From a longtime reader of the blog:

   “I’ve been trying to track down the author and title of a book I read a couple of decades ago. It’s about…humanoid killer giant river otters. Set in South America, main character maybe an Anglo who gets a job running a plantation, probably by a British author, from the 1950s-1970s. Kind of a weird thriller. Does it ring a bell? It seems like a novel John Blackburn would have written, but it doesn’t seem to be in his bibliography.”

   A correspondent known to me as Gunnar asks the following question. Perhaps those of you who have read more early detection fiction than I can tell us more:

    “Tony Baer’s recent review of A. A. Milne’s Red House Mystery (1922) got me thinking of the origins and early history of the country house mystery. I suppose you can trace its early prototypes back to Wilkie Collins, but later Sherlock is mainly metropolitan – and while Baskervilles, Valley of Fear and some of the short stories do feature country houses or castles, they’re not really country house mysteries in the true sense (with a closed circle of suspects and all that).

    “The first proper instance I can think of is The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) followed perhaps by Trent’s Last Case (1913) and then of course Styles (1920). Are there other early examples that predate Christie’s debut?”

   I was asked the following question by email a couple of days ago. I won’t include the name of the person asking in case he doesn’t want it circulating online without his knowing about it, but I thought it interesting enough to see how others besides myself might answer it:

    “I am a fan of old, rare books and I wonder if there is any mystery/crime/horror/suspense not widely known book from the past decades that hasn’t been turned into a feature film that deserves it?”

      Why is George Burns the most famous man in the world?

         A TV/Cinema Question from Lazy Georgenby:

   You all know how Dick Powell –- as Phil Marlowe –- is lounging in his office one night, sipping scotch, gazing out his window at the lights of Los Angeles. He’s got no active cases. No dough coming in.

   It’s all part of the opening sequence in Murder My Sweet. Suddenly –behind him –the ghastly face of Moose Malone (Mike Mazurki) looms over him in the darkness, reflected by the neons winking on his windowpane. Powell sits up and turns around.

   So far so good? Okay so, I’m talking to someone lately who wants to know whether there is any crime, mystery, noir, hard-boiled detective movie-or-TV-series which incarnates the archetype above: keeping everything exactly the same as the above, except that ‘the detective turns around’ because of a knock at his door. He bids the visitor to enter and the newcomer is a beautiful femme fatale in need of his help. Via voice-over, his mental patter is the usual, “…she looked like trouble right from the start…” or words to this effect.

   He swears this is the opening scene in a classic crime flick. I’ve racked my brains trying to pin this down. A lot of candidates were easily eliminated; I’m fairly sure that it’s not the opening scene in any of the really famous P.I. movies.

   Currently, I’m hunting through old episodes of Mike Hammer on TV (Darren McGavin’s run), Lloyd Nolan’s Mike Shayne movies, the early Spillane movies like Girl Hunters, and even the Bob Hope parody movies like My Favorite Brunette.

   The maddening aspect of it all, is that this ‘trope’ could literally be from anywhere: TV commercials, graphic novels, SNL skits, cartoons. It might not have ever been filmed at all. Could be found only in homages or pastiches. Might not even be from the majors era, could be something from the ’70s.

   So as a last resort, I am throwing myself on the mercy of this court. What say ye? Thx thx thx!

   From a Q&A newsletter called Quora that comes into my email inbox a few times a week, a question was asked, “What do you think are the four best noir films of all time, ones you would use to introduce the genre to, say, teenagers today?”

   The answer as given, in order:

1. Double Indemnity
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Laura
4. Detour

   Not a bad list, but what do you think? If you were add a number 5, what would it be?

   My good friend Richard Meli has just sent me images of two pieces of art for which he’d like to know the artist. Perhaps someone seeing this can help identify her or him:

   There is some resemblance in style to the artist who did this cover for the British edition of the book The Bang Bang Birds, by Adam Diment:
   

From Kenneth R. Johnson:

   I am hoping to repost my on-line reference book, The Digest Index, this year; to that end I am trying to tie up some loose ends. One minor quandary concerns a short-lived digest imprint called Pennant Mystery. I have one volume, The Six Iron Spiders by Phoebe Atwood Taylor. The back cover ad lists itself and three other titles:

      Death out of Thin Air by Stuart Towne
      So Much Blood by Bruno Fischer
      The Purple Parrot by Clyde B. Clason

   I have been absolutely unable to confirm the existence of these three other titles from any secondary sources. They are not listed in the World Catalog or the National Union Catalog. There are no known cover reproductions anywhere and I have not seen any of them offered for sale in the 14 years since I first posted The Digest Index. I am beginning to suspect that these are phantoms, advertised but never actually published.

   Does anyone out there actually have one of these, or at least have seen one on the hoof?

   
   My brother asked me this question, and while I remembered the scene, I couldn’t tell him in what movie or TV show it appears in. (I may even have reviewed it, which would be embarrassing, but what can you do.)

   At least one of the murders in the movie, which is my recollection of where I saw it, is that a giant mirror is placed crosswise across a narrow, isolated stretch of road, so that the driver of an oncoming car would see his own headlights reflected back at him. Trying to avoid an accident, the driver of said car would swerve the only way he could, and straight down into a ravine, the bottom of which is hundreds of feet down.

   Remember that one?

      Here’s a question left as a comment on a long-ago post:

   “These are pieces of the story of a movie I caught only a bit of, and missed the title and cast…. 1930s-1940s, B&W, etc. Genre like a Its a Wonderful Life, etc…

   “A gentleman in a small American town leave friends a bar, is mugged by the tracks, wakes up with no memory and wearing his assailant’s clothing. For all appearances he is a hobo, and he believes as much and moves on, leaves town for several years…. and around Christmastime, appears back in the same town, remembering nothing about it or his old self. A Ward Bond-ish cop mushes him off a snowy park bench at nighttime — in a respectable neighborhood, and as he is ready to comply and leave, he is espied by a younger man at the front door of what had been the elder gentleman’s home; then his wife — the young man’s mother — and he appeal to the old vagabond (without a good look at his face in the darkness) to join them as it is Christmas, after all (this is hugely climatic and heart-swelling). BUT, the kindly gent evidently does not want to impose on the family’s Christmas party and moves on.

   “The End and then the credits rolled… unread by me, dagnabbit!!

   “Please, it’s been 30 years that I have attempted to connect with this film. Not one person I have asked has heard of it, not a wit.”