist) is surprised to find himself in the morning a prisoner, with another young girl holding the key to his cell-like room.

   Chapter Three. We have nearly forgotten about Sexton Blake by this time, speaking collectively for myself alone, but the author hadn’t. Another young lady calls on Blake to solve a problem for her – her bungalow is being tampered with. Someone has been entering and prowling about while she is away. By an invisible man, she claims. No one has seen anyone enter or leave.

   It seems like a minor problem, but Blake takes the case, thinking her recitation too theatrical and wondering what could be behind such a fanciful tale. And of course, there is a surprise in store, and not only to Sexton Blake. On page 22 they discover a body in her locked and sealed home, riddled with lead – the body, that is.

   If some care had been taken, this could have been quite a mystery to unravel, but Blake makes it look easy. With only a cursory examination, Blake suggests a solution – and a rather ingenious one – to Inspector Briggan after he shows up, and of course Blake’s right and I have no idea how he did it. But it certainly is ingenious.

   In any case, no more details from me. You will have a find a copy of this book for yourself, if you’d like to know more. Suffice it to say that the opening three chapters are the best, but Chester certainly makes a more than competent story out of the rest of it.

   Some additional comments, though: Chapter Six is a long, ten-page conversation between two of the characters (already alluded to) which manages to both be informative and entertaining and moves the plot along while at the same time not being a mere recitation of topics and events that each of the two participants already know. It’s a neat trick, if you (as an author) can do it. Try it sometime and see.

   The weakest links in the chain of the narrative are (I sadly acknowledge) Sexton Blake’s own deductions, which consist almost entirely of whole cloth and gauze and mirrors, which is (I also admit) one heck of a way to run a railroad, um, detective novel. The gaps could have been fixed, but it is entirely to Mr. Chester’s credit that the story is still is as enjoyable as it is, even if they weren’t, and they never will be.

HERBERT ADAMS – Death of a Viewer.

Macdonald, UK, hc, 1958.

   Since it was published in the 1950s, Death of a Viewer hangs its toes over the precipice marking the end of the Golden Age period, but what the hay, the Roger Bennion series began in the 1930s so let’s agree this entry is grandfathered into my general area of discussion.

   Captain Oswald Henshaw tells his lovely young wife Sandra their financial resources are gone — but suggests if he sees her in comprising circumstances with Ewen Jones, Member of Parliament for an East London constituency, there could well be financial benefits. Ewen’s father is Lord Bethesda and his stepmother is worth half a million. Naturally they’d want to keep scandal — such as Hensaw bringing an action for alienation of affection against Ewen — from breathing nastily on the family name.

   Major Bennion becomes involved because Ewen lives in one of the houses built by Bennion Senior near the London docks. These homes are intended for disabled servicemen, old age pensioners, and the like and Bennion Senior wishes the better-off MP, who became a tenant due to a loophole, to move out so Lord Bethesda’s elderly gardener can retire and live there.

   Ewen refuses but asks Bennion to visit the family home of Welton Priory “in that charming part of the country where Sussex joins Hampshire.” Several Labour MPs are meeting there that weekend to secretly discuss plans to make the party more Socialist. Bennion’s presence will suggest the gathering is the usual sort of house party — and while he’s there perhaps he’ll persuade Ewen’s father to buy him, Ewen, a house or give him an allowance! The Henshaws will also be attending as Ewen’s guests, and thus the wheels of the plot begin to turn.

   Before too long there are interesting conversations overheard, furtive visits to bedrooms, and fiery political rhetoric that does not go down too well with the MPs. The viewer’s death occurs in a room full of people during a TV play about the Battle of Britain, and with very little to initially go on except a scrap of paper and a house full of suspects Bennion and Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Yeo and Inspector Allenby cooperate to solve the crime.

   My verdict: Ewen gets on his soapbox and in doing so reminds readers of the unrest in the air in the 1950s, including calls for the abolition of hereditary titles, Church and union reform, disgust at the possibilities of easier divorce, and legalisation of what is quaintly described as the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. These references will make the legendary Cheltenham colonels who so often write to the editor of The Times weep with joy, but alas they tend to swamp parts of the earlier part of the novel and do not add very much to the plot.

   However, once we get to the actual detecting the story runs along nicely. More than one house guest has what they might see as good reason to act against the deceased, so most of them are suspected at one time or another and the solution roars up after an unexpected twist which certainly caught me by surprise. I reget to say however that on the whole this novel is not one of the best I have read.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au

THE ROGER BENNION NOVELS. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Quite surprisingly, although a few were reprinted in paperback in Canada, none of these were ever published in the US. As you will see, there is some overlap with Adams’ golfing mysteries, as indicated.

# Death Off the Fairway (n.) Collins 1936    (Golf)
# The Old Jew Mystery (n.) Collins 1936
# A Single Hair (n.) Collins 1937
# Black Death (n.) Collins 1938
# The Bluff! (n.) Collins 1938
# The Damned Spot (n.) Collins 1938
# The Nineteenth Hole Mystery (n.) Collins 1939    (Golf)

# The Case of the Stolen Bridegroom (n.) Collins 1940
# The Chief Witness (n.) Collins 1940
# Roger Bennion’s Double (n.) Collins 1941
# Stab in the Back (n.) Collins 1941
# The Araway Oath (n.) Collins 1942

# Signal for Invasion (n.) Collins 1942
# Victory Song (n.) Collins 1943
# Four Winds (n.) Collins 1944
# The Writing on the Wall (n.) Collins 1945

# Welcome Home! (n.) Macdonald 1946
# Diamonds Are Trumps (n.) Macdonald 1947
# Crime Wave at Little Cornford (n.) Macdonald 1948
# One to Play (n.) Macdonald 1949    (Golf)
# The Dean’s Daughters (n.) Macdonald 1950
# The Sleeping Draught (n.) Macdonald 1951
# Exit the Skeleton (n.) Macdonald 1952
# The Spectre in Brown (n.) Macdonald 1953
# Slippery Dick (n.) Macdonald 1954
# The Judas Kiss (n.) Macdonald 1955
# Death on the First Tee (n.) Macdonald 1957    (Golf)
# Death of a Viewer (n.) Macdonald 1958

JOHN CREASEY – Double for the Toff.

Popular Library, paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1972. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1959. Walker (US), 1965. UK paperback editions: Hodder/Coronet, 1963,1973; Sphere, 1967. Earlier US paperback edition: Pyramid R-1221, Aug 1965.

   I’ll make no attempt here to do a general bibliographic discussion of John Creasey and the multitude of mysteries he produced. While that will have to wait for another time, this is certainly the place. As for the Toff, in real life Richard Rollison, I don’t believe it was ever a matter of a secret identity, only an honorific nomenclature.

   England seems to have had a long history of gentleman adventurers that did not seem to ever have been as popular in the United States as they were over there. The Toff, like Simon Templar, aka the Saint, before him (adventures recorded by Leslie Charteris), was merely another in a lengthy line of swashbucklers, figuratively speaking.

   And again, someone else may be better to write the history of such British adventurers, although again, this is certainly the place. In fact what I know about the Toff is minimal, but of course I will tell you what I know anyway.

   Let’s begin with a list of the books. These are in more or less the order in which they appeared in England. A hyphen (-) indicates the lack of an US edition. A star (*) means that there was one. A double star (**) indicates that the first US edition was a paperback. Alternate US titles are also included, if first appearances. (Thanks to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV for most of this information.)

Introducing the Toff. 1938. (-)
The Toff Goes On. 1939. (-)
The Toff Steps Out. 1939. (-)
Here Comes the Toff. 1940. (*) 1967.
The Toff Breaks In. 1940. (-)
Salute the Toff. 1941. (*) 1971.
The Toff Proceeds. 1941. (*) 1968.
The Toff Goes to Market. 1942. (*) 1967.
The Toff Is Back. 1942. (*) 1974.
The Toff on the Trail. 1942. (-)
Accuse the Toff. 1943. (*) 1975.
The Toff Among the Millions. 1943. (*) 1976.
The Toff and the Curate. 1944. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Great Illusion. 1944. (*) 1967.
Feathers for the Toff. 1945. (*) 1970.
The Toff and the Lady. 1946. (*) 1975.
Hammer the Toff. 1947. (-)
The Toff on Ice. 1947. (** – Poison for the Toff) 1965.
The Toff and Old Harry. 1948. (*) 1970.
The Toff in Town. 1948. (*) 1977.
The Toff Takes Shares. 1948. (*) 1972.

The Toff on Board. 1949. (*) 1973.
Fool the Toff. 1950. (*) 1966.
Kill the Toff. 1950. (*) 1966.
A Knife for the Toff. 1951. (**) 1964.
The Toff Goes Gay. 1951. (* – A Mask for the Toff) 1966.
Hunt the Toff. 1952. (*) 1969.
Call the Toff. 1953. (*) 1969.
Murder Out of the Past. 1953. (-)
The Toff Down Under. 1953. (*) 1969.
The Toff at Butlin’s. 1954. (*) 1976.
The Toff at the Fair. 1954. (*) 1968.
A Six for the Toff. 1955. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Deep Blue Sea. 1955. (*) 1967.
Make-Up for the Toff. 1956. (*) 1967.
The Toff in New York. 1956. (**) 1964.
Model for the Toff. 1957. (**) 1965.
The Toff on Fire. 1957. (*) 1966.
The Toff and the Stolen Tresses. 1958. (*) 1965.
The Toff on the Farm. 1958. (*) 1964.
A Doll for the Toff. 1959. (*) 1965.
Double for the Toff. 1959. (*) 1965.
The Toff and the Runaway Bride. 1959. (*) 1964.
A Rocket for the Toff. 1960. (**) 1964.
The Toff and the Kidnapped Child. 1960. (*) 1965.
Follow the Toff. 1961. (*) 1967.

The Toff and the Teds. 1961. (* – The Toff and theToughs) 1968.
Leave It to the Toff. 1963. (**) 1964.
The Toff and the Spider. 1965. (*) 1966.
The Toff in Wax. 1966. (*) 1966.
A Bundle for the Toff. 1967. (*) 1968.
Stars for the Toff. 1968. (*) 1968.
The Toff and the Golden Boy. 1969. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Fallen Angels. 1970. (*) 1970.
Vote for the Toff. 1971. (*) 1971.
The Toff and the Trip-Trip-Triplets. 1972. (*) 1972.
The Toff and the Terrified Taxman. 1973. (*) 1973.
The Toff and the Sleepy Cowboy. 1974. (*) 1975.
The Toff and the Crooked Copper. 1977. (-)

   There was even a three-act play in which the Toff was a leading character: “The Toff.” UK, 1963.

   Creasey died in 1973, so the final three books had been written and were still awaiting publication when he passed away. The Toff was popular enough in England that when his publisher (Hodder & Stoughton) ran out of Toff books to sell, they hired William Vivian Butler to write a very last one: The Toff and the Dead Man’s Finger (1978; no US publication).

   Besides three books of his own, Butler also wrote the final five Commander George Gideon novels, Gideon being Creasey’s Scotland Yard detective whose adventures he wrote as J. J. Marric.

   In creating this list of Toff books, there are several things I discovered that I hadn’t known before. First, I didn’t realize how many of the books were published in the US. If that were the question, the answer would be “almost all of them.” I also didn’t realize that the Toff was introduced to American readers in paperback form when Pyramid published a number of them in 1964-65, even though I purchased my copies when they did. They must have done quite well, since Walker soon took over and all of the rest of them came out in hardcover first. (Paperback editions of the Toff stories that appeared from Lancer and Popular Library were all reprints, although occasionally they altered the titles to suit editorial or marketing whims. These are not noted in the list above.)

   I also suspect (but so far I have not investigated) that the early Toff books were revised and/or updated when published in this country. I understand that it was a common habit for Creasey to revise his books for whatever his current market might be, and I do not expect the Toff books to have been an exception to this general rule.

   A little Googlizing on the Internet reveals that the Toff first appeared in the two-penny weekly The Thriller in 1933, so the gent with a bent for crime was really around for quite a long while. (As a useful frame of reference, the Saint first appeared in the novel Meet — The Tiger! in 1928, while several of his earliest short story cases were told in The Thriller in the years from 1929 to 1931. Simon Templar, once again, was there first, in other words.)

   The issue shown is #422, March 6, 1937, and includes the Toff story “The Man Who Knew.”

   On the same website as above, but on another page, is a description of the Toff’s first book-length adventure, Introducing the Toff:

   This seems to have come from the back cover of a recent British paperback edition, which perhaps explains the confusion over the date, but other than that, this blurb typifies exactly what I would have imagined the Toff’s early adventures to have been like.

   Returning to the book at hand, however, one can certainly read it without knowing all of the baggage that earlier stories might have brought along. One does get the sense that many of the secondary cast has been around for a while, but just as Della Street and Paul Drake were with Perry from the beginning, you can pick one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s books from the last 1960s as the first one in the series you read and not miss a beat.

   Creasey does not do a lot in terms of describing Richard Rollison. I made a few notes as I went along: he’s very handsome, a head taller than average, and in admirable physical condition. That’s about it. He’s on good terms with Scotland Yard, with Superintendent Bill Grice, apparently an old friend and only a semi-antagonist, willing to give the Toff a free hand whenever he sees a reason for it.

   The title comes from the fact that the Toff is handed two separate cases almost at one time, and after mulling over the possibilities, he decides he can handle both of them. Are they two separate cases? The reader knows better, but only the better reader will figure out how they are related before the Toff does.

   Which is due to two factors, the first being that even though this is a pretty good detective story, Creasey is determined to tell it as if it were a thriller, with lots of action and close calls for the Toff and his friends before it is over, and doing his best to keep the reader’s eyes away from the clues. The second factor is that the time table of events is wrong, or at least, let’s put it this way. The Toff’s reactions and apparent enlightenment on page 174 do not seem to match up with his deductions. In particular, please take note of his explanation to Grice on page 187 why he did something on page 168, well before he learned what he did that put the connections together on page, yes, 174.

   Inconsistencies are something you may have to learn to put up with when you read Creasey. On page 14 it is impossible to read the registration number on a motor-cycle, but on page 51 the Toff somehow knows that the motor-cycle had false number-plates. On pages 120-121 two men (bad guys) who have been gassed suddenly turn into three.

   Things like these used to drive me nutty when I was younger. I try not to let them any more. The book could have (and should have) been better. But taken as a given that you have to put your mind into a lower gear when you read his tales, Creasey was certainly a grand storyteller, with (as it turns out) a kind and sentimental streak in his books (or in this one, at least) a yard wide.

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.