DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Brothers Keepers

Fawcett Crest 2-2962; paperback reprint, no date stated. Hardcover edition: M. Evans & Co., 1975. Later paperback edition: Mysterious Press, 1993.

   Donald Westlake has written a long list of crime and mystery fiction over his writing career, all of the books avidly read and well celebrated. He’s well regarded for his comic novels too, and sometimes his crime fiction and his comic novels are one and the same. Not so this time. Even though I’m reviewing Brothers Keepers here on Mystery*File, and wickedly funny it is indeed, it’s a stretch to call it crime fiction in any shape, whatsit or form. You really have to hunt to find anything truly criminous in it all all. Al Hubin in Crime Fiction IV agrees with me, marking the title with a dash in front, indicating that it’s only marginally crime-related.

   For the basic plot line, I’m going to quote from the back cover of the Mysterious Press paperback. The book from Crest is actually closer at hand, since it happens to be the one I read, but I think the story is summarized a whole lot better in this later edition:

   There’s some exaggeration there in the last line, I’m sorry to say, all the more to sell books, I’m sure, but the rest is fairly well on the mark. The only crime, as far as I could see, occurs on page 139, when the Brothers learn to their dismay that the lease to their monastery, the one that will prevent them from being evicted has been stolen. Was it an inside job? Or has someone managed to infiltrate the monastery without anyone noticing? Good questions, both.

   As a purely personal matter, Brother Benedict may sin against God in this book, but his sins generally fall below the standard of being a crime, lust (for Mrs. Bone, the landlord’s divorced daughter) being not generally being a prosecutable offense in most courts of the land. Please note the outer cover of the Crest paperback (with the cutout hole part of the manufacture) versus the inner illustration behind. You may have a lot of sympathy for Brother Benedict’s anguish.

   Quoting would be a good idea once again, I believe. From page 107 this time, as Brother Benedict, who tells the story, is taking his first ride in an automobile in ten years:

   I see Gina Gershon in the part. Maybe Matt Damon as Brother Benedict, although I haven’t thought about that half of the casting anywhere near long enough. A better name may come to me later.

   I didn’t keep an exact count, but I’d estimate that this book averages a laugh-out-loud guffaw every six pages. This includes Brother Oliver’s comment about an edifice complex on page 68. This may not seem to you like a very high ratio, but considering all of the smiles and grins in between, and the fact that most books do not have a laugh-out-loud cause for guffaw anywhere in them at all, and I think you might pause to reconsider, and rightfully so.

   In Pity Him Afterwards, a book by Mr. Westlake which I reviewed some time back, he showed me that he knows his way around a summer playhouse with the ease of one who’s been around one often, and on the inside. The same is true, as difficult as it may to believe, of Mr. Westlake and monasteries. Of course I’ve never been in one or part of one, and maybe I’m easily convinced, but if verisimilitude is what you’re looking for, as far as the settings where the books you read take place, this one has it, and in a bushel full.

   The only part of this small affair – but a huge one for the monks involved, who are almost totally ignorant of the ways of the outside world – that I am a little hesitant about recommending outright is the ending, which didn’t go in the direction I was thinking that it was going to go. But it’s still a terrific ending – I just read it again, and it certainly works for me.

   What the heck. Forget my quibble. Let’s call it an outright recommendation. For a partially irreverent view of religion and the outside world of high finance as well, tossing in a bit of angst-filled bawdiness to boot, this is book that will challenge all comers, crime fiction or no.

W. T. BALLARD – Hollywood Troubleshooter. Edited by JAMES L. TRAYLOR. Popular Press, Bowling Green University; trade paperback; 1985. Also published in hardcover.

   Subtitled “W. T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox Stories,” not only does this book contain five of the twenty-seven of them that appeared in Black Mask during that magazine’s heyday, probably the best-known detective pulp of them all, but all of the following are included as well: an overview of Ballard’s career by Traylor and a short biographical sketch by Ballard himself, both extremely informative; an introduction to the Lennox stories and novels; and last but not least, a complete bibliography for all of Ballard’s long and prolific writing career.

   It’s a cliché, I suppose, but this is a book that should be on the shelf of every pulp detective fan, no ifs, ands or buts. After a lengthy career for the pulp magazines — even before he started writing for Black Mask in 1933, he had already been published in the October 1927 issue of Brief Stories — Ballard switched with the times to writing novels, some in hardcover, but most of them paperback originals.

   When he found the market for his mystery fiction was drying up, Ballard switched to writing westerns, most of these coming out under the pen names of either Todhunter Ballard or John Hunter. In the 1950s and 60s he wrote a number of television plays as well, for such series as Death Valley Days, Wild Bill Hickok and Shotgun Slade.

   While the Lennox stories in Black Mask appeared only from 1933 to 1942, he was apparently fond enough of Lennox as a character to continue writing about his adventures in hardcover form: Say Yes to Murder (Putnam, 1942), Murder Can’t Stop (McKay, 1946), and Dealing Out Death (McKay, 1947). Much later on, a fourth book, Lights, Camera, Murder (Belmont, pb, 1960), finally appeared, published for some reason under the name of John Shepherd.

   Here’s a suggestion from me. Lennox may have been the first Hollywood troubleshooter to have appeared in fictional form, the right-hand man for Consolidated Studio’s production chief, Sol Spurck. Having no specific title, according to the last of the five stories in this book, Lennox’s assignment was “to iron out whatever bottlenecks developed in the production schedule.” Murder is often one of those bottlenecks, as well as any other kind of behavior that might affect the studio’s star and starlets — including blackmail, crooked horse racing, gambling debts or the like. (Hollywood, crime and cover-ups somehow seem to go together naturally, at least in days gone by, if not today.)

   Whenever a pulp writer got a hot series going, there was often of crew of regulars that began to appear in the same stories the main character did, and Ballard was no different. (He may even have been one of the forerunners of the idea.) Given only self-contained glimpses here and there, and spread over the run, you won’t get the full flavor of this in the same way that a long-time regular reader of Black Mask might have been able to, but Nancy Hobbs, for example, who writes about movies, has short but very striking roles in the first two of them. Later on, it comes as no surprise to learn, she appears in his adventures as a long term girl friend and lover, although marriage does not seem to be in the cards for either of them.

   The earlier stories are told in the more terse hard-boiled style popularized by Dashiell Hammett, but by the end of the run some personal background had been built up around Lennox, making him a bit more human — but without losing any of the sheer sensationalism of the pulps. Lennox’s final Black Mask appearance, for example, is a case in which a killer sends his victim through the buzzsaw at a still very much functioning lumber mill.

   Although the tales contained in the book are, in all honesty, not among the finest the pages of vintage pulp magazine fiction can offer, they’re certainly right up there in the second level from the top. And if you’re like me, when you’ve finished reading the five in the book, you’re going to wish that somebody would publish them all of the Lennox stories, and then the “Red Drake” ones, then all of the Ace G-Man Stories, and on and on and on.

   Stories contained in this volume, all from Black Mask:

Postscript: Looking back at this review several days later, all I can think of is that I didn’t provide you with an excerpt from any of the stories. This one’s from early in the very last one, “Lights, Action — Killer!” I don’t think it needs any more introduction from me, other than to say that Lennox is talking to Sol Spurck about the latter’s latest movie, which is in trouble, as usual:

UPDATE [06-23-07]. Here, for the sake of completeness, is a complete list of Lennox short fiction:

“A Little Different” (September 1933, Black Mask)
“A Million Dollar Tramp” (October 1933, Black Mask)
“Positively the Best Liar” (November 1933, Black Mask)
“Trouble-Hunted” (January 1934, Black Mask)
“Tears Don’t Help” (April 1934, Black Mask)
“That’s Hollywood” (May 1934, Black Mask)
“Whatta Guy” (July 1934, Black Mask)
“Crime’s Web” (September 1934, Black Mask)
“Snatching is Dynamite” (October 1934, Black Mask)

“In Dead Man’s Alley” (November 1934, Black Mask)
“Murder Isn’t Legal” (December 1934, Black Mask)
“Gambler’s Don’t Win” (April 1935, Black Mask)
“Numbers With Lead” (January 1936, Black Mask)
“Blackmailers Die Hard” (May 1936, Black Mask)
“Whipsawed” (December 1936, Black Mask)
“There’s No Excuse for Murder” (September 1936, Black Mask)
“This is Murder” (March 1937, Black Mask)
“Fortune Deals Death” (July 1937, Black Mask)
“Mobster Guns” (November 1938, Black Mask)
“No Parole from Death” (February 1939, Black Mask)
“Scars of Murder” (November 1939, Black Mask)
“Pictures for Murder” (September 1940, Black Mask)
“The Lady with the Light Blue Hair” (January 1941, Black Mask)
“Not in the Script” (July 1941, Black Mask)
“Murder is a Sweet Idea” (November 1941, Black Mask)
“The Colt and the Killer” (February 1942, Black Mask)
“Lights, Action — Killer!” (May 1942, Black Mask)

   Now don’t you wish that someone would publish them all?

MICHAEL SHAYNE: PRIVATE DETECTIVE. 20th Century Fox, 1940. Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Walter Abel, Elizabeth Patterson, Donald MacBride, Douglas Dumbrille. Based on the novel Dividend on Death, by Brett Halliday. Director: Eugene Ford.

   Some random thoughts that may shape themselves into a review, and maybe not. What you see is what you get. The recently released DVD set of the first few Shayne movies calls them noir. Not so. It’s a good selling point, but when it gets to the point that every black and white movie made in the 1940s with a crime or mystery in it is called noir, the word simply no longer has any meaning.

   The first true noir film may have been The Maltese Falcon; I really haven’t thought about it too much, but it certainly could have been one of the first. I suppose it all depends on your own personal definition of noir.

   MSPD came out a few months before TMF, and it may have been a step in the right direction, but it’s way too light-hearted, and Lloyd Nolan is a little too goofy in the leading role, for the film, based on author Brett Halliday’s Dividend on Death, to be anything close to noir, using anyone’s definition. TMF is played straight, giving audiences the feeling for what a tough mystery film (as opposed to gangster movie) could really be like.

   At least, as I thought for a while, Michael Shayne doesn’t have a stooge for a sidekick in this movie — another step in the right direction — but on the other hand, Chief Painter (Donald MacBride) has a cop as his right hand man who is as dumb as they come, and Shayne does have Aunt Olivia (Elizabeth Patterson), who’s a dedicated fan of Ellery Queen, murder mysteries and The Baffle Book, to give him strong support when it counts.

   Nolan I called goofy, but he’s still immensely enjoyable in the role, as long as you don’t think of him as Brett Halliday’s Michael Shayne. Seeing the repo men moving the furniture out of his office at the beginning of the film, when cases have apparently been tough to come by for him, certainly sets a certain tone. And watching him cover himself with a blanket when Phyllis Brighton (Marjorie Weaver), whom he’s been hired to bodyguard by her rich father, catches him with his pants down, is mildly funny but hardly, I suspect, how the real Michael Shayne might have reacted in the same situation.

   Not that the real Michael Shayne was really truly tough-as-nails hardboiled or one of theose super-sexed PI’s who came along later, but Lloyd Nolan, he wasn’t either.

   Perhaps as the series goes along, given the TMF influence, the humor lessens and the mystery is played straight, but even if it doesn’t, I’m not going to be concerned about it.

   The story has to do with a gambling casino, horse-racing, a murder, a ditched dame, a possible suicide note, the switching of the barrels of two guns, a bottle of ketchup and a piece of jewelry that comes unpinned at the wrong time, perhaps even a couple of times. It really is a complicated case, I grant you that, which is one of the things I had in mind when I called this a possible transition into true noir from detective films that felt they also had to make the audience laugh.

   It’s remarkable, looking back now, how all of the plot is made to fit into a tight 77 minutes, which I have a hunch is a little longer than the average murder mystery movie at the time. I’ve watched it twice now, and there’s not a minute that’s really wasted. It was well worth the time, and if I may say so, probably yours as well.

AGATHA CHRISTIE – N or M?

Dell 187, reprint paperback: mapback edition; no date stated, but generally accepted as 1947. Hardcover editions: Collins Crime Club (UK), 1941; Dodd, Mead (US), 1941.

   I will not be so foolhardy as to list all of the editions that this book has been published in, nor will I supply more than the front and back cover of this particular mapback edition, especially since the jackets of the respective hardcover editions are so rather plain and unexciting.

   But speaking of mapbacks, what I just realized now, strangely enough, is that not once while reading N or M? did I refer to the back cover. Not until getting an image ready for uploading did I even think of it. And so, looking it just now, I find it utterly remarkable that while I all of the geographical details of the small seaside resort town of Leahampton essentially wrong in my mind, the overall picture in my head was exactly right. (And of course who is there to say that the artist who drew the map had the details right?)

   This is a Tuppence and Tommy (Beresford) book, and if you were to check the date that the book was published (1941), you might immediately gather that this wartime book had something to do with the war, and indeed it does. (It is my impression that relatively few murder mysteries published during the war ever mentioned the war, but this one does, and directly so. Other handedly, my impression could be totally false. It is a subject worthy of further investigation.)

   I have not read the earlier books in the Tuppence and Tommy series in quite some time, so I do not recall in which one of them the twosome were secret agents in World War I, but when this book begins, they are beginning to feel their age, not to mention the pain of their rejection, as sitting on the sidelines is not their idea of how to spend the time they find free on their hands, nor in any way how to make the best use of their abilities.

   A small pause here while I investigate and come back with a short list of the books in which the pair of intrepid adventurers appeared:

      The Secret Adversary, 1922. [This must be the World War I adventure .]

      Partners in Crime, 1929. [A story collection disguised as a novel.]

      N or M?, 1941.

      By the Pricking of My Thumbs, 1968.

      Postern of Fate, 1973.

   That’s quite a range of dates, and the gap between the 3rd and 4th is a huge one, 27 years, but I don’t imagine that it is anywhere near a record — the longest break between appearance of series characters. (A question like this is something else I wish I had more time to look into.)

   But back to the story. Luckily enough Tommy is offered a job by the British equivalent of Homeland Security, so hush-hush, he is advised, that he should not even tell Tuppence. Who, of course, has other ideas, and thus indeed there is a story.

   It seems that a pair of spies for the Germans, N (a man) and M (a woman) are located in the aforementioned seaside resort town of Leahampton, and in particular they may even be living there in a private hotel called Sans Souci. An amateur is precisely what is required, Tommy is told, as a professional would be spotted right away.

   During wartime towns like Leahampton would be populated by (as related on page 14): “old ladies, old colonels, unimpeachable spinsters, dubious customers, fishy customers, a foreigner or two. In fact, a mixed bag.” And the two spies, Tommy again is advised, are among them.

   Now if there are people Agatha Christie could write about more capably than “old ladies, old colonels, unimpeachable spinsters, dubious customers, fishy customers, a foreigner or two,” I don’t know who they would be, nor do I know of any other mystery writer could outdo her in this regard, either.

   What with the number of people staying on at Sans Souci to describe and make distinguishable, it might have been a Herculean task to succeed in doing so, but what Agatha Christie had was a knack of instant characterization for the inhabitants of her stories, and so it is here. And there is more. Christie is often put down for mysteries that focus more on the plots than they do on the writing of them, but such critics are generally wrong, as this book amply demonstrates. It is so smoothly written that 50 pages flash by in what seems to be an instant — gently humorous at times, sometimes (later on) deadly serious, and with a sense that something suspicious is always going on.

   There are a good many suspects at hand, in other words, in an oddly arranged version of the closed manor house type of mystery, but with little of substance to back up this statement, I do not believe that spies and espionage were Ms. Christie’s strongest points. Or in other words, where the book fails, if indeed it does, is in the plotting, which seems forced and unconvincing, concluding with some derring-do and remarkable rescuing that seems entirely fortuitous.

   And that the bring-down-the-curtain revelation at the end was one that I was suspicious about myself several pages earlier — “What’s going on here?” I wondered to myself (you’ll have to take my word for it) — which only goes to reinforce the statement I made in the preceding paragraph. Entirely enjoyable then, is my conclusion, but weakest precisely (and curiously) where you’d expect an Agatha Christie novel not to be.

HIGH RISK. 1981. James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, Lindsay Wagner, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little, Chick Vennera. Written & directed by Stuart Riffill.

   Some of the people leaving comments on IMDB after viewing this film — and quite a large number of them liked it a lot — felt that the reason it did not do well at the box office at the time of its theatrical release was because of its competition. Soon after High Risk was in the theaters, along came its nemesis — Raiders of the Lost Ark.

   Hmm. On a scale of 100 for Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’d rate High Risk as a 5. No comparison. Raiders was brisk, inventive, innovative and vastly entertaining. In spite of cast of well-known names, Risk is (e) none of the above.

   The pace is sedentary in comparison; the plot rewarmed and stale; and only entertaining enough to keep me watching, which is hardly a recommendation. It does have Lindsay Wagner in it, for whom I have always kept a figurative light on in the window, but it also has Anthony Quinn. When the latter’s usual chewing of the scenery begins, it’s all but lights out for me.

   Plot: Four suburban “mercenaries,” amateurs all, led by James Brolin take a risky trip to an unnamed South American country to relieve a drug warlord (James Coburn) of some misbegotten gains, to the tune of five million dollars. In on the deal are a black (Cleavon Little), a Hispanic (Chick Vennera) and a dork (Bruce Davison), not to mention a small fluffy white dog. (Yes, certainly you may ask.)

   Of course things go wrong, and very quickly. In an adjoining jail cell is a lovely American woman convicted of smuggling drugs (Lindsay Wagner). A gang of revolutionaries turned bandits also on their trail is led by Anthony Quinn, and of course they too want the money. There is an engaging light-hearted tone to the caper until the revolutionaries appear, but once they do, you get the feeling that the people responsible for the story had run out of ideas at just about the same time.

   And lots of gunfire erupts. Lots and lots. To no avail. There’s no Indiana Jones in this bunch. Maybe they should have made Lindsay Wagner’s part larger. They really should have. And yes, I know. I’m not being fair. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest movies of all time, regardless of genre.

PETER RABE – Murder Me for Nickels

Gold Medal 996; paperback original. First printing: May 1960. Trade paperback, paired with Benny Muscles In: Stark House Press, 2004.

   First of all, if you haven’t read it, you might want to take a look at an interview that George Tuttle did with Peter Rabe, shortly before his death in May 1990. It’s on the primary Mystery*File website, complete with cover photos and a bibliography which I compiled for the author, making it unnecessary for one to include one with this review, or at least I won’t need to if you go and come back.

    When I was 16, 17 and 18, Peter Rabe was one of my favorite crime fiction authors, but it’s been several years since I’ve read this particular one, until now. It’s probably been even more than several. The usual trepidation comes into play at times like this. The question at the back of my mind is — and I imagine this happens to everyone, eventually — is he as good as I remember him?

   The answer is yes, but I know I’ve just read this with different eyes and a different mind than when I read it for the first time, having just finished my first year of college in 1960 and plenty wet still behind the ears. You’ll get the present me talking about it now, not the callow youth I was back then.

   My favorite detective writer back at that time was Erle Stanley Gardner, to make a small distinction between styles, and I’ll be catching up with one of his books sometime in the near future. My other favorite mystery writer, noir style, was Cornell Woolrich, who’s still the master of whatever genre of mystery fiction you may care to put him in.

   Reading one of Rabe’s books, though, is like opening a case of dynamite. You do it carefully, and you hold your breath just a little. Jack Saint Louis is the primary character in this one, and the narrator. He’s the right hand man of Walter Lippit, businessman racketeer and owner of the single jukebox supplier for a 30-mile radius around town. I don’t think the town is specified, but it’s not a small town, and it’s not that far from Chicago.

   Jack is tough when he needs to be, but he’s also smart when he needs to be, which is often, as he has a few things on the side, such as Walter’s girl friend Patty and a recording studio of his own. When outsiders begin crowding in on Walter, the intricate balancing act that Jack is doing becomes more and more difficult to maintain.

   Told in an authentic but subdued tough guy vernacular, this is a straightforward gangster novel, not pulp fiction, but an intellectual gangster novel, but a nuts and bolts one, not a literary gangster novel such as The Godfather. Every once in a while, though, Jack’s emotions can’t be held in any longer. When he lets loose, watch out. He’s still tough and terse, don’t let me mislead you. Let’s see if quoting from page 113 will show you what I mean:

   Rabe is a wizard at dialogue, too. One early sexy love scene between Jack and Patty goes on for six pages, for example, and over 80% of it is in dialogue, with just enough narration by Jack to, well, it’s just enough. After reading this, you will be convinced that every other paperback writer goes in for overkill.

   If this is not your kind of book, I think this review will have convinced you of that. If it is your kind of book, I think this review should have convinced you of that also. What more can I tell you?

ROBERT BARNARD – The Case of the Missing Brontë

Dell 11108; paperback reprint, May 1989. Hardcover edition: Scribner’s, 1983. Previous Dell editions: June 1984; 1986. Penguin, paperback, November 1994. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, 1983, as The Missing Brontë.

   This was – I have a confession to make – my first reading of a Robert Barnard mystery novel. I don’t know why that should be so. I just never read one before. But at a library sale not too long ago, and I got there late, mind you, and in the mystery section of the paperback tent were, lined up all in a row, about a dozen of his books. I couldn’t resist. I grabbed them all, and this is one of them.

   Not knowing what to expect, it’s difficult to suggest that I was disappointed, because I wasn’t, but it (um) wasn’t exactly what I expected. I had the strong sense that Barnard’s books are filled with an understated British humor, and in that regard I was right. But I also expected more detection (or deduction, to choose the right word, which never hurts) than there is in The Case of the Missing Brontë. There may be detection on the part of Scotland Yard Superintendent Perry Trethowan, but I think that his wife Jan may have done more of the deducing in this book than does Perry, she having taken an interest in the case even though having never read one of the Brontë books before –

   I’ll start at the beginning, which is very, very funny, with the Trethowan family (one son) on a short summer holiday and stopping for a short respite in a small Yorkshire village, in which mother and father meet an old woman in a pub with a story: a find that she had made in some old family papers.

   Could it be the manuscript of a never-published Emily Brontë novel? The Trethowans are quickly convinced, but so are other members of Miss Edith Wing’s family (distant relatives) and assorted thugs and academics – don’t be concerned; it’s easy to tell them apart, most of the time. The academics are simply thuggish in more refined ways.

   When Edith Wing is knocked on the head and the papers stolen, Trethowan has a case on his hands officially, but why Scotland Yard allows such a leisurely investigation to occur on such a minor matter is a (shall we say) a mystery. But we (the reader) are thankful that they do, as the resulting novel is small marvel of small town japery and incisive cultural commentary, British style, through and through.

   A few quotes will suffice to illustrate, perhaps. From page 38. Perry is interrogating the Reverend Amos Macklehose, the aforementioned distant cousin:

Or from page 95, Perry again:

   Barnard, I have neglected to say, has written a large number of mystery novels, most of them, I feel somewhat able to say, very much like this one, or at least I suspect so. Some of them are standalone thrillers, while others have other series characters other than Trethowan, with occasional instances of crossovers by the characters between them. Here are the ones in which the latter appears, thanks to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, the point being that I hope to be reading another one soon. Listed chronologically:

TRETHOWAN, INSP. PERRY
       o Sheer Torture (n.) Collins 1981   [US: Death by Sheer Torture]
       o Death and the Princess (n.) Collins 1982  [US: The Cherry Blossom Corpse]
       o The Missing Brontë (n.) Collins 1983   [US: The Case of the Missing Brontë]
       o Bodies (n.) Collins 1986
       o Death in Purple Prose (n.) Collins 1987   [US: The Cherry Blossom Corpse]

MANNING COLES – No Entry

Carroll & Graf, paperback reprint; 1st pr., November 1985. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1958; Doubleday (Crime Club), June 1958. Hardcover reprint: Mystery Guild [book club], July 1958. Contained in Five Spy Novels, Howard Haycraft, ed., Doubleday, Oct 1962. Other paperback edition: Ace D-389, no date stated [1959].

   I imagine that if you know anything about Manning Coles the author, you may already know that there never was a Manning Coles. The semi-jovial spy thrillers that appeared under his name were actually written by two friends and neighbors in England, Cyril Henry Coles (1899-1965) and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning (1891-1959), all but a few of them starring the steadfast British agent, Tommy Hambledon.

   Some of this information came from Tom and Enid Schantz’s introduction to the four ghost novels that Manning Coles also wrote (appearing under the byline Francis Gaite in England) and which the Schantzes have reprinted as part of their highly recommended Rue Morgue line of books. But according to Tom and Enid, Cyril Henry Coles wrote the last three Hambledon books after his collaborator died, but Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV lists only the last two as having been written by Coles and without Manning:

      Search for a Sultan [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1961, hc; Doubleday, 1961.
      The House at Pluck’s Gutter [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1963, hc; Pyramid, 1968.

   Question: Was the previous book [Crime in Concrete (Hodder, 1960, hc). U.S. title: Concrete Crime. Doubleday, 1960] written by C. H. Coles alone or with another collaborator?

   No matter how it works out, this places No Entry as either the last or next-to-last in Manning’s tenure, and unfortunately it’s not one of the better one in the series. If you don’t start with the first two, Drink to Yesterday (Doubleday, 1940) and A Toast to Tomorrow (Doubleday, 1941), preferably in that order, then any of the other immediate post-war books will do. In No Entry, however, decidedly a Cold War novel, the two authors seem to have run out of steam.

   It’s not entirely a book not worth your time, but the minute the young naive son of a British diplomat unwittingly crosses the border from West Germany to East, and Hambledon arrives to see what he can do about the situation, you know that he’s going to find a way across the nearly impenetrable border, and make his way back out again.

   None the less, Coles – from now on “Coles” will refer to Coles the pair – has a beautifully laid-back way with dialogue that I can’t describe better than that, but which tickles my fancy every time I read one of their books. Take, for example, the following passage occurring early on, on page 20, after Hambledon finds a body in his hotel room. (Nothing like starting a story with a quick bracer to the spine like this.)

   Here’s another relatively long quote that will tell you some more about the complications that occur in the story as it goes along. From page 66, as the man driving Hambledon around the area next to the border says:

   When Hambledon finally does cross the border, it is in a old automobile constructed of various makes and models, and he adds some gunk to the engine to make it misfire uncontrollably, belching black smoke and threatening almost to explode if one were to look at in a threatening manner. Which is a huge amount of fun to read until you (the reader) realize that there really is no point to such a matter of calling so much attention to oneself, if you are in enemy territory under false pretenses and with high hopes of retreating back across the border with another person with you.

    Does such behavior make you less suspicious? Does it draw attention away from you and more toward the automobile? What sort of agent would behave in such a fashion, he must not be an agent, perhaps? I’m the one supplying the possibilities. Coles does not. The uproar goes on, stops, and with or without it, the story seems to continue as it would have, either way.

   And while things do not go smoothly, naturally, crossing the border back again still seems all too easy. (I am discussing matters of plot importance that I would not generally do, but as it is clear from the beginning, as I pointed out before, that this is what the story is going to be, in essence, and what is going to happen, I do not believe that I am being unwise in doing so.)

   Coles seems to be very familiar with the area in which the story takes place, which adds immensely to the pleasure provided by say, the first two-thirds of the book. The final third is where the letdown occurs, and even so, it doesn’t make this a bad book, only one that’s disappointing in a way that suggests that it might have been better.

PostScript: I’ve never really had a solid picture in my mind of what Tommy Hambledon looks like. If I think of the various “Tommy”s that I know, none of them, I do not believe, resemble Mr. Hambledon. As I was reading, therefore, I made notes of any mention of his physical appearance that Coles provided, and perhaps it was deliberate, but there were not many:

      Page 19. “broad shoulders”
      Page 91. “blue eyes”
      Page 129. “he was not a tall man”
      Page 165. “… slipped like a prowling cat”

   And that’s it. I haven’t tried to look elsewhere, online or in any of the other Manning Coles books I have. I’ll allow you to tell me more, if you can?

EVELYN BERCKMAN – Journey’s End.

Avon, paperback reprint; 1st pr., July 1978. Hardcover edition: Doubleday & Co., 1977; first published in UK as Be All and End All, Hamish Hamilton, 1976.

   From Twelfth Night:

   Or possibly (more likely, given the apostrophe) Othello:

   As for the British title, consider Macbeth, as the leading character is contemplating the killing of Duncan:

   What is also remarkable, in a prescient melancholy sort of way, is that this is Evelyn Berckman’s final novel, written when she was in her late 70s, two or three years before her death in 1978. She did not start writing mystery novels until she was 54 (with The Evil of Time, 1954), but once begun, she averaged a book a year, plus or minus a small fraction.

   Having not read any but this one, I can hardly characterize her work in any definitive fashion, but in paperback, at least, her books were often packaged as Gothic Romances, or if not, as Romantic Suspense, with the usual damsel in some sort of distress on the cover.

   Since her work was always published in hardcover first, I have a strong hunch that her books had more behind them than that, however, and if you were to go by this book alone, with its strong, in-depth characterizations, the hunch is even stronger. In and of itself, Journey’s End is a melancholy book, filled with melancholy people, with a melancholy ending. Generating most of the plot are a husband and wife who are hired as consultants to evaluate the remnants of an old French woman’s estate.

   Their marriage is unhappy, however, and perhaps it has never been consummated. The husband is gay, and before his wife arrives, he finds himself head-over-heels madly in love (and in an affair) with a young lad who had been working for the dead woman. That the young lad is also unscrupulous almost goes without saying. If this suggests that the characters seem difficult to sympathize with, it is not so. They are fussily drawn, but that does not make one feel uncharitable toward them, and – somewhat to my own surprise – quite the opposite.

   In the midst of the old furniture (all valuable) is a library with hundreds of old documents, dating back to the 1600s. This is a work of criminous fiction, but is there a crime involved? It is difficult to say. On page 123, though, I can tell you this: I sat back and said Wow. (Perhaps I should not tell you anything more definitive than this, and I do not believe I will, but there are some hints hidden in this review.)

   Other than this deliberately non-descriptive description, this is a nearly unclassifiable tale, and it’s one that I believe will stick around upside my head for a while.

   Here’s a complete bibliography for Evelyn Berckman’s mystery fiction, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. US editions only, unless the British titles differ, and in chronological order:

      BERCKMAN, EVELYN (Domenica) (1900-1978)

* The Evil of Time (n.) Dodd 1954 [Germany]
* The Beckoning Dream (n.) Dodd 1955. Published as Worse Than Murder: Dell, pb, 1957.
* The Strange Bedfellow (n.) Dodd 1956. Published as Jewel of Death: Pyramid, pb, 1968. [Germany]

* The Blind Villain (n.) Dodd 1957. Published as House of Terror: Dell, pb, 1960. [Philadelphia, PA]
* The Hovering Darkness (n.) Dodd 1957 [Ship]
* No Known Grave (n.) Dodd 1958
* Lament for Four Brides (n.) Dodd 1959 [France]
* Do You Know This Voice? (n.) Dodd 1960
* Blind Girl’s Buff (n.) Dodd 1962 [England]
* A Thing That Happens to You (n.) Dodd 1964. Published as Keys from a Window: Eyre, UK, 1965.
* A Simple Case of Ill-Will (n.) Dodd 1965 [London]
* Stalemate (n.) Doubleday 1966 [England]
* The Heir of Starvelings (n.) Doubleday 1967 [England]
* -A Case in Nullity (n.) Doubleday 1968. Published as A Hidden Malice: Belmont, pb, 1978. [England]
* The Long Arm of the Prince (n.) Hale 1968 [England; 1600s]
* She Asked for It (n.) Doubleday 1969 [Los Angeles, CA]
* The Voice of Air (n.) Doubleday 1970 [France]
* A Finger to Her Lips (n.) Doubleday 1971 [Germany; 1700s]
* The Fourth Man on the Rope (n.) Doubleday 1972 [England]
* The Stake in the Game (n.) Doubleday 1973
* The Victorian Album (n.) Doubleday 1973 [London]
* Wait, Just You Wait (n.) Doubleday 1974. Previously appeared as Wait: H. Hamilton, UK, 1973. [England]
* The Nightmare Chase (n.) Doubleday 1975. Published in the UK as Indecent Exposure: H. Hamilton, 1975 [England]
* The Crown Estate (n.) Doubleday 1976. Published in the UK as The Blessed Plot: H. Hamilton 1976. [England; 1200s and present]
* Journey’s End (n.) Doubleday 1977. Previously appeared as Be All and End All: H. Hamilton, UK, hc, 1976. [France]

JOHN J. LAMB – The Mournful Teddy

Berkley 21112; paperback original. First printing: August 2006.

   Speaking of cozies, as I was just a book or so ago, take one look at the cover and the title of this book and what would you think? I’ll get back to that in a minute.

   This is the second mystery written by John J. Lamb, a retired homicide detective from San Diego County who pulled up stakes and moved back east to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where he now lives and attends teddy bear shows with his wife, among other activities. His first book, Echoes of the Lost Order (Five Star, hardcover, 2005) sounds as though it might be the first of a totally different series, one that takes place in Talmine, a small Virginia Tidewater town, where a murder is solved by the town’s chief of police, Steve MacKinnon, and his wife, Victoria, a former police crime analyst.

   Looking back at that paragraph, I see that I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The Mournful Teddy is already the first in a series, even though it’s the only one that’s been published so far. Coming up in May 2007 is The False-Hearted Teddy, and according to his website, the author is now hard at work on The Crafty Teddy.

   And I’m still ahead of myself, or I’ve swung off sideways, and I really have to get back on track. The protagonists in all three of these “Bear Collector’s Mysteries” are retired San Francisco P. D. homicide inspector Brad Lyon and his wife, Ashleigh, a teddy bear collector (and creator), now living along the Shenandoah River in rural Virginia. One senses a pattern at work here.

   Which is hardly bad news, and the even better news is that The Mournful Teddy became Number One on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association’s best-seller list for August 2006. Who among mystery readers can resist a work of detective fiction that involves teddy bears? (When beanie babies were hot hobby items, was there a mystery that involved beanie babies? If not, someone missed a good opportunity, as beanie babies hardly have the mass appeal they had at one time, do they?)

   But teddy bears? They never go out of fashion, and I think this series of mysteries that Mr. Lamb has concocted and devised could go on for quite a while. It begins with Lyon finding a body in the Shenandoah outside his home, a male body that the local sheriff and ambulance crew seem to recognize without even turning him over. They also quickly invite Lyon to mind his own business, which of course rankles the retired homicide detective.

   Also worked into the tale, as of course you were wondering, is a valuable teddy bear with connections to the Titanic. Make that extremely valuable.

   After a slow opening, the story gradually picks up speed, and the antagonistic behavior of the local law enforcement officers gives it an even bigger boost. As an investigator, which he has been for a long time, Lyon is a good interviewer, and he is especially good with hostile witnesses. But even with so many facets to the mystery, it is one that is surprisingly easy to solve, with at least one of the bad guys caving in all too easily and not really (as it turns out) perhaps not that bad at all. Some of them certainly are, however – do not get me wrong – and they are not necessarily all guys, either, in case you were trying to read something into my words that I didn’t mean for you to pick up on.

   Overall? Everyone reading this will either (a) read the book or (b) not, no matter what my recommendation might be, so I won’t say anything further, nor do I think I need to.

   But here’s a quote from page 88 that I thought was amusing, and since it’s about mysteries, I thought perhaps you might also:

   Ouch. Nothing like that in this one, but still. Ouch.