JOHN DICKSON CARR – Death Turns the Tables

International Polygonics 330-22; paperback reprint, April 1985. Hardcover editions: Harper & Brothers, 1941. Grosset & Dunlap; n.d; Collier, n.d. British title: The Seat of the Scornful, Hamish Hamilton, 1942. Other US reprint appearances: Two Complete Detective Books, pulp magazine, Fall 1942. Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday supplement, December 5, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Books, Inc., 1946. Paperback reprints: Pocket 350, 1945; Berkley G281, Nov 1959; Berkley F929, 1964; Berkley 1573, 1968.

   When it was originally published, the book was sealed after page 193. If the reader were to have read the book to this point and still wished to do so, he could return the book to the bookseller with the seal unbroken and receive a full refund. Since I read the IPL reprint, which has only 156 pages (of small print) in total, I can’t tell you what point in the book that might have been.

   [Small pause.] I’ve just checked, and the Harper edition had 256 pages, so the “Challenge to the Reader” seems to have come awfully early. In terms of the relative difficulty in solving the crime before Dr. Gideon Fell does, well, good luck on that. I don’t think that anyone is going figure out all of the details on how, when, where and why the crime is committed, no one, not anyone.

   Carr was an absolute master of making his detective fiction so complicated that of course it could never happen in the real world, but once you are in place in his world, it all makes sense, in a fashion and only after the fact. In the early 1940s he was still in peak form, there’s no doubt about it. And here’s a word of advice, if you think that you’re going to give it a shot – figure it out ahead of time, that is – everything that you see (through the detective’s eyes) is going to be important, no matter how trivial it may be. Everything that anyone does is at least 99% going to come back and be important later, I kid you not.

   And even so – even so, I say – there were aspects of this work of Mr. Carr, the genius craftsman that he was, that I did figure out ahead of time, but only (I think) because he got there first and they’re clichés of the field now, worn out by overuse by lesser hands.

   What’s the story about, you may well ask. I think what I will do this time is to quote the blurb on the back cover. I think it sums things up exceedingly well:

   And here’s a rather lengthy quote, but relevant, I think. Fell and Ireton are playing chess early on in the book (page 17 of the IPL edition):

   The answer that Judge Ireton gives is, unfortunately, on the next page, but I submit that it will not necessarily be the answer that you may be suspecting.

   The chess game at the beginning is important. It is quite obvious – I believe that it is safe to mention this – that once the dead man is found, Judge Ireton is hiding something. But is he the killer? That is where the real chess match begins.

   As always, when you pick up a John Dickson Carr to read, be prepared to be confounded, and it will, I guarantee you, happen once again in Death Turns the Tables. I’m not quite so pleased with the ending, though, as I believe that Dr. Fell concedes on one crucial point far too quickly. That, along with the fact that – and I apologize for not mentioning this before – there is no “locked room,” one of Carr’s best-known specialties, makes this book rate not so highly as it might otherwise have done.

MICHAEL KURLAND – The Empress of India

St. Martin’s Minotaur; hardcover. First Edition: February 2006.

   On and off over the period of nearly 30 years, Kurland has been chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ most notorious nemesis, James Moriarty. In the process his primary intents seems to have been to clean some of the tarnish off the good (or not so good) professor’s reputation.

   Not that Holmes was entirely mistaken about him, but could it just possibly be that Moriarty was NOT responsible for all of the crimes Holmes suspected him of committing?

   Take this latest case, for example. When a fortune in gold is known to be on its way to the Bank of England from India, and Moriarty is known to be on the way to Calcutta, what other reason could he have other than the most obvious one? Wrong. Admittedly he has nefarious intent, but the gold is not why he is there.

   While Holmes himself has mysteriously disappeared, swept away in a London sewer, Thuggees seem to have re-emerged as an evil force in India, and Dr. Pin Dok Low and his gang of unsavory associates really do have gold on their minds.

   While Kurland is not terribly convincing when writing in the mode of Doyle, when he is left to tell his own rollicking story, what a glorious romp of a tale it is! His quick breezy style, interspersed with small jabs of wry humor, makes this particular caper move along in fine smile-provoking fashion.

   That there is also a locked room mystery to be solved is only the frosting on the cake.

FOLLOWUP: Rather than expand upon my (of necessity) shorter than usual review, which first appeared in the Historical Novels Review, I’ve decided to take a look instead at the complete list of Michael Kurland’s mystery and detective fiction, as much (as always) for my own benefit as yours, as many of these books I’d never been fully aware of until now.

   I’ll be working in somewhat chronological order, but also grouping the novels by theme and series character, with some comments or two scattered between. Not included are Kurland’s science fiction and fantasy novels with no criminous connection, but perhaps The Unicorn Girl (Pyramid, pbo, 1974) deserves a mention, as it partially takes place in the same alternative universe as Lord Darcy, about whom, keep reading.

         +++++

Mission: Third Force. Pyramid R-1578, pbo, 1967.
Mission: Tank War. Pyramid X-1876, pbo, 1968.
Mission: Police Action. Pyramid, pbo, 1969. [Scarce. No copies on ABE. It is quite possible that the book was never published.]     [UPDATE: This is correct. According to Mr. Kurland, the book became A Plague of Spies instead.]

   I have a copy of the second of these, but as usual, I don’t have it at hand and available for inspection. Here is a description taken from an online listing, however, one that will give you the essence of what kind of spy thrillers all three books are likely to be:

   It is not known if Peter Carthage, the “Man from WAR” is in either of the other two books or not. If he is, he is a series character not (yet) known to Al Hubin.     [UPDATE: Peter Carthage is indeed in all three books, the third being the one below.]

A Plague of Spies. Pyramid X2098, pbo, 1969. [Finalist for Edgar award.]

   Described by one bookseller as a “sexy spy thriller.”

         +++++

The Professor Moriarty / Sherlock Holmes novels:

The Infernal Device. Signet J8492, pbo, January 1979. [Finalist for an Edgar and nominated for an American Book Award.]

Death by Gaslight. Signet AE1915, pbo, December 1982.

The Great Game. St. Martin’s, hc, August 2001.
      St. Martin’s, trade pb, February 2003.

The Infernal Device and Others. St. Martin’s, trade pb, August 2001.

The Empress of India. St. Martin’s, hc, February 2006.

          +++++

The Last President, with S. W. Barton. William Morrow, hc, 1980.
      Critics Choice Paperbacks/Lorevan Publishing, pb, June 1988.

          +++++

Psi Hunt. Berkley 04664, pbo, September 1980.
Star Griffin. Doubleday, hc, March 1987.

   Science-fiction crime novels both, taking place in the future as constituted at the time of their writing.

          +++++

Ten Little Wizards. Ace 80057, pbo, March 1988.

A Study in Sorcery. Ace 79092, pbo, May 1989.

   The detective of record in both of these novels is Lord Darcy, a character created by SF author Randall Garrett. Darcy is a private security expert and chief investigator for Richard, Duke of Normandy, in an alternate world from ours in which magic takes the role of science. Garrett wrote one novel and several short stories about Lord Darcy, and after Garrett’s death, Kurland wrote the final two adventures.

         +++++

Too Soon Dead. St. Martin’s Press, hc, March 1997.
The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes. St. Martin’s Press, hc, August 1998
       St. Martin’s Press, trade pb, August 2001.

   A traditional mystery series set in New York City in 1935, featuring New York World columnist Alexander Brass.

         +++++

   And I’d certainly be remiss if I failed to include the Holmes-related anthologies edited by Kurland:

My Sherlock Holmes: Untold Stories of the Great Detective. St. Martin’s Press, hc, February 2003. Stories about Holmes but told by characters from the canon other than Dr. Watson.
      St. Martin’s Minotaur, trade pb, November 2004.

Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years. St. Martin’s Minotaur, hc, November 2004. An anthology of original stories taking place while Holmes was believed dead after Reichenbach Falls.
      St. Martin’s Griffin, trade pb, January 2006.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE – Round the Fire Stories

Smith, Elder, 1908, hc. Also published abridged as: Tales for a Winter’s Night. Academy Chicago (U.S.), 1989; Academy Chicago (England), 1990. According to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, only some stories are criminous. Film (based on “The Lost Special”): Universal, 1932 (scw: Ella O’Neill, George Plympton, Basil Dickey, George Morgan; dir: Henry McRae)

   None of the Round The Fire Stories features Mr. Sherlock Holmes, although two mention anonymous letters to the press presenting solutions which some readers believe to have penned by the great detective himself (“The Man With the Watches” and “The Lost Special”).    FOOTNOTE.

   In “The Man With The Watches” the titular corpse is found dead an hour into the London-Manchester rail journey. Three other passengers have disappeared yet none were seen to leave or join the train at the one stop made before the grisly discovery. Where are the missing trio and why is the dead man in possession of no less than six gold timepieces?

   The village of Bishop’s Crossing is the home of Doctor Aloysius Lana, whose olive skin led to his nickname of “The Black Doctor.” After receiving a letter from abroad, Dr Lana breaks off his engagement to Miss Morton, whose enraged brother Andrew declares the doctor deserves a good thrashing. Dr Lana is subsequently discovered dead and the evidence points to Andrew being the guilty party. But was he?

   Ward Mortimer is appointed curator of the Belmore Street Museum. Its greatest treasure is “The Jew’s Breastplate,” a gold artifact decorated with a number of valuable gems. Soon there are two burglaries, both of which focus on the breastplate. How is the miscreant getting in and why doesn’t the culprit just pinch the breastplate and be done with it?

   Louis Caratal and his companion, newly arrived in Liverpool from central America, must get to Paris without delay. Caratal charters a train to London but “The Lost Special” disappears between St Helens and Manchester, the only trace of its passage being the dead body of its driver, found at the foot of an embankment. The truth comes out some time later, and even then it’s as the result of a confession rather than an investigation.

   John Maple’s Uncle Stephen has one leg shorter than the other, so is known as “The Club-Footed Grocer” due to his high-soled boot, which regularises the length of the limb. One day John receives an urgent summons to his uncle, involving extremely odd instructions on how to reach his isolated dwelling. The mystery is slight, although the story has a touch of the Buchan about it.

    “The Sealed Room” opens with solicitor Frank Alder’s accidental (literally) meeting with Felix Stanniford, son of a disgraced banker who fled the country some years previously and has not reappeared, despite a letter two years before strongly indicating he will return. Given the title, almost all readers will immediately guess what the mystery might be and they’d be right.

   Lord Southerton’s nephew and presumptive heir to the family fortune is Marshall King, a spendthrift who devotes his time to frivoling about London. Marshall’s cousin Everard King has purchased an estate after returning from South America, bringing various wild life including “The Brazilian Cat” back with him. On the verge of bankruptcy, Marshall accepts an invitation to visit Everard. This story is not a mystery as such and while the plotline is predictable, there are moments of genuine excitement.

   It’s back to more traditional crime in “B. 24.” The narrator presents a plea for clemency, in which he admits to burglarising a country mansion, but adamantly denies killing its owner, Lord Mannering, and instead points the finger at Lady Mannering, who hates her husband and according to local gossip has reason to feel that way. B. 24 asks that her background be investigated before he is executed. Is he innocent or trying to save his neck at the expense of hers?

   My verdict:   An uneven collection, although an interesting hour or two will be spent reading it. Most readers will guess the solutions but one or two twists may be more difficult to rumble and it was a refreshing change from Holmes and company taking centre stage.

FOOTNOTE: I must thank various members of the Golden Age of Detection Yahoo group for their further discussion of this point.

   In “The Man With The Watches” we see:  “There was a letter in the Daily Gazette, over the signature of a well-known criminal investigator…”

   … and then we have “The Lost Special,” in which we learn of a letter:   “… which appeared in the Times, over the signature of an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date, attempted to deal with the matter in a critical and semi-scientific manner. An extract must suffice, although the curious can see the whole letter in the issue of the 3rd of July.

    “‘It is one of the elementary principles of practical reasoning,’ he remarked, “that when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth….”

   And I think we’ll agree the second letter in particular has his grammatical fingerprints all over it, but it raises another question: why didn’t Conan Doyle write these two adventures as Holmes stories? Were these stories written during a period when he was thoroughly tired of his own creation?

      Etext:  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600401.txt

   [Note:  This online version does not include all of the stories in the original edition. See below.]

Complete contents, as taken from CFIV:

# • B.24 [“The Story of the B24”] • ss The Strand Mar, 1899
# • The Beetle Hunter [“The Story of the Beetle Hunter”] • ss The Strand Jun, 1898
# • The Black Doctor [“The Story of the Black Doctor”] • ss The Strand Oct, 1898
# • The Brazilian Cat [“The Story of the Brazilian Cat”] • ss The Strand Dec, 1898
# • The Brown Hand [“The Story of the Brown Hand”] • ss The Strand May, 1899
# • The Club-Footed Grocer [“The Story of the Club-Footed Grocer”] • ss The Strand Nov, 1898
# • The Fiend of the Cooperage • ss The Manchester Weekly Times Oct 1, 1897
# • The Japanned Box [“The Story of the Japanned Box”] • ss The Strand Jan, 1899
# • Jelland’s Voyage • ss
# • The Jew’s Breastplate [“The Story of the Jew’s Breastplate”] • ss The Strand Feb, 1899
# • The Leather Funnel • ss McClure’s Nov 1902
# • The Lost Special [“The Story of the Lost Special”] • ss The Strand Aug, 1898
# • The Man with the Watches [“The Story of the Man with the Watches”] • ss The Strand Jul, 1898
# • Playing with Fire • ss The Strand Mar 1900
# • The Pot of Caviare • ss The Strand Mar 1908
# • The Sealed Room [“The Story of the Sealed Room”] • ss The Strand Sep, 1898
# • The Usher of Lea House School • ss The Strand Apr, 1899

HUNTER STINSON – Fingerprints

Henry Holt & Co.; First Edition, March 1925.

   After a short investigation on my part, I believe that I can safely say that this is the only edition that was published of this book, nor were there any other books that appear under this author’s name. (The asking price for the only copy found on the Internet at the time I am writing this is $50, but that is certainly explainable by the fact that that particular copy is inscribed by the author; otherwise it is in about the same condition as mine.)       FOOTNOTE.

   Long time readers of the pulp magazines may, however, suspect that they know the author by a slightly different name, and they would be correct, if they happen to be thinking of H. H. Stinson. An incomplete list of his short fiction at Bill Contento’s Fiction Mag website begins with a western story published in Top Notch in 1928 and ends with a mystery yarn in Black Mask in 1948. In the latter magazine he had a series character by the name of Kenny O’Hara.

   To discover more, I put out a call for help, first from Victor Berch, whose name has been mentioned on these pages before, then from the various members of the Pulp Mags yahoo list:

[From Victor:] I think I found your man. He’s Herbert H. Stinson. In the 1930 Census he’s listed as a police reporter. In the 1920 Census, he’s listed as a journalist. Have his birth and death dates: Born 27 Apr 1896, Died 09 Oct 1969. Mother’s maiden name was Hunter, so that would fit right in. Wrote some plays as well out in California.

[From John Locke:] He’s mentioned in The Black Mask Boys [edited by William F. Nolan]:

   The following year [1933] proved to be Shaw’s finest as he brought five powerful new writers into the Mask: Thomas Walsh, Roger Torrey, H. H. Stinson, W. T. Ballard, and (at the close of 1933) Raymond Chandler.

   H.H. Stinson’s series hero was quick-fisted Ken O’Hara, of the Los Angeles Tribune. Again, a very tough cookie.

   From the AFG Bulletin, July 1, 1936:

      Joseph T. Shaw, Black Mask:

   Your request to select a “model” story in the July Black Mask, or in almost any issue, for that matter, cannot be fairly done without a word of explanation. You see, we follow the principle of “no dud in any issue;” therefore it is rarely that any one story stands out markedly from any other or all of the balance, although we hope that the magazine itself, as a whole, does.

   So far as the writers permit, we select for an issue the best of as many types as are available; in consequence, readers naturally have preference for one over another in accordance with their individual tastes, and all may be equally good as to workmanship quality. There is a story in the July issue, however, which can be pointed to for a specific reason. It is “Nothing Personal,” by H. H. Stinson.

   If a new writer should ask me to suggest what might be interesting to our readers, I would probably mention anything but what Mr. Stinson has in his story, in the way of characters, by name or position – that is, a reporter, an editor, a tough police official, and so on. They have been used so many, many times.

   Yet Mr. Stinson has done something with these familiar identities, with the ordinary action, which, to many readers, will make this an outstanding, a “model” story, in any company. The one word to describe it is “treatment.” He has brought every one of his characters vitally alive. The fact that they are this, that or the other is less important than that they are “real” personages; not once do they speak, act or react out of character – with a more or less commonplace setup, his handling of story detail, of constant menace, of action, is masterly. One careful reader refers to one of his scenes as the most vivid, the best of its type since Hammett told about Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key.

   The fact that Mr. Stinson is himself a newspaper man, a police reporter on one of the big Los Angeles papers, may have contributed to the sense of reality which he has infused into the story. But it isn’t every newspaperman who can make a story live and throb like this one. If it were, editors would have an easier time.

   A “model” story. No – except for treatment. A marvelously entertaining and vital one? Yes – decidedly yes.

[From Ed Hulse:] Besides O’Hara in Black Mask, Stinson in the post-WWII years wrote a series about a dick named Pete Rousseau for Dime Detective.

   He stopped writing for both Mask and Detective in 1948. He wrote for other detective pulps, too; Cook-Miller credits him with 60-odd stories altogether.

[From Will Murray:] I just went through my copy of the manuscript of the Joe Shaw bio written by his son, Milton. I find no mention of HHS.

   However, Shaw did pick one Stinson story for possible inclusion in his Hard-Boiled Omnibus, “Give a Man Rope.” His editor thought it weak in comparison to other selections and it was dropped along with several others.

   So we know what Shaw thought was his best BM story.

    Me again. I’m back, and I’m assuming that after all of this talking, as interesting as I hope you found it, you’d like to hear about the book itself. Truth be told, it’s not very good, but for most of an evening or two, the entertainment value is still high enough that I did. Read it in an evening or two, that is.

    As the story begins, the primary protagonist has discovered that as of that very same morning, he is a pauper. The estate he believed that had been left to him by his overly generous father, he learned, had been badly (and sadly) overtaken by various notes, mortgages, liens and debts. Which therefore means, as of that very same evening, his marriage to Maryse Douglas is off.

   Not by any wishes of the young lady herself, far from it, but by Owen Kenrick, her guardian until she comes of age. Here is how the author describes the young lady, on page 5:

   The next morning Christopher is consoled by a gent by the name of Bosworth, who lives in the apartment upstairs from him. From page 13:

   This is not the sort of dialogue that would make any kind of headway in the pages of either Black Mask or Dime Detective, nor would the mystery itself. When Kenrick is found dead, young Christopher is, of course, the obvious suspect. The only others in the running are the butler or Miss Douglas herself, and when Christopher’s fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, that just about clinches the case right then and here.

    Except for one undeniable fact, and that is that Christopher did not do it, and in the remaining 200 pages, it is up to him, Maryse, and Bosworth (who has secrets of his own) to prove it.

   Also on Blake’s trail are a gang of jewel thieves (jewelry being a primary item of trade for the dead man) who kidnap Maryse as part of their nefarious doings, but she escapes and makes her way back to the city just as Blake and Bosworth discover the hideout where she had been kept a captive, and mystery upon mystery ensues. By page 209 Maryse has been captured again, by yet a third party to the drama, and rest of the book is devoted to her rescue, nothing more, and quite a lot less.

    A lot happens in this book, as you can tell, but when it comes down to it, as I’ve already implied, nothing really happens, if you know what I mean. And what about the phony fingerprints? You might ask, and rightly so. In 1925, they were still a novelty to mystery readers, and so in 1925 they must have been amazed as to what could be done with them, by both the investigators and (in this case) the villains. I checked online with Google, and guess what, what the chaps on the wrong side of the law did back then could really be done. Of course Mr. Stinson makes it sound easy, but in terms of the technology of 1925, I’m still not quite convinced it would have been as easy as he made it sound.

FOOTNOTE: I seem to have spoken somewhat ahead of myself. After some further investigation I have discovered that the novel was previously published as a three-part serial in the mystery fiction magazine Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, concluding in the February 1925 issue. Mostly, I think but am not sure, the stories that appeared in RDT&MS were either of the mansion house variety or out-and-out thrillers, and thusly not hard-boiled fare at all.

    Or am I making a judgment on a sample of size only one? Other authors who appeared in the magazine in 1925 include Seabury Quinn, Arthur J. Burks, Raoul Whitfield, Otis Adelbert Kline and Vincent Starrett. You tell me.

   I don’t know about you, but for me writing is the hardest thing in the world. I have nothing but admiration for the storytellers whose works and words we mystery readers follow so avidly. They make it look so easy – and every once in a while, I imagine that it is.

   Because maybe they’re human like you and me, and they spend their days struggling to put the words on the computer screen in the right order, and not only that, but the right words in the right place and at the right time, and if the wrong word is used, it just throws everything out of whack, like a single grain of sand in a well-tuned BMW engine.

   I’ve been writing reviews of mystery fiction since the early 1970s, when I was the “Courant Coroner” for the local Hartford paper, and every once in a while I’ve run out of words, and I’ve had to quit for a while. This latest consecutive streak of books reviewed has been going on for nearly seven years now – and do you know what?

   It’s still a struggle to put the right words down and in the right order and with the right punctuation. Case in point. I was reasonably happy with my comments on the John Whitlatch book I recently reviewed – until I read them the next morning.

   You probably haven’t noticed – and I sincerely hope not – but I’m constantly tweaking and changing little things here and there on this blog until either (a) I get it right or (b) I concede defeat – in a good sense, that is. I can only hope.

   But every once in a while, I look at something I wrote and say to myself, for example, what is really he trying to say here? Or could he possibly be more convoluted than this to get his ideas out? And look at what he says here. If changes are going to be made, they’re going to have to be big ones this time. Case in point. After considerable inner struggle and debate, I’ve revised the Whitlatch review and I’ve posted the result and I don’t think I will read it again for a week. (My fingers are crossed when I say that, though.)

   My opinion is the same, and some of the words are the same, but some of them aren’t and the punctuation is different too.

   Next up, a review of Death Turns the Tables, by John Dickson Carr. It’s turned out to be a tough book to comment on, and I’ve been putting it off for a couple of weeks now. I’d better get to it, before I forget the story altogether. (This has happened before.)

   I wonder what I’m going to say about it.

JOHN WHITLATCH – Stunt Man’s Holiday

Pocket 77660; paperback original; 1st printing, May 1973.

    I don’t know very much about John Whitlatch, and I don’t know anyone who does. In many, many ways he was the last of the true pulp fiction writers, even though his first book was published in 1969. Between then and 1976 he wrote 11 novels in a wide range of categories for Pocket, ten of them in one four years period.

   All of them paperback originals – crime, adventure, westerns, war, motorcycle gangs, the whole gamut. The titles were not all that remarkable, but the covers – the covers were lurid and eye-catching, and the books were reprinted over and over again. One presumes that they sold well.

    Only three of them were listed in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, but in Addenda #10 a complete revision of his entry now includes all of the books he wrote, as follows:

WHITLATCH, JOHN. No biographical information is known about this author of eleven popular pulp fiction paperbacks in the 1960s and 70s. While specific genres, settings and time periods vary widely, there is a criminous element in each of them. With Tom Power, one of the survivors of the event, John Whitlatch later co-authored Shoot-Out At Dawn (Phoenix Books, pb, 1981), an account of what took place at a remote Southern Arizona cabin in 1918. SC: John Gannon = JG; Captain Jamey Morgan = JM.

Gannon’s Vendetta. Pocket 75383, pbo, 1969. JG “Do not forget, gentlemen – violence is the only thing they understand. If in doubt, kill.”

Morgan’s Rebellion. Pocket 75384, pbo, 1969. “Prison made a man of Morgan. And the man became a legend.”

Tanner’s Lemming. Pocket 75616, pbo, Sept 1970. “Tanner – the man who single-fistedly quashed a student takeover and tongue-lashed its leaders into silence at a turbulent school-board showdown. Tanner – the man who had never flown a plane, yet took the stick when a pilot died in midair and landed safely. Tanner – the man whose blunt business sense had won him a place in a Senator’s inner circle. Tanner – had he blown a hole in the heart of the man millions of Americans revered? Had he killed Senator Stanton? Could he have been the assassin?”

The Iron Shirt. Pocket 75642, pbo, 1970. [West] “Jonathan Fontaine swore it … in the smoking remains of his homestead, over the charred, mutilated body of his young daughter. He had gone East but now was back in Arizona with a specially equipped rifle. And he had a fresh lead on the Indian – the one who had worn a necklace of human fingers and The Iron Shirt.” [Marginal: primarily a Western.]

The Judas Goat. Pocket 75643, pbo, 1970. “Hand-picked from the entire US World War II army, they were a unique company. Twelve men led by a lieutenant, as able as he was arrogant, and a sharp, seasoned sergeant who was militantly silent about his past. Twelve fighters, among them an ugly man, a black man, on old World War I scout, a southern redneck, and a mountain climber. They were a strange assortment, but tough and tenacious – and they didn’t care too much about living. To the General they were the army’s answer to the marines. To the Colonel they were a crack team … the best he could assemble. To the Lieutenant they were ‘animals.’ And by the time their brutal training had ended they were Killers!”

Lafitte’s Legacy. Pocket 75670, pbo, Sept 1971. [Louisiana] “The last of the Lafittes had come back from Arizona to visit his dying grandfather. But enemies lay in wait, blcoking his way with fallen trees, terrorizing his wife with poisonous snakes, signalling their malice with voodoo dolls. Someone wanted the old treasure map that was his legacy. But his adversaries had not reckoned with the pirate blood that was also part of Lafitte’s legacy. He would fight with all the guile and guts, tenacity and ingenuity that had made his legendary ancestor the terror of the bayou.”

Frank T.’s Plan. Pocket 77587, pbo, Oct 1972. “To avenge his daughter’s death, an old man pits himself against the most violent forces of evil.”

Stunt Man’s Holiday. Pocket 77660, pbo, May 1973. [Arizona] “He made his living getting shot in the movies. But this time the bullets were real.”

Cory’s Losers. Pocket 77661, pbo, May 1973. “The little western town was full of crooked operators – and Cory wanted revenge on every one of them.”

Morgan’s Assassin. Pocket 77659, pbo, Aug 1973. “A squad of mean, smart killers was out to bring the nation to its knees. Only one man was tough enough to stop them –El Arquito!”

Gannon’s Line. Pocket 80743, pbo, Oct 1976. [Mexico] JG “Blazing adventure and a perilous game of survival south of the Rio Grande!”

    Victor Berch has checked the copyright records for the earlier books, and from the evidence found he says, “John Whitlach seems to be a real name. There was no indication in the records that this was a pseudonym.” Also interesting is the fact that, he goes on to say, “Nor are there any renewal records for any of his 1969 books.”

   Stunt Man’s Holiday is a crime novel, and in a more than minor way, it’s even a “fair play” detective story. Max Besh is the stunt man that the title advertises, not to mention a full-blooded Apache who needs all of his heritage, as it turns out, to follow a gang of bank robbers on a long, exhausting chase through the Arizona desert after they kidnap the girl he’s traveling with, along with the wife of a Don Rickles look- (and act-) alike Jewish comedian named Les Rick.

    And that’s the entire plot right there, summed up in only one sentence, even allowing for the fact that it’s a long one, which I grant you. Les Rick starts out being deliberately unlikable, but he gradually shows his worth (if not his innate cowboy ability) by accompanying Max the entire distance, by which I mean the entire book. Here’s an example of Max’s tracking skills, taken from page 132, where Rick asks if they’re getting closer:

   The writing is competent enough, but as the excerpt shows, it may also be straightforward to a fault. And in all honesty, if you haven’t gathered where I’m headed already, as opposed to the opening scenes that take place in Las Vegas, the rest of the tale is rather skimpy in plot. Take the long trek in the desert, for example, in which (in retrospect) nothing really happens, except to allow the reader to watch as Besh and Rick, natural-born opposites, react against the other and get to know (if not understand) each other more.

   Nonetheless, what Whitlatch is rather adept and clever at, in this book at least, is in making the reader think something is happening – a hint here, building an anticipation there, adding to the puzzle now and again – when perhaps the something that is happening is a whole lot less. The ending, which is rather violent – all of a sudden, you see, things really do start to happen – is what the reader has been eagerly waiting for, he suddenly realizes, and he is finally rewarded. (Not many women will read John Whitlatch’s books, I suspect, but as always, I may be wrong.)

   What was unexpected, on the other hand, is that – as I mentioned earlier – this is a detective story of sorts. Not everything is what it seems, and since it is fairly obvious that it is not, I do not believe I am revealing anything I should not be. There are clues as to what is going on, in other words, if one reads slowly enough. But because they are not emphasized, it is easy to lose track of them as the story heads off in another direction, which it does.

   Or to be more specific, the crux of whole affair depends upon what was discovered way back on page 86. If you’re paying attention, and make yourself notes of what’s happening when it happens, you’ll have it figured out at the same time that Besh does, guaranteed – but he’s not talking. And Rick– as early into his education of the way of the west as it is when it happens – don’t count on him. He’s simply not swift enough.

   All in all, though? Not entirely what I expected. Whether that’s good or bad, I leave for you to decide.

PostScript: For a Gallery of all the Whitlatch covers, check out this page on the primary Mystery*File website.

MAGGIE ESTEP – Flamethrower

Three Rivers Press; trade paperback. First Edition, September 2006.

   This is the third in Maggie Estep’s Ruby Murphy mystery series, and as usual, I came in late. The first two were Hex (Three Rivers, March 2003) and Gargantuan (Three Rivers, July 2004), and while I’ve been meaning to – and I haven’t yet – my intentions are to get my hands on the first two as soon as possible.

   If I thought that Doug Swanson’s Dreamboat was somewhat over-the-top and humorous, and I did, I certainly didn’t see this one coming. Ruby Murphy, who lives as low-key and laid-back a life in Brooklyn and environs (post-Giuliani Manhattan, Queens, Coney Island) as anyone possibly could, begins this episode with a visit to her psychiatrist, Dr. Jody Ray. Ruby has been seeing Jody since the death of someone she cared about – well, Attila, her lover – in a previous book. Unfortunately, not having read the previous book, this did not mean a lot to me, personally, but having a sociopath murder someone close to you right before your eyes, I grant you, maybe a psychiatrist could help.

   And Ruby’s new boyfriend is obsessed by a new object of his affection, his new horse, making this her primary complaint to Jody during this particular visit. Which is summarily interrupted when Ruby discovers, you will not believe this, one of Jody’s husband’s legs in the fish tank outside her office.

   That’s when you know that you have a story that has gone completely off the tracks, and in fact there are no tracks in sight. Where, oh where, you could most reasonably ask, could a story possibly go from here? The quote above came from only page 11 and continues thusly:

   Eventually, a few twists and turns of the plot later, Ruby is hired (after being mysteriously (and falsely) fired from her job at the Coney Island Sideshow Museum) to find the missing doc, who seems to have a past history that Ruby knew nothing absolutely about, including (page 211) the aspect of the previously mentioned past from which the title of the story arises.

   That the last 12 pages have nothing to do with the mystery end of things tells you something about where the priorities lie in the Ruby Murphy mysteries: not all that so very high. And truth be told, mystery-wise you will have had to have read the other two books to reap all you should from this one. The last chapter is about Ed, the new boyfriend, who became somewhat estranged from Ruby partway through this one, and Ed’s new horse, and Ruby’s new dog Spike.

   That you might not care (that the last 12 pages have nothing to do with the mystery end of things) – and I didn’t – shows you what kind of writer that Maggie Estep is, and how finely etched her characters are. Or, on the other hand, you being you and not me, it might do absolutely nothing of the kind.

ENTRAPMENT. 20th Century-Fox, 1999. Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ving Rhames, Will Patton. Rating: PG-13. Director: Jon Amiel.

   I have listed four actors in this movie, and while the last two of the four have small but significant roles to play, the fact of the matter is that this is a two-star picture — Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones — and no one else matters very much at all. One or the other is on the screen, let’s say about 99% of the time, and often both. If for some reason you have an aversion to either one, and I don’t see possibly how, but OK, I’ll concede it, then this is not the movie for you.

   Storyline: Virginia Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones) works for an insurance company specializing in security. Robert MacDougal (Sean Connery) is an art thief.

   Um. Do you need more than that? Of course there’s more. This is a caper movie, one with many, many intricate plans for stealing things, and getting away with it, and yes, they are working together on almost all of them, for reasons that are complicated and you don’t want to know about them before you watch this movie anyway.

   A question though: If you are forced to go along with a theft — you know, incriminating photos or the like — is that entrapment or blackmail? I thought so.

   Many of those leaving comments on IMDB mention the lack of chemistry between Gin and Mac, or the actors who play them. Nonsense, I say. Utter nonsense. One of Mac’s rules is that there be no romantic involvement between partners in the crimes he commits, and he is sorely if not wistfully tempted to break it; and it is clear — well, as clear as anything is clear in this small masterpiece of role-playing, we know she is playing a role, but what role is not so clear — that she returns the feeling. Those IMDB viewers must have been very young.

   At the age of 30, Catherine Zeta-Jones may have been at the peak of her youthful beauty — slim and lithesome and fair of face — when she made this movie. At the age of 69, Sean Connery is as handsome as ever, mismatched in terms of age, perhaps, but most definitely not in terms of the fire within.

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment–Stella Marni

Gold Medal 666; paperback original. First printing, April 1957. Reprinted several times: as 906 (2nd pr., 1959), k1515 (4th pr., 1965), d1729 (5th pr., 1966), T2308 (6th pr., 1970), and M2949 (1973).

   Search as I may, I cannot determine what the number and date of the third printing might be. Although, of course, I fully realize that I may be the only person reading this who may care. The data as given above may also be suspect, it is true, determined as it was largely from listings on ABE and elsewhere, which is hardly the most reliable way of doing bibliographic research.

   But one thing that is clear is that the book, published as the fourth in the Sam Durell “Assignment” series, came out early enough to be reprinted again and again as later ones came along. (In the same way the the oldest child in the family gets the vast majority of the appearances in the family’s photo album.) What is not so obvious from the bibliographic data is that the book is not among the better ones in the series.

   At first I thought that this may have been due to the fact that the action takes place solely in the five boroughs of New York City. It’s been a while since I read one of the books in the series, but what I remember always enjoying is Aarons’ detailed descriptions of the exotic places of the world where he would place Durell next. But that’s not really the problem Even this early in the series Aarons shows how he could make even the most mundane places suddenly come to focus, and with a fresh perspective. Here, for example, is Sam on page 87 as he is tracking down a frightened girl’s father – well, all right: Stella Marni’s father – who has been kidnapped and may be hidden away on a freighter docked along Manhattan’s west side:

   Stella Marni is a crucial element in a campaign by several communist countries to “call home” refugees who’ve come to the United States seeking political asylum. Convinced that all is well back in their native land, several such people have gone back, only to never to be seen again. As a famous successful photographic model, Stella Marni has gone before a Senate committee stating her willingness to return to her native Hungary. Sam wonders why, and if there is any way to change her mind. The final key to her mysterious change of heart: her missing father.

   Stella is also one of those women who draw men to her like the proverbial moths to a flame, and even Sam may not be immune. On pages 72-73 he has a long and increasingly bitter confrontation with his close lady friend Deirdre, who, although she herself asked Sam to help Stella in the beginning, is also beginning to have second thoughts. As it has transpired, Sam has spent the previous night with Stella, causing Deirdre to become suspicious and increasingly jealous. And even though the night spent together by Sam and Stella was innocent enough, the fact remains that Deirdre has every right to be.

   The primary focus of this tale is therefore Stella: as an enchantress, as a unwitting Jezebel, and yet as an innocent victim. And if you are beginning to wonder if this makes the book a “cozy” in any sense of the term, the answer is no. There are some extremely tough fight scenes in this book also, one example of which is on page 127. (Severely tempted to add quotes both here and up above a paragraph, I decided to reconsider when I looked and saw just how long each of the insertions would have to be, in order to convey the full effect.)

   And this is strange. As I am typing up my comments on the book just now, based on the notes that I took (over a month ago) I am suddenly discovering that I may have liked the book more than I thought I did. But no, it is not so. The last comment I see that I made is that it is “lightweight at the core.”

   Which meant at the time, and still so now, that there are no twists or surprising turns of the plot. Paths I anticipated did not occur, even the less imaginative ones. The story has but one direction to go, and that it does so with skill – and a modicum of finesse – still does not mean that it is not going in any more than in one direction.

Postscript: I wonder somewhat about Deirdre. Being the girl friend of an ruthless CIA agent whose jobs continue to take him to exotic places around the world, places in which equally exotic women are always available and/or near at hand, would hardly seem ideal for a long-lasting relationship. The future for her appears rather blaak and dismal. All seems well again at the end of this book, but just how long, I wonder (that is to say, for how many more books) does Deirdre manage to stick it out? Anyone know?

HERBERT JENKINS – Malcolm Sage, Detective

Jenkins, 1921; Doran, 1921. The complete contents are as listed below, as given in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Some of these are apparently bridging episodes only and not complete stories in themselves.

   Malcolm Sage was an accountant who was always finding “little wangles” in the books. Refused for war service by the army, he worked for the Ministry of Supply and found a much larger wangle, eventually transferring to Department Z in Whitehall. The department handled secret service work during the war and now the conflict is over and the Department is being demobilised, Sir John Dene, his old chief, agrees with Lady Dene Sage that Sage should be set up in a private detective agency.

   Sage has a “bald, conical head”, a “determined” jaw, and protruding ears. His keen gaze is aided by gold-rimmed spectacles and his “shapely” hands are always restless, drawing on his blotting pad, balancing a spoon on a knife, constructing geometrical designs with matches, that sort of thing. He is kind, quiet, and never smiles. Nevertheless Sage’s Whitehall staff is devoted to him and it is from their ranks he chooses a handful to work at his agency. Gladys Norman will continue as his secretary and other departmental personnel engaged for the new venture are Sage’s assistant James Thompson, office junior William Johnson, and chauffeur Arthur Tims.

   ● This collection of investigations kicks off with “The Strange Case of Mr Challoner,” who was found an apparent suicide in a locked library. However, foul play is suspected and Richard Dane, Mr Challoner’s nephew is fingered as the likely culprit, having violently quarreled with the dead man the day before.

   ● In “The Surrey Cattle-Maiming Mystery,” Sage is called in to hunt down the person responsible for the crimes. There had been almost thirty going back over two years, despite villagers organising a committee to keep watch at night. Peppery General Sir John Hackblock, whose mare has been similarly mutilated, asks Sage to look into the matter since he is not satisfied with what he was told when he consulted Scotland Yard.

   ● “The Stolen Admiralty Memorandum” opens with a summons to a country mansion where the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Secretary of War are both weekend house guests – and all are in a panic. The memorandum has disappeared and could do a great deal of damage in the wrong hands. Who is responsible for its theft? There are plenty of suspects, including over a dozen house servants and a number of other guests along with their ladies’ maids and valets.

   Next we have an interlude in which secretary “Gladys Norman Dines with Thompson,” Sage’s assistant. Gladys debates why the staff is so loyal to their employer, with a nice little sideswipe at expectations raised by romance novels (E. M. Hull sprang to mind!). Their conversation explains how Gladys came to work for Sage and where Thompson first met their employer, fleshing out the lives of the bureau employees as also happens elsewhere. The reader never has the impression the staff are spear carriers whose role is to admire Sage’s brilliance, and learning something of their lives was an attractive sidelight.

   ● Then it’s back to criminous business with “The Holding Up of Lady Glanedale,” wife of margarine magnate Sir Roger Glanedale. She has been robbed at gun point in a nocturnal burglary at the family’s country house. The Twentieth Century Insurance Corporation Limited calls Sage in to investigate the circumstances and find the missing jewelry.

   ● “The McMurray Mystery” deals with Professor James McMurray, found murdered in a locked laboratory. It is a particularly mysterious matter because the body of the professor displays a strangely youthful appearance. McMurray’s friend and philanthropist Sir Jasper Chambers was the last person to talk to the professor, who was in the habit of living in his laboratory for days on end and refusing to admit anyone for any reason. How then did his murderer get
in and out and what is the role of marmalade in the affair?

   ● A flurry of scandalous poison pen letters allege a vicar’s daughter and his curate are carrying on an intrigue. Naturally these foul communications cause much distress and agitate the villagers of Gylston and its surrounding area. “The Gylston Slander” sees Sage called in to find the culprit.

   ● Charley Burns is “The Missing Heavyweight,” who disappears on the eve of an important fight on which many have wagered large sums. Where has he gone and why? Was he taken ill, kidnapped, or did he run away, afraid to fight? This particular entry includes an excellent example of Sage’s deductions from evidence, in this case a patch of garden soil. Unlike some of the more startling deductions made by Holmes, here as in other stories the detective’s explanations seem reasonable and the reader is left with the impression they too could have made the same conclusions, if not as quickly.

   In the final chapter, “Lady Dene Calls on Malcolm Sage,” Lady Dene arrives at the bureau with an unusual aim. To the amazement of the staff she’s there to decorate Sage’s office with vast quantities of red and white roses on the anniversary of the agency’s founding and to present him with an antique platinum and lapis lazuli ring from her husband and herself to set off his “lovely” hand. To the astonishment of secretary Gladys and disbelief of Thompson, Sage accepts the gift — and smiles at Lady Dene.

   My verdict: Malcolm Sage is clever and yet an “ordinary shmoe” protagonist surrounded by a likable staff. It would be difficult not to warm to him and them. No astounding leaps of deduction or parade of esoteric knowledge here! Sages uses common sense, a keen eye, and the occasional bit of psychology to solve the cases he investigates. I enjoyed this collection a great deal.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200921.txt