JOHN R. L. ANDERSON – Death in the Channel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS – Average Jones.

Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1911. Story collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   From Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

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

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

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

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

NICOLAS FREELING – Sabine.

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

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

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

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

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

BRIAN BALL – Death of a Low-Handicap Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Terrified Typist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RHYS BOWEN – In Like Flynn

St. Martin’s; paperback reprint, December 2005. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s Press, March 2005.

   I’ll defer to Ms. Bowen’s website for most of the data about her, including the fact that her books have been nominated for “every major mystery award – Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Barry, Macavity – and has won seven of them.” Thanks to Crime Fiction IV, however, it can be learned that her real name is Janet Quin-Harkin. Ms. Bowen started writing mysteries later than usual in life; her first one was Evans Above, part of the Evan Evans series, and was published in 1997 when the author was 56. [FOOTNOTE.]

   From her website, here’s a list of all of the books in each of her two series:

     The Constable Evans Series: [All St. Martin’s Press in hardcover; Berkley Prime Crime in paperback.]

     The Molly Murphy Series: [St. Martin’s Press in both hardcover and paperback.]

   The Constable Evans series take place in Llanfair, Wales, and are contemporary in nature. The Molly Murphy books, on the other hand, are historical mysteries, Manhattan-based, and take place just after the turn of the last century. Naturally it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I’ve just read the fourth book, and none of the first three.

   What that means, in other words, is that there is a lot of backstory that has developed through the course of the three before this one, and there are a number of characters to be introduced to, all in a hurry. If you take all in stride, however, it doesn’t take too long to fill in most of the salient details. Suffice it to say, perhaps, that Molly Murphy is a recent immigrant who has improved her status in her new world to become one of the few female private investigators in that particular time and place. On page 12 she also admits to having been an artist’s model, comfortable in posing in the nude before strange men, which of course is an eye-opener, and equally of course I can only believe her.

   In any case, Miss Molly Malone is about as progressive as you could possibly get, in that particular time and place, and her love life and home life are equally eyebrow-raising, figuratively speaking. She is all-but-spoken-for with one man, she shares her home with another, and the man she really loves (it seems) is her ex-beau, Captain Daniel Sullivan of the New York Police.

   Much of this background, once the new reader has found some solid ground upon which to stand, turns out to be unnecessary in a way, since the case that Molly undertakes this time around takes her to a mansion up along the Hudson, where her task is twofold: (1) to investigate the authenticity of two females mediums who have been preying upon wealthy people who have lost loved ones, and (2) and Daniel Sullivan does not know this, to investigate the kidnapping and subsequent disappearance (and assumed death) of a young child born to Senator Barney Flynn and his wife.

   And what this means is working undercover as an unknown cousin of the senator’s, visiting from Ireland – and hence the title. What Molly does not know that this also means meeting someone from her recent past, someone whom she expected never to see again, as well as keeping her wits about her in solving the case without blowing her cover. Taking advantage of some rather limited opportunities, she does a capable enough job of investigating – enough so that the truth, in long-winded fashion (the book is over 320 pages long), does come out. Investigating, that is, in the sense of Nancy Drew, reacting rather than acting, and with little sense of doing any real deducting.

   It is a fine piece of writing, though, you should certainly not get me wrong, with quite a few serious insights into who people are and why they are that way. Once again, I should not lead you astray by saying what the book is not, as opposed to what it is, and what it is, is fine indeed. The ending also contains a considerable enticement to read the next one, to see what comes next for Molly Malone and her somewhat embattled (and bewildered) policeman friend.

FOOTNOTE. Ms. Bowen addresses this point in a short autobiographical section that she’s included on her website: “Children’s books, young adult books, adult historical romances and sagas followed [working for the BBC and Australian broadcasting] until I decided it was finally time for me to write what I enjoyed reading most … and that was mysteries.”

PAULA GOSLING – Death and Shadows

Warner, British paperback; 1st printing, 2000. British hardcover edition: Little, Brown; 1998. No US edition.

   A brief bit of biographical information first, if you’ll allow me, because an explanation’s going to be needed as to why a book taking place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been published in the UK but never here in the US. According to one website, Paula Gosling was born in Detroit in 1939, but she moved permanently to England in 1964. After working as a copywriter and a copy consultant she became a full-time writer in 1979.

   Taken from both that website and Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list of her book-length mystery fiction, as published in the UK. Most of these are also available in paperback editions, but I haven’t taken the time to investigate into these. The last four, though – the ones marked # – have never had a US edition:

   I’ve already informed Al that he omitted Matt Gabriel as a series character in Death and Shadows. Gabriel is the sheriff for Blackwater Bay, a sleepy backwater resort town that over the years has have more than its share of unusual mysteries to solve. Jack Stryker, who’s a lieutenant for the police force a few towns over, makes a cameo appearance in Death and Shadows – never in person, only by telephone.

   Here’s a question for you. How are hospitals and serial killers alike? Answer: I don’t usually read mysteries in which either one is involved, and here I violated my own rules twice, as that’s exactly what kind of mystery this is – one in which the staff and patients in a private nursing home are found murdered, one by one.

   As I pointed out earlier, Matt Gabriel is the local sheriff, but as it turns out, he’s neither of the two primary leading characters, the first being physiotherapist Laura Brandon. She’s the niece of the owner of Mountview Clinic, and extremely interested in learning how her friend and predecessor for the position was murdered. The second of the ad hoc sleuthing pair that gradually develops is Tom Gilliam, a patient who’s withdrawn well into himself since the mishap iy was that forced him off Jack Stryker’s police force.

   Another reason why I surprised myself in reading this book is that it is nearly 380 pages long, and in small print too. A hospital setting, a possible psychotic killer on the loose, and a book twice as long as my usual reading fare. You’d think it would be a matter of three strikes and out, but not so. This book kept me up reading for several nights in a row. I was able to put it down, but the next evening I couldn’t resist, and I was back reading it again.

   Maybe because the opening two or three chapters read exactly like a gothic novel, with a young(ish) girl coming fresh into a new mysterious and slightly spooky setting. A manor house, a hospital – it makes little difference. Maybe because in 380 pages there is an ultra-abundance of clues to be puzzled over, with lots of secrets on the part of almost everybody, broken hand railings, a local legend called the Shadowman. Maybe because of the many, many red herrings and false trails to follow and double back upon. Delicious!

MICHAEL GILBERT – The Black Seraphim

Penguin; US paperback reprint; 1st printing, 1985. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1983; Harper & Row (US), 1984.; Detective Book Club, n.d. [3-in-1]. Other paperbacks: Hamlyn (UK), 1984; Mysterious Press (US), 1987.

   Mr. Gilbert was born in 1912, which would have made him 73 when this book was first published, and by no means was he finished as a writer. By my count there have been 14 more novels and collections that came after this one, including the provocatively titled The Mathematics of Murder, a collection of short stories that was published in England in 2000. No US edition seems to have been forthcoming, and [at the time I write this] no copies of any persuasion show up on ABE at all.

   The series characters in The Mathematics of Murder belong to the London solicitors’ firm of Fearne and Bracknell, with several of the stories being previously published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and that is where perhaps they might be most easily tracked down. There are no series characters in The Black Seraphim, to which I will return to in a moment, but over the years several detectives and other starring characters have made their way in and out of Gilbert’s novels and short stories. These include Inspector Patrick Petrella, Inspector (later Superintendent) Hazlerigg, Commander Elfe, solicitor Henry Bohun, Jonas Pickett, the espionage team of Samuel Behrens and Daniel John Calder (Petrella, Pickett and and Elfe also make various crossover appearance in several of their adventures), and Luke Pagan, about whom I know little, but whose cases seem to all have taken place around the time of World War I.

   Gilbert’s most recent book is a collection of short stories, The Curious Conspiracy and Other Crimes, which was published by Crippen & Landru in 2002. (C&L also did The Man Who Hated Banks And Other Mysteries, which came out in 1997.) The most recent novel that Gilbert has written seems to have been Over and Out (Hale, 1999), a Luke Pagan entry. Going back to the beginning of his career, Gilbert’s first work of crime fiction was Close Quarters (1947), a mystery in which Hazlerigg has the starring role, a work of detective fiction which falls, definitely and definitively, within the so-called “Golden Age” or classical tradition.

   Which gets us circled back around to The Black Seraphim, which – if you’re still with me — is a “Golden Ager” as well, at least in an modernized sense. The romance that’s involved is a little more amorous than it would have been in 1933, for example, and in a few other ways which involve how the story itself is allowed to develop, which I’ll get back to in a moment.

   From the beginning, though, while the year this novel takes place is not stated in any specific fashion, it can easily be assumed to be 1983, the year of its publication. Nothing overtly suggests otherwise. But taking place as it does in a small cathedral town, with much of the action behind the walls of the cathedral grounds and in effect isolated within, the book produces the feeling that a massive slidestep back into time has occurred. Save for a few modern conveniences, the year could have as easily been 1933, a mere fifty years before.

   James Scotland, a young pathologist sent to Melchester for a little R&R (rest and recovery), soon discovers that jealousies and bitter rivalries can exist (nay, thrive!) just as well in a theological college as well as it can in academia, to name another scene of the crime where the stakes are as equally high (or low, depending on your point of view). Town and gown antagonisms are an equally crucial part of the mix.

   Having not read Gilbert recently, if ever, other than one or two short stories, I was surprised a bit at the elements of rowdy schoolboy humor – I’d have thought it was more in Michael Innes’s field of expertise, if you’d asked me ahead of time – but when the murder occurs, it becomes clear that a serious turn has been taken.

   And being a book produced later in Gilbert’s career, it is not too surprising that within its pages he turns philosophical, as age and wisdom come upon him, and it is here where I believe the major deviation from the Golden Age comes in.

   I hope you don’t mind a lengthy sort of quote. This is from page 182, and is a discussion between Scotland and a lady whom he is rapidly becoming fond of. They are discussing how the investigation is proceeding, and Scotland speaks first:

   This is not your usual lovers’ tiff, I think you will agree. There are two brief scenes (pages 184 and 191) that puzzlingly do not seem to fit in with any of the explanations that come later, but what at first is the most – let’s say disconcerting – is that the final unraveling takes place totally outside of Scotland’s presence. It’s anti-climactic, one thinks, initially, and then, given some thought, perhaps not.

   Much is made of Scotland’s age. He’s but 24, and he’s young enough to recover from the blows of fate that his stand (see above) has dealt him. In what may be a final twist, not in terms of solving the case, but rather in terms of who –- it is another man, not Scotland but one much older, who, in the final few pages, looks back, and who decides on his own that justice has been done, and on its own merits.

   It took me a while, but I finally came around. This is a fine piece of work.

PostScript: The title is taken from a line in a poem by the French poet Alfred de Musset, concerning the concept of a blessed wound, from which at length Scotland will recover: “une sainte blessure; que les noirs séraphins t’ont faite au fond de coeur.”

UPDATE [07-14-07] Michael Gilbert died in 2006, nearly two years after this review was written. For a comprehensive online overview of his career, including a bibliography of his mystery fiction, this webpage will do very nicely, I think.

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – The Stoneware Monkey.

Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1938. Dodd Mead & Co, hardcover, 1939. Paperback reprints: Popular Library #11, 1943. Dover, with The Penrose Mystery, 1973.

   Dr James Oldfield is doing a stint as a locum-tenems in the small country town of Newingstead. Biking back after a professional call, he stops on a country road to smoke a pipe and enjoy the pleasant evening air. Investigating a cry for help from nearby Clay Wood, he discovers Constable Alfred Murray dying from a fatal blow dealt with his own truncheon.

   Constable Murray had been chasing whoever stole a packet of diamonds worth some 10,000 pounds from Arthur Kempster. A dealer in London, Kempster lives locally and carelessly left the gems unattended, allowing the thief to pop in a window, take them, and scarper. Kempster runs after the thief, engaging Constable Murray in the pursuit. Thief and constable outpace Kempster so there is no witness to the murderous assault, and the criminal escapes by stealing Dr Oldfield’s bike.

   The scene then shifts to Dr Oldfield’s practice in Marylebone, London. One of his patients is Peter Gannet, who lives at 12 Jacob Street — a thoroughfare with more than its ration of crime! Gannet shares the studio behind his house with his wife’s second cousin, Frederick Boles, a maker of jewelry. Gannet is a potter, and among creations displayed on his bedroom mantelpiece is the titular statuette. Gannet’s works do not impress Dr Oldfield much, for he describes them as “singularly uncouth and barbaric”, exhibiting “childish crudity of execution”. Be that as it may, Gannet’s illness defies all the treatments prescribed, and so Dr Oldfield, a former pupil of Dr Thorndyke, Freeman’s primary series character, decides to consult his old teacher about the case.

   They make a startling discovery, pointing to an attempt to murder Gannet. Is the culprit Mrs Letitia Gannet, who does not appear to get along with her husband? Or is it Boles, suspected of being over familiar with Mrs Gannet? Might it be the Gannets’ servant, or perhaps even an unknown outside party? Nothing is established and things return to normal in the household but after Mrs Gannet returns from a holiday she finds her husband is missing and Boles has disappeared. Then a startling discovery is made and Thorndyke is called upon to solve the mystery.

   My verdict: Although I guessed whodunnit and why before reaching the closing stages of the book, it was more by intuitive leap rather than Dr Thorndyke’s careful step by step building up of a case, so I missed some of the more subtle clues planted along the way. The novel features perhaps one too many coincidences for my taste, although I got a kick from RAF’s nod to The Jacob Street Mystery. There’s a fair bit of interest in the explanation of the procedure to be followed in bringing a capital case, while the portion devoted to pottery technique may make readers’ eyes glaze, no pun intended, but also forms an important part of the narrative.

   All in all, however, I found this one of RAF’s less interesting works, so give it a mark of B minus. Other readers will probably enjoy it more.

   Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700811.txt

LIGHTS, CAMERA, MURDER – John Shepherd.

Belmont 215, paperback original, 1960.

   This book is advertised on the front cover as “a new Bill Lennox mystery – over 1,000,000 copies sold.” That might have puzzled many a would-be buyer, trying to think back as to when he’d seen a book by John Shepherd before. And to tell you the truth, he wouldn’t have, as this was the first book that John Shepherd ever wrote.

   I’d better take that back. John Shepherd is a common enough name that it could have easily been the byline of plenty of books. In the interest of utmost accuracy, I’ll rephrase what I just said. This was the first mystery that any John Shepherd ever wrote.

   What about Bill Lennox? Was he a mystery character who’d be immediately recognized as a hot sales commodity in 1960? He could have been, but if you’d like my best guess, probably not. Bill Lennox had last appeared in mystery form a mere six years before, in a book called Dealing Out Death, published as a paperback reprint in 1954 by an obscure company called Graphic Books. The byline? Not John Shepherd. The byline for Dealing Out Death was W. T. Ballard. It would have taken a lot of rather esoteric knowledge on the part of a would-be buyer before this book would have snapped up off the newsstand on the basis of this particular sales pitch.

   Of course, maybe you know all of this, and I’m berating the unberatable, not now, not almost 50 years later. (And by the way, my spell-checker doesn’t know that word either.) Both Bill Lennox and W. T. Ballard have come up for discussion here on the Mystery*File blog not too long ago, mostly, as you’ll recall, in relation to his pulp magazine appearances in Black Mask between 1933 and 1942.

   As mentioned then, but it’s worth repeating now, when he stopped writing about him for the pulp fiction magazines, Ballard took his character over to book-length hardcover cases, but unlike Erle Stanley Gardner, neither he nor Bill Lennox managed to succeed very well in making the transition. While putting together a more comprehensive, detailed list of the books that Bill Lennox, the Hollywood trouble-shooter, appeared in, I decided to go all out and using Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV as a guide, come up with a list of all of Ballard’s crime fiction in book length form:

The Bill Lennox books:

      Say Yes to Murder. Putnam, 1942. Penguin 566, pb, October 1945. Reprinted as The Demise of a Louse, as by John Shepherd. Belmont 91-248, pb, 1962.
      Murder Can’t Stop. McKay. 1946. Graphic #26, pb, 1950.

      Dealing Out Death. McKay, 1948. Graphic #72, pb, 1954.
      Lights, Camera, Murder, as by John Shepherd. Belmont 215, pbo, 1960.

The Tony Costaine/Bert McCall books, as by Neil MacNeil:

      Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal 807, pbo, September 1958.

      Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal s844, pbo, January 1959.
      Two Guns for Hire. Gold Medal s898, pbo, July 1959.
      Hot Dam. Gold Medal 964, pbo, January 1960.
      The Death Ride. Gold Medal 1005, pbo, November 1960.

      Mexican Slay Ride. Gold Medal s1182, pbo, January 1962.
      The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal d1658, pbo, 1966.

The Lt. Max Hunter books:

      Pretty Miss Murder. Permabook M-4228, pbo, December 1961.

      The Seven Sisters. Permabook M-4258, pbo, October 1962.
      Three for the Money. Permabook M-4297, pbo, November 1963.

Non-series books:

      Murder Picks the Jury, as by Harrison Hunt. [Co-written with Norbert Davis.] Samuel Curl/Mystery House, 1947.
      Walk in Fear. Gold Medal 259, pbo, September 1952. [Based on “I Could Kill You,” a story that appeared in The Shadow magazine in 1948.]
      Chance Elson. Cardinal C-277; pbo, November 1958.
      Age of the Junkman, as by P. D. Ballard. Gold Medal d1352, pbo, 1963.
      End of a Millionaire, as by P. D. Ballard. Gold Medal d1486, pbo, 1964.
      Murder Las Vegas Style. Tower 42-778, pbo, 1967.
      Brothers in Blood, as by P.D. Ballard. Gold Medal T2563, pbo, 1972.
      The Kremlin File, as by Nick Carter. Award AN1165, pbo, 1973.
      The Death Brokers, as by P.D. Ballard. Gold Medal M2867, pbo, 1973.

   After World War II, W. T. Ballard seems to have been more successful in writing westerns than he was with his mystery fiction, but I haven’t taken the time to do any research in that particular direction. And this review is nominally of Lights, Camera, Murder, so let’s get back to that, shall we?

   Sadly to say, however, and I’ll say this upfront, this is a book that’s little more than ordinary, and in some ways less. It is, after all, as Bill Pronzini has pointed out to me, a book that was published under a never-before-used pseudonym and put out by a second-rate publisher. On the other hand, I read the book all the way through, and I can’t say that about every book I pick up to read.

   The greatest appeal this book probably has today is to completists: those who want every Bill Lennox story there is to read; or those who want every novel that W. T. Ballard wrote; or simply those who collect everything that Belmont ever published. (These completists have been arranged in order of decreased (although not negligible) likelihood. My spell-checker doesn’t recognize the word completist either, but we know you’re out there, don’t we?)

   To begin at the beginning, though, the story begins when Lennox is called upon to salvage a movie that’s in production down in Mexico, where one of the leading male stars has been found knifed to death in his room. The leading female star is in jail for the crime, having been seen leaving his room quietly the night before. This is the kind of disastrous situation in which a legendary trouble-shooter is always called upon to save the day, and quickly.

   In quick order we are re-introduced to Sol Spurk, the head of the studio and the only man that Lennox reports to. In the pulp stories, though, I am sure he spelled his last name as Spurck, and sure enough, on page 97, it is spelled that way too. We also meet Lennox’s steady girl friend, a movie columnist named Nancy Hobbs, although very briefly. Their relationship is a loose one, meaning that neither places any restrictions on the other.

   Which is a good thing, one realizes quickly on, as Lennox does not offer much resistance, first of all, to the leading star (Sylvia Armstrong) who is in jail for the crime she did not commit, or so she says, even though she was seen leaving his room during the night the murder was committed. Since she is in essence a victim of nymphomania, perhaps what she says may not entirely be the truth, even though the dead man was said to be homosexual.

   But it is the beautiful and unsullied Candy Kyle, new to motion pictures, motion picture making and motion picture people, whom Lennox finds himself falling for. On her part, she serves as his assistant in crime-solving by keeping tabs of people, knowing where they are or should be, being shot at together, and being rammed on the open sea by power craft together.

   This is, as you fully well realize, the way that bad guys have of warning detectives off. It is also the approach which of course never works, even with high rolling gamblers and drug kingpins calling the shots, and is rather typical of the clichés and not-very-involving story line that ensue as soon as Lennox crosses the Mexican border.

   Lennox’s past, which began back in 1933, as you may recall, has been updated into the TV era and the age of beatnicks (sic) and the aforementioned drug-pushing industry. On page five, past history irregardless, it is said that he has had a ten year’s tenure working for Spurk. The usual time compression procedure is at play here, and don’t get me wrong. It’s happened to the best of fictional detectives, from Perry Mason, Hercule Poirot on down, though perhaps their creators were less blatant about it.

   The plot itself is not very interesting, as I suggested before. If anything, I was more interested in the players themselves. Even though some come from solid stock companies, some, including Lennox, came to life, including Candy Kyle, and some more than others.

   Speaking of which, the ending is a wowser, one of those endings that really make you wonder what is going to happen next. Except, of course, there was no “next.” This is all he wrote.