MARGUERITE SILVERMAN – The Vet It Was That Died. Nicholson & Watson; UK hardcover. First edition: 1945. No US edition.

   Of the three mystery novels written by this author, this one is the most common among those found offered for sale online: there are six copies available at the time I am writing this. Of Silverman’s second (Who Should Have Died?, Nicholson, 1948) there are none, and of her third (9 Had No Alibi, Nicholson, 1951) there is but one.

   According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, the primary detective in each is Chief Inspector Christopher Adrian. Coming to his assistance in this one, at least, a relatively minor affair, is a newly graduated veterinarian surgeon by the name of Helena Goodwin.

    Helena’s involvement with the mystery is due only to this, her first job, however, and in fact she’s one of those immediately on the scene when her body of her veterinarian employer is found. (Hence the title.) And yet, even though both the inspector and his wife are old friends of her family, it doesn’t seem as though there?s enough of a connection there to warrant her presence in any of Adrian?s other cases. I could be wrong. It will also be difficult to find out, but if and when I do, I will be sure to tell you.

    It comes as no surprise that “the vet it was that died,” as both Mr. Thorpe and his wife are two of the most terrifically unlikable people that one can imagine. They are hated by their niece Carol, who lives with them; Dora, the other girl who works for them; their neighbors, and even their clientele, believe it or not. That the couple were not especially fond of each other is also an understatement, to put it mildly. When Mr. Thorpe is found poisoned to death, what Adrian and Helena quickly realize is that they have a lengthy list of suspects to work with. There is no need at all to start looking under rocks or for tramps passing by.

    By page 92, however, the list has been narrowed down to five: the only ones who had access to the brandy to which the strychnine was added, but with 100 pages yet to go, it takes quite a bit of time (and false leads) to whittle the list down any further.

    I called this mystery a “minor affair” a short while back, and truthfully that is all it is. The dialogue on occasion is rather juvenile in tone, and on other occasions one gets the unsettling feeling that the author is making up facts as she is going along. Neither of these are necessarily fatal flaws, mind you, but neither of them allows for much in the way of recommendation, either.

FRAMED. Columbia, 1947. Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan. Director: Richard Wallace.

   More than a B-movie, but not quite an “A,” Framed is generally considered to fall into the noir style of filmmaking. One definition I found online (Encyclopædia Britannica) is that noir is “a film genre that offers dark or fatalistic interpretations of reality. The term is applied to U.S. films of the late 1940s and early ’50s that often portrayed a seamy or criminal underworld and cynical characters. The films were noted for their use of stark, expressionistic lighting and stylized camera work, often employed in urban settings.”

   I’ll tell you the general plot line, then you tell me. An unemployed mining engineer named Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford) comes into a cheap bar where a beautiful girl named Paula (Janis Carter) is a waitress.

   Bad luck seems to follow Lambert, even getting him into trouble almost as soon as he hits town (literally), but – good luck at last? – Paula is there to bail him out of jail. Of course she has ulterior motives, and Lambert almost realizes it, but he can’t quite make a break from her.

   One of Paula’s bedtime buddies is a local banker named Steve Price (Barry Sullivan), and their plans for Mike Lambert are both sinister and obvious. Of course we, the viewer, know full well that plans of this nature do not always work out the way they’re expected to, and in this movie, no exception is made.

   Noir? I thought you’d say so, and I’d agree, but I don’t think it fits the definition above, unless it’s expanded to include “… dark or fatalistic interpretations of reality, often involving unexpected twists of fate, against which the participants feel helpless to react.” Well, maybe the phrasing needs some work, but work on it I will.

   Glenn Ford’s sometimes goofy-faced grin serves him well in this film, but the chemistry between Paula and him doesn’t quite seem to work. She’s also a little too glamorous – especially to be a waitress in a cheap bar – and not quite vampish or seductive or dangerous enough. (If I include enough words here, maybe the point I’m making will also make itself clear.)

   As Jeff Cunningham, though, the genial old prospector whom Lambert hopes to work for, and who – completely bewildered – ends up in jail, Edgar Buchanan is in a role made expressly for him. All in all, while you may find the plot line a little too familiar, if this is the kind of movie you like, then you won’t mind seeing yet another variation on the same theme, one more time, with just enough gusto to get by.

   Not many writers have had a career lasting as long as the 56 years that British mystery writer E. R. Punshon happened to have. Even so, Nick Fuller, on the pages of his website devoted to Punshon’s detective fiction, calls him “one of the most shamefully neglected writers of detective fiction,” with plots “rivaled only by [those of] John Dickson Carr.”

   He had, Nick goes on to say, the same “gift of conveying atmosphere and setting [and with the same adeptness] at devising clues and situations.” His work are also studies of character, of “the catalyst that drives an ordinary human being to commit the ultimate crime.”

   A complete list of Punshon’s mystery fiction in book form will follow Mary’s review of The Bittermeads Mystery, taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. The detective twosome of Inspector Carter and Sergeant Bell appears in some his early books, but the series character who appears most often is Bobby Owen, who, according to Nick, “rises from the rank of police constable (in Information Received, 1933) to Commander of Scotland Yard by the later books.”

   The Bittermeads Mystery is a stand-alone, however. Robert Dunn appeared in this book and no other.        – Steve

E. R. PUNSHON – The Bittermeads Mystery

Knopf, hc, 1922. [No British edition?]

   The Bittermeads Mystery gets off to a lively start with protagonist Robert Dunn eluding pursuit after a donnybrook (or should I say a Dunnybrook?) with a man he was following through a wood.

   Dunn continues his nocturnal activities by sloping along to Bittermeads, the titular house, where he finds a burglary in progress. Seizing the day, or rather the night, Dunn knocks the burglar out and after exchanging clothing with the unconscious man (subsequently concealed on the village common opposite the house) he enters the dwelling hoping to be discovered.

   An unusual ambition, you may say, but since a burglar is a shady sort he hopes to be invited to join the murky band associated with Bittermeads. His reasoning is he will not be turned him over to the police as the residents don’t want attention drawn to the house. In this way he hopes to find out what has happened to his old chum Charley Wright, who was romantically involved with Ella Cayley, the daughter of the house, but has disappeared. (He has another reason for his interest in joining the enemy camp, but it is not revealed until some way into the narrative.)

   The only people at home are Ella and her ailing mother and after tying Ella up and promising not to disturb her mother, Dunn explores the house – only to find the murdered Charley in a packing case in an attic.

   Ella’s stepfather, Deede Dawson, returns home and nabs Dunn but decides to employ him as chauffeur and gardener – not an action one would expect of an honest man. Dunn’s first task is to finish nailing down the lid of the packing case without revealing he knows what is in it. But then Ella takes the packing case away in a car, thus removing the only evidence he can produce to launch a police investigation.

   Then there is another murder as the plot thickens up in satisfactory fashion.

   My verdict: The two matters Dunn is investigating have no immediate apparent link but ultimately are shown to be intertwined. Although the close reader may well deduce a certain hidden identity and the name of the person masterminding the mayhem, it will likely not be until fairly late in the book.

   The action gallops along and we have an unusual look at the romantic agony of a male protagonist as well as his internal musings as the plot develops. Although it is a fast, light read there are noir underpinnings and the whole is resolved with a satisfactory comeuppance for the egregious villain of the piece.

   Etext: http://www.geocities.com/hacklehorn/punshon/index.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY [British editions only, unless retitled in the US; all covers shown are those of the US editions, however.] —

PUNSHON, E(rnest) R(obertson) (1872-1956); see pseudonym Robertson Halket

* Earth’s Great Lord (n.) Ward 1901 [Australia]
* -Constance West (n.) Lane 1905 [England]
* The Mystery of Lady Isobel (n.) Hurst 1907 [England]
* The Choice (n.) Ward 1908 [England]
* The Spin of the Coin (n.) Hurst 1908 [England]
* The Glittering Desire (n.) Ward 1910 [England]
* Hidden Lives (n.) Ward 1913 [England]
* -The Crowning Glory (n.) Hodder 1914 [England]
* Arrows of Chance (n.) Ward 1917 [England]
* The Miser Earl (n.) Newnes 1917
* The Solitary House (n.) Ward 1919 [England]
* The Woman’s Footprint (n.) Hodder 1919 [England]
* The Ruby Bracelet (n.) Newnes 1920 [England]
* The Bittermeads Mystery (n.) Knopf 1922 [England]
* Dunslow (n.) Ward 1922 [England]
* The Blue John Diamond (n.) Clode 1929 [England]
* The Unexpected Legacy (n.) Benn 1929 [Insp. Carter; Sgt. Bell; England]
* The Cottage Murder (n.) Benn 1931 [Insp. Carter; Sgt. Bell; England]
* Proof, Counter Proof (n.) Benn 1931 [Insp. Carter; Sgt. Bell; England]
* Genius in Murder (n.) Benn 1932 [Insp. Carter; Sgt. Bell; England]
* Truth Came Out (n.) Benn 1932 [Insp. Carter; Sgt. Bell; England]
* Information Received (n.) Benn 1933 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Crossword Murder (n.) Knopf 1934; See: Crossword Mystery (Gollancz 1934).
* Crossword Mystery (n.) Gollancz 1934 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Death Among the Sunbathers (n.) Benn 1934 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Mystery Villa (n.) Gollancz 1934 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Death Comes to Cambers (n.) Gollancz 1935 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Death of a Beauty Queen (n.) Gollancz 1935 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Bath Mysteries (n.) Gollancz 1936 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; London]
* The Dusky Hour (n.) Gollancz 1937 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Mystery of Mr. Jessop (n.) Gollancz 1937 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Comes a Stranger (n.) Gollancz 1938 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Death of a Tyrant (n.) Hillman-Curl 1938; See: Dictator’s Way (Gollancz 1938).

* Dictator’s Way (n.) Gollancz 1938 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Murder Abroad (n.) Gollancz 1939 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; France]
* Suspects-Nine (n.) Gollancz 1939 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Four Strange Women (n.) Gollancz 1940 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Dark Garden (n.) Gollancz 1941 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Death in the Chalkpits (n.) Mystery Novel of the Month 1941; See: The Dusky Hour (Gollancz 1937).
* Ten Star Clues (n.) Gollancz 1941 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Bathtub Murder Case (n.) Detective Novel Classics 1942; See: The Bath Mysteries (Gollancz 1936).
* Diabolic Candelabra (n.) Gollancz 1942 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Conqueror Inn (n.) Gollancz 1943 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]

* Night’s Cloak (n.) Gollancz 1944 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Secrets Can’t Be Kept (n.) Gollancz 1944 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* There’s a Reason for Everything (n.) Gollancz 1945 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* It Might Lead Anywhere (n.) Gollancz 1946 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Helen Passes By (n.) Gollancz 1947 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The House of Godwinsson (n.) Gollancz 1948 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Music Tells All (n.) Gollancz 1948 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; Sgt. Bell; England]
* So Many Doors (n.) Gollancz 1949 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Everybody Always Tells (n.) Gollancz 1950 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Golden Dagger (n.) Gollancz 1951 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Secret Search (n.) Gollancz 1951 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* The Attending Truth (n.) Gollancz 1952 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Strange Ending (n.) Gollancz 1953 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Brought to Light (n.) Gollancz 1954 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Dark Is the Clue (n.) Gollancz 1955 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Triple Quest (n.) Gollancz 1955 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]
* Six Were Present (n.) Gollancz 1956 [Det. Sgt. Bobby Owen; England]

HALKET, ROBERTSON; pseudonym of E. R. Punshon, (1872-1956)

      —

   Mary Reed and Eric Mayer are in the process of compiling an online directory of all freely available etexts of mystery fiction published during the Golden Age of Detection. If you know of any they’ve missed, additions are extremely welcome.

   Peter Rozovsky has just left a comment after my review of Step by Step, posted about this same time yesterday. Peter found what NY Times movie critic Bosley Crowther said about the film to be very interesting. (Crowther didn’t like it very much, and he said so.)

   What’s even more interesting is that in the same column Crowther also reviewed the film version of The Big Sleep, which many people today find one of the classics of the hard-boiled private eye genre. He didn’t care for this one either, and he said so – and at even greater length. You can read the entire review online yourself, and you should, but here are some excerpts:

   If somebody had only told us – the script-writers, preferably – just what it is that happens in the Warners’ and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, we might be able to give you a more explicit and favorable report on this over-age melodrama which came yesterday to the Strand. But with only the foggiest notion of who does what to whom – and we watched it with closest attention – we must be frankly disappointing about it.

   For The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself. What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement. Unfortunately, the cunning script-writers have done little to clear it at the end.

      […]

   Through it all, Humphrey Bogart stalks his cold and laconic way as the resolute private detective who has a mind and a body made of steel. And Lauren Bacall (Mrs. Bogart) plays the older of the daughters languidly. (Miss Bacall is a dangerous looking female, but she still hasn’t learned to act.) A dozen or so other actors play various tramps and tough guys acidly, and the whole thing comes off a poisonous picture lasting a few minutes shy of two hours.

   On the other hand, to pick a critic whose comments are always handy, Leonard Maltin gives The Big Sleep four stars (****) and in part agreeing with Crowther says, “So convoluted even [Raymond] Chandler didn’t know who committed one murder,” then going on immediately to say, “but so incredibly entertaining that no one has ever cared. Powerhouse direction, unforgettable dialogue…”

   I realize that it’s unfair not to give Mr. Crowther a chance to reconsider – and later on perhaps he did. No one always gets everything right the first time, and I do mean no one.

   And, just in case you might be wondering, Mr. Maltin gives Step by Step two stars (**), but other than a one line summary of the plot, his only critical judgment is that it is a “patriotic programmer.”

STEP BY STEP. RKO Radio Pictures, 1946. Lawrence Tierney, Anne Jeffreys, Jason Robards Sr., George Cleveland. Screenwriter: Stuart Palmer. Director: Phil Rosen.

   I don’t know his career all that well, but I know enough to make it awfully hard to imagine that the tough-looking Lawrence Tierney had many leading roles in which he wasn’t the villain. Nonetheless, here he is in this low budget postwar mystery movie, pairing up with a deliciously blonde Anne Jeffreys to help nab a gang of Nazi spies somewhere along the sunny California coast.

   Fresh out of the Marines, Johnny Christopher (Tierney) spots Evelyn Smith (Jeffreys) while she’s swimming in the ocean, and in a two-piece bathing suit yet. Not easily taking a friendly no for an answer, he follows her to the house where she’s working as a Senator’s secretary, but another Miss Smith seems to have taken her place. Johnny’s Miss Smith is nowhere in sight.

   Bringing the police in does not help, and in fact makes things worse. When the bodies start to pile up, he’s immediately been tagged as being a semi-delusional if not cracked-up war veteran, and his Miss Smith, when found, quickly becomes his partner on the lam.

   Although I admit that the plot is ridden with as many holes as that legendary slice of Swiss cheese, it still tickled my fancy to see fate conspire against the pair of fugitives, with every step they take getting them more and more deeply into trouble. George Cleveland, playing a cranky but lovable old motel owner, is the only one who believes in them.

   Since I watched a print that omitted the opening credits, I didn’t recognize Anne Jeffreys until I looked it up after the movie was over, but with her long blonde hair curled up slightly at the ends, I didn’t take my eyes off her very often. Even as a misunderstood hero, Lawrence Tierney played his part as if he were an old-fashioned pocket watch that has been wound up too tightly and is ready to burst into a flying display of gears, cogs and pieces of broken springs at the slightest provocation.

   And on two occasions, he does, in a couple of high-flying, hard-punching fist-fights in which he nearly bounces off the walls in the bargain. A good film that the critics didn’t care for (*), but on the other hand, five out of six IMDB viewers so far have thought it was as much fun to watch as I did.

   —

   (*) Here, for example, are some of Bosley Crowther’s contemporaneous comments as they appeared in The New York Times: “Even two murders don’t relieve the tedium of this incredible tale about an ex-Marine and a chance feminine acquaintance who stumble into a Nazi espionage plot in sunny California and get quite a pushing around before their innocence is established and the spies are apprehended. As the principals Lawrence Tierney and Anne Jeffreys move through the film like two bewildered innocents in search of a director.”

DANA CHAMBERS – Rope for an Ape

Jonathan Press Mystery J63; digest-sized paperback; no date stated, but circa 1951. Hardcover edition: The Dial Press, 1947. Previous paperback edition: Bestseller Mystery B-103; abridged; no date stated, but circa 1948.

   Jonathan Press and Bestseller Mysteries were each published by the same company, which was essentially Mercury Press, with Lawrence E. Spivak the actual publisher. Back in the 1940s Mercury Press also published Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, to set a frame of reference, perhaps. I have no idea why this particular book by Dana Chambers was so popular that they did it twice. The books they reprinted are not considered very collectible, since more often than not, many of them were abridged. In this case I read the uncondensed version, and I’m sure I’m far better off for having done so.

   Since Dana Chambers is all but a brand new author for me, you’ll have to indulge me. Let me check in with Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV to see what other mysteries he might have written:

CHAMBERS, DANA; pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell, (1895-1966); other pseudonym Giles Jackson

LEFFINGWELL, ALBERT (1895-1946); see pseudonyms Dana Chambers & Giles Jackson

JACKSON, GILES; pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell, (1895-1946); other pseudonym Dana Chambers

   There’s a year of death discrepancy there, I see, but I suspect that 1966 is the one that’s wrong, and that it was really 1946 when he died. If so, that would mean both that Leffingwell died young and that the book in hand was published posthumously. If and when I learn more, I’ll let you know.

   While I have some of the books listed above, I’m almost positive that Rope for an Ape is the first one of them I’ve read. As for who Jim Steele was, I admit I have to cheat and tell you what Bill Crider had to say about him on his blog, where he recently reviewed The Blonde Died First:

   So Jim Steele is a radio writer, is he? Then what’s he doing being listed on Kevin Burton Smith’s master list of private detectives on his Thrilling Detective website? Acting like a PI in all his stories, as a wild and probably not-so-far-off-the-mark guess.

   Jim Steele’s not in this one. Suffice it to say for now that the detective of record is a fellow named Nile Boyd, he has a girl friend named Anna Warriner, and I’ll say more about both of them more in a minute. First, though, what caught my eye was a short sentence on page 65 of this edition to the effect that he and Anne were involved in a case very much like this one “up in Connecticut a while back.” Aha! Here’s a series character appearance that Al Hubin didn’t know about before – see the pair of books written by Chambers as by Giles Jackson listed up there not too long ago.

   Boyd works for the New York Clarion, and now that the war has ended, he’s back from overseas as a war correspondent. Anne, who works for the same newspaper, is nearly twenty years younger than he, and since he’s now on the East Coast and she’s in California visiting her mother, and maybe having a good time out there as well, he’s beginning to worry about how strong the attraction he has on her may actually be.

   He needn’t worry too much, only just a little, as it turns out. As far as the detective puzzle is concerned, the one that Boyd soon finds himself in the middle of, this is one of those wealthy “upper crust affairs” that are the equivalent of the British manor house mysteries that were so common back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. A well-to-do family is hosting a slew of guests over a long weekend, the only problem being that some of them starting to turn up dead.

   The chief suspect, and a huge negative as far as I was concerned, is a giant ape who has recently escaped from a circus train which derailed nearby. Forget that. I’ve heard too many bad radio shows and watched too many equally bad B-movies that’ve been based on this same old plot gimmick, which was tired and worn out even the first time.

   But the killer is all too human, as it turns out, and it takes all of Nile Boyd’s ingenuity to nab him. And all the while he’s doing so, with Anne’s assistance eventually, there is plenty of witty upscale dialogue to keep the reader amused on a fulltime basis – at least this one was – and as usual in novels like this, particularly in the beginning, everyone is drunk, was drunk or is about to get drunk. Well, yes, perhaps I am exaggerating, but maybe that’s because I am getting a little high on the fumes myself. (Never touch the stuff otherwise.)

   The case eventually turns to the tough, though, what with guns and blows to the head (Boyd’s) and a small amount of generally restrained violence such as that. After the second murder, it begins to dawn on everyone that they’re not playing fun and games any more. Nonetheless, this is a fairly-clued detective puzzle, with a long explanation at the end, with all of usual trappings.

   Something for everyone, you might say. An unusual mix, and maybe the book suffers a little for it, but if you ever come across a used copy and want my advice, I think you might take at least a second scan through it before saying Yay or Nay.

[UPDATE] 04-18-07.    S. B. has asked me about the cover of the paperback edition. “Is that what I think I see?”   Yes, indeed. If you think you see a man sitting in a bathtub with a gun in his hand, that it is exactly what it is. Is the scene in the book?   Yes, indeed again. What you see is what you get.

[UPDATE] Later on 04-18-07. I’ve just received a pair of email messages from Victor Berch, who says in the first one:

    The second is a copy of Leffingwell’s obituary notice taken from The New York Times for August 15, 1946, so the year of death stated for him as Dana Chambers is the one that’s wrong, as suspected. Leffingwell, aged 51, was a former advertising executive who lived in Scarsdale NY at the time of his death, which occurred after a few months’ illness. He founded his own advertising agency, Olmstead, Perrin & Leffinwell, in 1925, the Times goes on to say, before turning to writing. It isn’t clear from the obituary whether he was ever a writer on a full-time basis or not.

MEET BOSTON BLACKIE. Columbia, 1941. Chester Morris, Rochelle Hudson, Richard Lane, Charles Wagenheim, Constance Worth. Screenplay: Jay Dratler; based on a character created by Jack Boyle. Director: Robert Florey.

   I was warned by Vince Keenan that in spite of their popularity at the time — there were 14 of these Boston Blackie films with Chester Morris in all — they (um) weren’t very good, or certainly not as good as he’d expected. He taped a few of them last month from TCM, just as I did, only he got around to watching some of them before I did.

   This is the first one, as you might have guessed from the title — the series lasting until 1949 — and even before I started watching it, I was convinced that Vince was wrong. And for the first 10 or 15 minutes or so, I was even more convinced. After that, well, I’ll get back to it, but Vince — crossing my fingers where you cannot see them as I say this — I’ll never doubt you again.

   In this movie, it isn’t made clear whether Blackie is a reformed jewel thief or a very tricky one whom the persistent Inspector Faraday (Richard Lane) simply hasn’t been able to catch yet. They are on friendly enough terms, but Faraday has this obsession about finally outwitting his (much) more quick-witted nemesis, and he can’t quite do it.

   A body found in Blackie’s cabin on a ship returning from Europe gets the chase started, and to clear himself, Blackie has to nab a gang of foreign agents hanging around a Coney Island carnival. The black-and-white atmospherics are nicely done, and then done again, until finally overdone. Another location would have been welcome, but it’s not difficult to figure out that a lot of money, time and effort had already been spent on this one.

   Chased by the aforementioned gang, Blackie commandeers a roadster driven by a dark-haired beauty named Cecelia Bradley (Rochelle Hudson), whose charms Blackie doesn’t seem to recognize as quickly as the audience does — speaking only for myself, of course — but charms nonetheless.

   Running the car up into a freight train to escape doesn’t work as well as planned, but after a desperate automobile chase and dodging a few bullets, the pair finally manage to get away. Miss Bradley, no weak-kneed spinster lady she, discovers that she has had the time of her life, and signs herself up with Blackie to solve the case together. While her company is certainly welcome, in my heart of hearts, I am not entirely persuaded.

   I see that I am on the verge of revealing more of the plot than I should, and I had better watch what I say from here on out, except to say that the story line goes drastically downhill from here.

   The light-hearted approach is a little too light-hearted. The funny lines are tired, worn and generally not very funny, even (I would have thought) for 1941 audiences. The gang of agents couldn’t smuggle their way out of wet paper bags. And for most of their time together, Blackie seems to connect with Miss Bradley on a buddy-buddy basis more than he does on a man-to-woman basis

   On the other hand, Miss Bradley is definitely smitten, but as for the hint at movie’s end that she’d be coming back to appear in Blackie’s next exploit, well, it never happened. Too bad. While I’m sure Blackie will find plenty of women to pair up with through the course of his follow-up adventures, too bad indeed.

   Screenwriter Jay Dratler was later nominated for an Oscar (for the movie Laura) and won a Edgar in 1949 as one of the people responsible for Call Northside 777. He was still in the minor leagues, though, when he was assigned this one to work on.

[UPDATE] 04-17-07. Looking at this blog entry this evening, checking for errors and tweaking the prose a little, neither of which I actually did, it occurred to me that none of the images I’ve posted actually came from this particular movie, not even the one in the poster. The two women in the film never met, not once.

   And as long as I’m doing this update and to remain fair and balanced in my presentation, why don’t I give equal time to someone who liked the movie? Leonard Maltin gives it three stars (***) and goes on to say, “… a slick and fast-paced mystery comedy … Franz Planer’s stylish cinematography enhances this solid programmer.”

RICHARD BURKE – The Frightened Pigeon

Unicorn Mystery Book Club; hardcover reprint, June 1946. First Edition: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944. Paperback reprint: Dell 204, mapback edition, 1947.

   When Victor Berch, Bill Pronzini and I did our annotated bibliography of the Ziff Davis line of Fingerprint Mysteries , we included a short profile of Richard Burke, which of course you should go read. Many of his books, we said, involved a Broadway private detective named Quinny Hite, but as it happens, this is not one of them. In fact The Frightened Pigeon takes the reader to another part of the world and (one imagines) another kind of mystery altogether.

   But first a word on the cover that’s shown, though, before getting down to details. This is, of course, the Dell mapback edition that’s mentioned above, and in case you can’t make out the details, the map on the back below is that of the city of Marseilles, which is where the last eighty percent of the story takes place.

   The setting of the first fifty pages is Paris, 1942, with the Germans solidly in control of the city. An American dancer named Valerie Bright is still there, however — the pigeon of the title –- and very determined to stay non-political. From page 8, of the Unicorn edition:

   Her close male friend, Charles John Dillon, nicknamed “Ching,” is working closely with the French underground, however, and events, beginning with a stolen German diary, bound to be embarrassing if it falls into the wrong hands — as, for example, into Ching’s hands — soon make the light-hearted Val realize how dirty — and dangerous — war really is, not knowing what will happen next nor whom your friends really are. By page 40, she is one frightened pigeon indeed, as off to Marseilles they and a small group of displaced others go, hoping to find a way out of France and its closed borders.

   The diary appears and disappears with amazing regularity. It is, in fact, amazing, how much mileage an author (Burke) can make of one small important object. Otherwise here is a novel one can learn a large amount from — supposing, that is, that one has never been in a place controlled by Nazi-like enemies one is trying his or her best to avoid — both in term of locale (well-described) and people, especially those like Valerie, whose mind is soon brought down to earth in satisfying (but not very surprising) fashion, but also the large number of others who find themselves caught up in events far beyond their say.

   Don’t get me wrong. This is by no means a major work. It’s no more than ordinary at best, in the overall scheme of things, but what it does have is atmosphere, and plenty of it.

PRAIRIE LAW. RKO Radio Pictures, 1940. George O’Brien, Virginia Vale, Slim Whitaker, Paul Everton, Cy Kendall. Directed by David Howard.

   Generally speaking, I didn’t intend to include reviews of B-western movies here on the M*F blog, but since there’s more than the usual amount of criminous activities going on in this film’s 60 minutes, I decided to break my own rule, and who better?

   A crooked land promoter, Judge Ben Curry (Paul Everton), is taking money from farmers hand over fist, without telling them two things: One, that the former ghost town of Olympia City, where his headquarters are, has no water, and two, that the land he is selling them belongs to cattleman Brill Austin (George O’Brien).

   Yes, in this movie it is the cattlemen who are the good guys and not the usual other way around. Among the settlers is the daughter of one of the farmers, Priscilla Brambull (Virginia Vale) – and no, I didn’t think of that until right now, and no, it’s not that kind of movie. Among other legal misbehavior committed by Judge Curry is his blatant attempt to call for an election without proper notice, stuffing the ballot box, and declaring Olympia City the county seat so that the killer of the sheriff, Brill Austin’s Uncle Jim, can be set free.

   Later on in the movie while a valid trial is being held in Prairie Rose, the jury does double duty: while deliberating on the verdict, they’re also dodging bullets by the judge’s henchmen. All this in sixty minutes, I remind you, which also includes a song sung by the uncredited Ray Whitley and his band.

   There’s nothing here to be taken too seriously, as the players certainly don’t, but other than that, it’s a rather pleasurable experience. As for George O’Brien, a former silent film star who went into non-series westerns like this one when talkies came in, this was close to the end of his steady movie career.

    [Truth in advertising: The photo of O’Brien comes from another film of the same vintage and not this one — but it could have been.]

  Dear Steve,

   Someone sent me your review of my long lost book Dreamboat. I write to say that you are correct that the Flippo series is packed up and put away, and that I remain at the Dallas Morning News as a reporter and editor. You were too kind to Dreamboat, I thought. I wrote it in a tremendous hurry, and never liked it. But thanks, anyway.

   Writing crime novels started out as a hobby, then became a part-time job, then a burden. The books weren’t making enough money for me to quit my newspaper gig, and after number five all the pleasure had drained away. So I stopped writing for a few years.

   About a year ago I started writing again, but once again as a leisure-time activity. The new book is a one-off suspense that bears little resemblance to the previous five. Don’t know if I’ll ever finish it..

   It was a fun ride for a while, but you’re right: it didn’t last long. Long enough, though. I had a good time while it lasted.

>>   Thanks for writing, Doug, and best wishes in return on getting that new novel finished!    — Steve