DORIS MILES DISNEY – Room for Murder

Macfadden 75-448; paperback, 2nd printing, October 1971; 1st printing, Macfadden 60-392, April 1969. First Edition: Doubleday/Crime Club, 1955.

   Explain this to me, if you can. Doris Miles Disney, while very popular in her day – and I’ll get back to that in a minute – and I haven’t checked to see how true this is for her other books, but at least the one I have here in my hand has all but vanished from the Internet marketplace. I find only six copies for sale, including none of the hardcover edition, ranging in price from $16.81, including shipping, to $34.49. The cheapest one, by the way, will be coming from the UK, if you were to order it.

    I don’t know whether it’s low supply or high demand, but what on earth is going on? It’s a good book, but by no stretch of the imagination is it a great one. It’s also very much not typical of books being written today, and that’s something else I’ve have to get back to.

   But in terms of describing Mrs. Disney’s popularity, here’s a list of her books, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

    Did you spot the book from Putnam in there? I don’t know how or why that happened. It otherwise seems like a long and production relationship with Doubleday, one that lasted for nearly 35 years.

    For some basic biographical data, one online source says briefly of the author:

Doris Miles Disney (22 Dec 1907-9 Mar 1976) insurance employee, social agency publicist.

   For the long version, you can learn more here. (This webpage comes from doing a search in Google books, so you may have to repeat the search.) If you were to have gathered from the locale of many of her stories that she may have been from Connecticut, you would have been correct. She was born in Glastonbury, two towns over from me.

   Of her series characters, Jim O’Neill is a Connecticut county detective; Jeff DiMarco is an insurance investigator; and David Madden is a US postal inspector. From all accounts, Mrs. Disney began her career writing traditional detective stories, but began writing suspense thrillers that grew progressively darker as the years went on. Even so, a dose of comedy could often be found in her mysteries as well.

   Case in point, the book in hand, the only one of the above that I’ve read in, say, 30 years or so, making it the only one I can talk about with more than vague generalities. I won’t say I laughed out loud while reading it, but if intermittent chuckling counts, this is a funny book. There are some noirish qualities to it as well – by which I do not mean to say hard-boiled in any way, shape or form – far from it – but behind the walls of the rooming house where the book is centered there’s a definite sense of uneasiness that never quite goes away.

   Running the rooming house are two spinster sisters named Aggie and Kate, Irish through and through, and who argue and quarrel with each other nearly all day long, or at least whenever they’re in the same room together. Nonetheless, having spent their lives together so far, the reader can tell that they could never live apart. Their niece Teresa has lived with the two women for most of her life and is now of marriageable age, but to her aunts’ ever growing frustration, she shows no signs of finding a suitable man to marry, or wishing to.

   There are other relatives, and of course there are the boarders, some of them long-term and some relatively new, and all have their own particular eccentricities, shall we say. It is one of the more recent roomers who is found dead after coming home after what appears to have been a long night of drinking. Suicide is the verdict of the local (Somerset, Connecticut) police department. Aggie, who reads true crime magazines, is not so sure, and surprisingly enough, ventures out on a long trip from home alone to prove it.

    I have not mentioned Dennis Callahan yet. He is one of the policeman called to the scene of the roomer’s death, and while he is there, he and Teresa immediately catch each other’s eye, much to the two sister’s displeasure. A mere policeman, he is, even though he has a solid Irish name – and there’s a story behind that as well.

   The case itself is complicated, and unfortunately, to my own personal regret, most of the detection takes place offstage. On the other hand, Mrs. Disney doesn’t pull any punches. As cozy and light as the banter in the rooming house is, there is a villain that is as nasty as any you will find in many other much tougher venues. It’s a clever mix that I found both unusual and, well, delightful.

LAWRENCE BLOCK – Lucky at Cards

Hard Case Crime; paperback reprint, Feb 2007. First published as The Sex Shuffle, by Sheldon Lord; Beacon B757x, paperback original, 1964.

   Here’s a crackerjack of a crime novel published in 1964 that has been a loosely kept secret, not even appearing in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV until now, which is when the folks at Hard Case Crime have essentially let the entire world know about it. Everyone, that is, but a small handful of diehard collectors who delve into and devour what are called the “sleaze” books in the trade, Beacon being one of the better and more well known providers of the same.

   Not that the “sex scenes” in Beacon’s output are anything near torrid, given today’s standards, and The Sex Shuffle, if anything, is tamer than most. On the other hand, if you believe the quality of the writing in the Beacon books is anything like that of The Sex Shuffle, you’d be fairly well mistaken. They were written quickly for the most part, mostly by men who had one eye on the market and other on their landlord, whenever the rent was due — sometimes with hidden talent but far more often, what you read was what you got.

   Nor do I think searching out Sheldon Lord’s books in general would necessarily be a worthwhile pursuit, unless you are one of those aforementioned diehard collectors, or this book persuades you to become one. An article in Books Are Everything, which I have not seen, is reported to have stated that Block was “the first user of the Sheldon Lord pseudonym, followed by Hal Dresner, followed by Milo Perichitch.” There are also claims that say that Donald Westlake was one of the writers behind Sheldon Lord, but since this statement seems to have been questioned immediately by others, you’d better not rely very much on my saying so.

   In any case, what you have here, whatever its lineage may have been, is a near perfect low-level novel of crime and lust and greed and comeuppance and all of the other noir-related themes you can think of, written so smoothly that its 220 pages can be read in an hour, without once coming up for air.

   Story: a professional cardshark is stuck in a two-bit town while recuperating from his last scrape with — not the law — but with real gamblers in a real game and of course there was a woman at the root of it. Quoting from page 19:

   Thus beginning the book with this pair of introductory lines:

   The town isn’t mentioned, or if it is, I missed it, and even so I’d rather think of it as one of those typical small Midwestern towns of the sixties that was still living in the fifties at the time, with small town businesses and small town businessmen and small town wives…

   Except for one of them. From page 27, and an even longer quote this time. The dentist has invited Bill Maynard to a friendly small town poker game:

   This is one of those moments when the clock simply stops ticking, in other words. Her name is Joyce, and it turns out that she has a sharp eye out for a man who’s (too) good at cards. One thing leads to another, as things like this happen to do, and the husband is in the way. Bill Maynard has a plan, an outrageous plan, and even when you read it for the first time, it sounds outrageous but you go along with it, simply because Bill Maynard knows his plan will work.

   It doesn’t involve murder, not quite, or maybe it does, in a way, and of course it doesn’t work. Not at least, the way that Bill Maynard thinks it will. Did I mention that there is also a “good girl” in this story, a grade school teacher named Barbara who thinks that maybe she wants a bad man? Bill thinks she deserves a house and kids, and says good-bye. She’s not in the plan.

   What is the plan, how is it supposed to work, why doesn’t it work, and what it is with women who are attracted to bad men? Read the book, and you will learn.

   It does go a little over the top — a small misstep once or twice somewhere near the end — but all in all, it is the truth: about bad men (and bad women, for that matter) and life in small towns and a small chunk of our past, all in an hour’s reading. I kid you not.

A. WHATOFF ALLEN – Exit an Admiral

Sampson Low; hardcover. No date stated, but given as 1938 in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   And the above seems to be the sum total knowledge of Mr. Allen and his single work of detective fiction, unless you include an Internet obituary of one David Whatoff Allen, BA, 22 May 1997; commoner 1936-39. Aged 79. Perhaps a relative?     [See also the FOLLOWUP below.]

   In terms of other general information about the family, in this country (US) there was (presumably) a family of Whatoffs in Oklahoma, five members of which died between 1987 and 1993. [From Social Security records.] In the UK there is a Whatoff Lodge Farm in (I belive) Leicestershire where camping sites are available.

    Using Google, even though it’s an uncommon name, there are other references to Whatoff to be found, so perhaps if one wanted, the author could be traced, given a little more persistence, ingenuity and luck.

    And you may need the same (persistence, ingenuity and luck) if you were to try to find a copy of this book. I obtained mine on eBay, a winning bid taken purely as a shot in the dark, as I had no idea what kind of crime fiction the book might turn out to be. There are no copies available on the Internet, for example, at the present time. (Right now my book searching website of choice is addall.com. The results on bookfinder.com are organized better, but since ABE took them over, they seem to miss a lot of books that addall finds.)

    But I digress. As a detective novel, Exit an Admiral leaves a certain amount to be desired, but it is also crammed full of clues, derring-do, more clues (a house full of them), mistaken identities, false trails, even more evidence and other clues, and I tell you up front, this was an extreme pleasure to read. (Not to mention the sinister satisfaction that one sometimes feels when one knows one is reading a book that no one else has in over 50 years perhaps — or am I deluding myself with this? — nor perhaps no one else will in another 50 years.)

    I do tell you this. If you do see a copy for sale anywhere, make sure you grab it up immediately. If I can’t persuade you to read it, and I am about to do my best, you can consider this: that I will have persuaded someone else that they desperately want to read it, and they will pay almost anything for the opportunity.

    In Chapter I we meet Ivor Duke, young barrister and a well-known amateur sleuth of the type that England was filled with in 1938. His assistant (major domo), a former boxer named Pug Jordan, is with him in a car, and the story of how they met is told.

    In Chapter II Duke stops along the highway, rather deserted, to come to the aid of young woman standing next to a car with a decidedly flat tyre. She resists his assistance, he allows her to resist, but persists long enough to see a man in the back seat who looks decidedly dead. She holds a revolver on him, and that is when the lights go out, as someone has snuck up on him from behind. (Pug remains asleep in Duke’s car throughout the incident.)

   Next day. In Chapter III Duke is visited by Inspector Jenner at home and is told about the mysterious murder of a retired admiral in his home, the same night and in the (totally coincidentally) same area as Duke’s own strange encounter. Not the same dead man, however, much to Duke’s surprise.

    But two bodies in the same evening and in the same vicinity? Are the cases connected? Apparently not, but we (the reader) know better, and in spite of some doubts along the way, so does Duke.

    Here’s a quote from the beginning of Chapter III, however, describing Duke on the morning after, and before the visit from Inspector Jenner:

   Here’s where you and I may go our separate ways, if I were to tell you that this is my kind of writing and it happens not to be yours. And at least in the early going, the author is making it abundantly clear what sort of approach he plans to take with the story.

   What the paragraph above also makes clear is that this is not Duke’s first brush with strange events occurring at two o’clock in the morning, which is reinforced with some suitably appropriate banter soon thereafter with Jenner about how, when Scotland Yard is baffled, they come along to see Ivor Duke.

    Now this was in 1938, and in 1938, whether true in real life or not, amateur assistants to Scotland Yard in detective fiction were allowed to examine the premises where the dead man’s body was found, picking up clues and other evidence, sometimes revealing what they find to the reader, and sometimes not, carelessly forgetting to do so until such time when a careful exposition is more likely to impress the reader with their various reasonings and conclusions.

   One can easily forgive Mr. Allen for merely going along with the trend. Here’s a quote from page 101 which will describe what Ivor Duke soon finds himself up to his waist in, immediately after interviewing an elderly gent named Huggett, whose horse and buggy were nearly run off the road on the same night as the murder, but by another car altogether:

   There is also a host of strange and mysterious coincidences that are, I confess, exceeding frustrating, coincidences being the primary means of support for many a weaker detective fiction writer, but do not despair, all is explained, as well as the even stranger behavior of the dead man’s daughter on page 112.

    While this is a thoroughly solid detective story, once one gets over some of the shakier parts, it ends in a sudden burst of activity found in only the best thrillers of the day, followed by the revelations suggested above in which all is marvelously and beautifully explained.

    One is also left with the hope of another detective thriller from the pen or typewriter of A. Whatoff Allen, but for whatever reason, alas, such a one was not to be.

FOLLOWUP. I did hear from one fellow twice by email in one evening who told me he was a relative of the author and passed along some interesting pieces of information about him. I’ve not heard back from this fellow, though, and posting this review of Exit an Admiral here on the blog is serving as a reminder to me that perhaps I should try getting in touch again. More, when I learn more, as always.

RANDALL PARRISH – The Case and the Girl

Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1922. A. L. Burt, hc reprint, n.d. Paul (UK), hc, 1923.

   Captain Matthew West has just been honourably discharged after twice being wounded during World War I. Feeling restless and not yet ready to return to civilian work, while browsing the newspaper at his club he decides to answer a personal ad running thus

   “Wanted: Young man of education and daring for service involving some personal peril. Good pay, and unusual reward if successful. May have to leave city. Purpose disclosed only in personal interview.”

   Instructed to bring his evening clothes — and a good job he has them! — he is soon off to a rendezvous with orphaned heiress Natalie Coolidge. She does not explain what task she requires him to undertake but Captain West agrees to help her even so, and is whirled off to the family mansion, where he is astonished to be introduced to the house party as her fiance. One of the guests is Natalie’s uncle and guardian Percival Coolidge. The two men dislike each other on sight – in fact, Uncle Percy accuses West of being a fortune hunter, the cad.

   Next morning the gallant captain has a private chat with Natalie and learns someone is impersonating her. However, nobody believes her because the responsible party looks so like her she fools even Natalie’s friends, not to mention the servants and bank clerks who know her well.

   Is Natalie telling the truth, mistaken, or demented? Despite doubts at times, West agrees to try to solve the mystery. There are a couple of odd happenings, statements made don’t quite check out, and then a death occurs and West is plunged into an adventure with enough twists and turns to make a scriptwriter swoon. The detective work is partly deductive and partly wearing out shoe leather and when it comes to action, West usually wipes the floor with his opponents, yet in a manner showing he is not a super hero.

   My verdict: Apart from the occasionally annoying fact that Captain West is a bit slow on the uptake at times, this was a rollicking read and keeps the interest to the end. I particularly admired a sequence in which West and Natalie are trapped in…but no, I will not ruin the suspense, although I will say it gave me the creeping heeby jeebies.

      Etext: http://www.gutenberg.org

RANDALL PARRISH (1858-1923) – A Partial Bibliography

● Crime Fiction  (Thanks to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.)

● Titles available online, including non-mystery fiction:

* Beth Norvell: A Romance of the West

* Bob Hampton of Placer
* The Case and the Girl
* The Devil’s Own: A Romance of the Black Hawk War
* Gordon Craig: Soldier of Fortune
* Keith of the Border
* Love under Fire
* Molly McDonald: A Tale of the Old Frontier
* My Lady of Doubt
* My Lady of the North
* Prisoners of Chance: The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, through His Love for a Lady of France
* The Strange Case of Cavendish
* When Wilderness Was King: A Tale of the Illinois Country

* Wolves of the Sea: Being a Tale of the Colonies from the Manuscript of One Geoffry Carlyle, Seaman, Narrating Certain Strange Adventures Which Befell Him Aboard the Pirate Craft “Namur”

● Shorter fiction:   (Thanks to The FictionMags Index.)

● Three of his novels and stories have been adapted into film:   (Thanks to IMBD.)

A BUCKET OF BLOOD. American International, 1959. Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Julian Burton, Judy Bamber, Ed Nelson, Bert Convy. Producer/director: Roger Corbin.

   I went to the local library sale twice last weekend. On Friday night it cost $5 to get in, and I spend $70. On Sunday afternoon they charged $5 a bag, and I bought four bags. Do you know how many paperbacks you can get into an ordinary plastic shopping bag? Even more amazing, do you know how many DVDs you can get into one? DVDs that sat there at four dollars apiece for two days and nobody wanted them until I came along on Sunday and took four shelves full in one swell foop? Well, four foops.

   This is one of them, and more than that, this the second half of a double feature DVD, the prime attraction being George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), which I saw once and probably never again. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be too hasty. The version I saw I am sure was colorized, the worst idea that the ladies and gents in Hollywood ever had. The lighting is always wrong and the computers don’t really get it right anyway, what with swatches of color hovering over everything on the screen trying to match what the ladies and gents think is the right color, but (in my opinion) probably almost never is.

   But I digress. A Bucket of Blood was also filmed in black-and-white, and the DVD version is also in black-and-white, and very sharp black-and-white it was also. It was also filmed, or so I’m told, in five days. A small budget film, and of course it shows. It is also quietly hilarious, and somewhat to my relief, intentionally so, since one of the posters I’ve seen for this film says at the top: “You’ll be sick, sick, sick – from LAUGHING!”

   Unless they took a look at the film when they were done filming and decided to accept the inevitable: a bad movie that they could market only if they made everyone believe that that is the way it was done on purpose. But I don’t think so.

   Dick Miller, in probably the only starring role he ever had, but not the only one he played a fellow named Walter Paisley, is a busboy in a beatnik hangout who has a social problem. He’s laughed at, which of course is even worse than being ignored. He’s not only inept but two or three magazines short of a rack, and Dick Miller nails the role perfectly.

   The Yellow Door, where Paisley works, is one those places, by the way, where poets recite their wares to the sound of a single saxophone (uncredited jazz artist Paul Horn) along the lines of “Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art,” to quote Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton), or “Where are John, Joe, Jake, Jim, jerk? Dead, dead, dead! They were not born, before they were born, they were not born. Where are Leonardo, Rembrandt, Ludwig? Alive! Alive! Alive! They were born!”

Maxwell Brock is perfect in the part. So is Barboura Morris as Carla, the girl that Walter loves but doesn’t have a chance with until he becomes an acclaimed artist. By mistake. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, hiding in a wall, Walter covers the dead animal with clay. A masterpiece, it is praised. One must only smile.

   And of course Walter is not content to be a one-shot wonder. Perhaps you can picture what comes next. If you remember The House of Wax with Vincent Price (1953), I am sure you will. There is, of course, a gag like this (literally) can last much more than an hour, and no, it doesn’t, clocking in at a mere 66 minutes. Just about perfect.

   Not to mention the other starring attraction, besides Alice the model’s nude back (Judy Bamber), that being, of course, an (uncredited) stage appearance of guitarist-folksinger Alex Hassilev at just about the same time he was becoming one of the founding members of The Limeliters. A good career move, that.

SARAH ANDREWS – Dead Dry

St. Martin’s, paperback reprint; 1st printing, September 2006. Hardcover: St. Martin’s Press, November 2005.

   Em Hansen, the detective of record in Dead Dry, is the new forensic geologist for the state of Utah, and while she’s had nine previous adventures on record, this is the first case of murder that’s come her way since taking the new position. I’d tell you more about some of her earlier cases, but as it happens, as I so often have to admit, this is the first one of the ten that I’ve happened to read.

    For the record, expanded from her entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here are the previous nine (plus this one, her tenth, along with the one that’s in the works) in chronological order, beginning with her earliest:

   Tensleep. Otto Penzler Books, hc, June 1994 [Wyoming]
      Signet, pb, December 1995
   A Fall in Denver. Scribner, hc, December 1995. [Colorado]
      Signet, pb, December 1996
   Mother Nature. St. Martin’s, hc, June 1997 [California]
      St. Martin’s; pb, July 1998
   Only Flesh and Bones. St. Martin’s, hc, May 1998 [Wyoming]
      St. Martin’s; ; pb, August 1999
   Bone Hunter. St. Martin’s, hc, September 1999 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, September 2000
   An Eye for Gold. St. Martin’s, hc, September 2000 [Nevada]
      St. Martin’s; pb, Decmber 2001
   Fault Line. St. Martin’s, hc, January 2002 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, January 2003
   Killer Dust. St. Martin’s, hc, February 2003 [Florida]
      St. Martin’s; pb, March 2004
   Earth Colors. St. Martin’s, hc, March 2004 [Pennsylvania]
      St. Martin’s; pb, December 2004
   Dead Dry. St. Martin’s, hc, November 2005 [Utah]
      St. Martin’s; pb, September 2006
   In Cold Pursuit. St. Martin’s, hc, Spring 2007 [Antarctica]

   For a photo of the author is the controls of her plane while researching her latest book, go to her website. You’ll also find a biography of the author there. Short version: “A geologist who writes mystery novels about a geologist.” For the long version, I’ll suggest you simply check out her website. It’s definitely worth a visit.

   While researching the publication dates of the books above, mostly on Amazon, I happened to glimpse some of the reviews, and unfortunately, some of them matched my opinion almost completely. Long discourses on matters geological, many of them, too little plot.

    In Dead Dry, for example, we (the reader) are given mini-lectures (some not so mini-) on the lack of water in Colorado, along with water resources (and ecology) in general. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, because it’s important, but when it becomes noticeable, as it does here, then maybe (just maybe) it’s overdone, at least in a (mere?) mystery novel.

   Which, in the case at hand, involves the death of an old colleague of Em’s, an eccentric geological consultant named Afton McWain, buried in a suspicious quarry wall collapse. Was he the victim of a horrific accident, or is this a case of murder? It is the latter, and the connection with the above-mentioned water resources in Colorado (or lack thereof) has a great deal to do with it.

   Besides working all over the western part of the US (see the settings as listed above), Em also seems to have a romantic interest in every book. Whether new ones or not, I do not know, but Fritz (in this one) seems to be rather new, while Ray seems to have been part of her past for some time longer, and it appears that he will stay there.

   Now you may have noticed that I have left the detective work involved until after discussing the romantic aspects of the book, mostly because, well, I found the detective work of a rather, um, perfunctory nature. Something invariably seemed lacking. On more than one occasion, I found myself commenting to myself – I almost always write notes to myself while I’m reading – that Em simply wasn’t asking the right questions, if she was asking questions at all.

    But she’s a character whose lively, animated outlook on life is definitely worth following – a series wouldn’t last as long as this has if that weren’t true – and it all turns out well in the end. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that the book is considerably better than the one that I see (looking back) that I have described so far. But (still looking back) I don’t see anything I’ve said that I would change, so I won’t.

JOHN DICKSON CARR – Death Turns the Tables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MICHAEL KURLAND – The Empress of India

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         +++++

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

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

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

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

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

         +++++

The Professor Moriarty / Sherlock Holmes novels:

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

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

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

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

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

          +++++

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

          +++++

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

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

          +++++

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

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

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

         +++++

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

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

         +++++

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

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

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

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE – Round the Fire Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complete contents, as taken from CFIV:

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

HUNTER STINSON – Fingerprints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   From the AFG Bulletin, July 1, 1936:

      Joseph T. Shaw, Black Mask:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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