RALPH DENNIS – Atlanta Deathwatch. Jim Hardman #1. Popular Library, paperback original, 1974. Brash Books, softcover, 2018.

   In 1974, Popular Library introduced a new series called “Hardman,” by Ralph Dennis, by releasing the first two books in the series simultaneously. These were followed by five more that year, and another five in 1976. The series stands at twelve, and that’s a shame, because although Hardman was marketed as just another men’s adventure series, it was much more than that. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale subgenre that was filled with Executioner rip-offs.

   Jim Hardman is a disgraced ex-cop working out of Atlanta as an unlicensed PI with an ex-football player sidekick, Hump Evans. They walk a tight legal line and will do just about anything for money that doesn’t offend Hardman’ s morals — which are high for the kind of life he leads.

   In this book they are hired by a black mobster called “The Man” to find out who killed a girl he was in love with, but the plots of these novels are secondary to the actions and interactions of the main characters and the crisp writing. At its worst, Dennis’s writing is well above that of the run-of-the-mill men’s adventure series; and at its best, it is a fine example of PI writing that depends little on the conventions of the genre.

   Other novels in the series particularly recommended are Working for the Man (1974), The One Dollar Rip-Off (1976), and The Buy-Back Blues (1976).

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

RICHARD DEMING – Anything But Saintly. Matt Rudd #2.  Permabooks M-4286, paperback original, 1963.

   Richard Deming wrote original mysteries and novelizations of numerous TV series, including two books based on Dragnet. The two Dragnet books appeared in 1958 and 1959 and perhaps led to Deming’s writing his own police procedural series in the early 1960s. Although the series was only three books, it was competently written and entertaining.

   The setting of each of the books is the riverside city of St. Cecelia, and the first-person narrator is Sergeant Matt Rudd (real name Mateusz Rudowski), a member of the city’s Vice Squad.

   In Anything but Saintly, a businessman visiting the city is rolled by a prostitute and robbed of $500. Rudd and his partner, Carl Lincoln, set out to recover the money, only to find that the girl was murdered shortly after returning to her apartment. Being a member of the Vice Squad does not keep Rudd from getting involved in the killing, because an attempt is soon made on his own life.

   What looked at first like a simple case suddenly escalates into something more, with a heavily protected procurer and a big-time politico getting dragged in. The procedural details, including the peculiar workings of the St. Cecelia Police Department, are well done, and the story is terse and fast, with a good depiction of a racket-ridden city and how it is run.

   Matt Rudd appeared previously in Vice Cop   (Belmont, 1961) and again in Death of a Pusher (Pocket, 1964 ). An equally good, but very different, paperback original by Deming is Edge of the Law (Berkley, 1960). He also created a one-armed private detective, Manville Moon, who appears in three novels published in the early 1950s, beginning with The Gallows in My Garden (Rinehart, 1952). Other of his mysteries appeared under the pseudonym Max Franklin, notably Justice Has No Sword (Rinehart, 1953).

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Updated and reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

MICHAEL DELVING – The Devil Finds Work.  Dave Cannon #2. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1969. Belmont, paperback, 1971.

   Of the six bibliomysteries Michael Delving (Jay Williams) wrote about the adventures, in England, of the two American partners of a Connecticut-based rare-book and manuscript firm, The Devil Finds Work is the only one featuring both Dave Cannon and Bob Eddison.

   In the small town of Bartonbury, the two dealers are offered a collection of material belonging to Tristram Vail, a notorious Satanist who was once called “the wickedest man in the world.” They also find themselves caught up in the investigation of the theft of a silver cup from a desecrated church. When Vail’s secretary. Richard Foss, is found dead during another attempt to rob the church, Chief Inspector Codd — whom Delving introduced in the first Cannon/Eddison adventure, Smiling the Boy Fell Dead (1966) —  is called in from Scotland Yard to investigate.

   The odd activities of Vail’s ambiguous friend Anthony Gaunt play a role in the mystery. As does Bob (who is a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma) being challenged by the local pub’s darts champion to a match in which Bob will use a bow and arrow and lined target, and the other player will use a regulation dart board with appropriate adjustments made for distance.

   Another plot thread is Bob’s romantic interest in Jill Roseblade, the niece of an eccentric woman named Miss Trout, who owns a valuable Book of Hours coveted by the two partners. It is Codd, with help from Dave and Bob, who finally sorts out the disparate elements and solves the mystery.

   Each of the characters in The Devil Finds Work is fully developed (Bob is especially well drawn), and the narrative is packed with vivid descriptions of village life, the English countryside and architecture, and various works of art. Delving was also a master at conveying the differences and similarities between the English and American ways of life. (Anthony Boucher said of him: “I can’t think of anyone since John Dickson Carr who has better handled England-from-an-American-viewpoint.”)  And his knowledge of rare books and art is that of both an expert and connoisseur.

   The other five books in the series are equally fine, in particular Die Like a Man (1970), in which Dave, traveling in Wales, is offered an ancient wooden bowl its owner claims is the Holy Grail; and A Shadow of Himself (1972), which is concerned with a seventeenth-century Dutch painting and in which Delving divulges the outcome of the romance between Bob and Jill. Because of such personal elements that carry over from book to book, a sequential reading of the series is recommended.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DAVID DELMAN – He Who Digs a Grave. Lt. Jacob Horowitz #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1973. No paperback edition.

   The combination of protagonists David Delman has used in this engaging novel — that of a small-town female sheriff and a male cop from New York-is an inspired one. Sheriff Helen Bly and Lieutenant Jacob Horowitz are as different on the surface as two people can be.

   She’s a country woman with strong roots in the area around Cedarstown, an elected official who’s never had to handle a murder before. He’s a tough city cop who’s seen more than enough violent death. And they hold opposing views about whether Horowitz’s old army acquaintance Ian Kirk (who has asked Horowitz to come to town and investigate in an unofficial capacity) murdered his wife and her lover. But Bly and Horowitz are both strong, fair, and sensitive people-characteristics that allow them to work together and also allow them to fall in love.

   As Bly and Horowitz piece together such facts as a missing suicide note, an unwanted pregnancy, a vanished housekeeper, and a pair of thugs who have been paid to intimidate the outsider from New York, the author skillfully depicts small-town life through his characterization of the other residents. A well-plotted novel with a realistic and satisfying conclusion.

   Delman’s other mysteries: A Week to Kill (1972), Sudden Death ( 1972), One Man’s Murder ( 1975), and The Nice Murderers ( 1977)-feature Jacob Horowitz. His most recent book, Murder in the Family, appeared in 1985.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LILLIAN de la TORRE – The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1960. Dolphin Books, paperback, 1962. Intl Polygonics Ltd, paperback, 1984.

   At first glance, the great eighteenth-century English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson seems an unlikely detective. On closer consideration, however, the idea of the man who, after years of sleuthing, published the first English dictionary (1755), and who had the original Boswell close at hand to chronicle his literary detections and adventures, seems just right. The combination of the grumpy sage Johnson and his Scottish biographer, James Boswell of Auchinleck, forms the model for the classic detective-story Holmes-Watson relationship.

   The eight stories in this book are pastiches, written in Boswell’s style with the fancy of the author woven into the fabric of history. The detections take place around the 1770s, mostly in London ( “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” -S.J.), and in Bath and Stratford-onAvon. Johnson, or “Cham,” as he is sometimes called, investigates crime and chicanery, fraud and felony.

   His unique position enables him to mix with all classes of society and get involved in various events-from the soldiers’ court-martial on the greensward of Hyde Park, to the robbery of Gothic enthusiast Horace Walpole, to the espionage exploits of the female American patriot against Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne. In “The Tontine Curse,” he hears of dying children and blesses a Roman parent. The “harmless drudge” probes the pitfalls of antiquarianism and exposes forgery in “The Missing Shakespeare Manuscript.” “The Triple-Lock’ d Room” is a case of murder and theft at Boswell’s lodgings with its weird inhabitants.

   The Dr. Sam tales are scholarly and quaint and quite the best of their kind. An earlier collection is Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector (1946), and there are more to come. Most of the stories originally appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

      Contents:

• The Black Stone of Dr. Dee · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1948
• The Frantick Rebel · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Dec 1948
• The Missing Shakespeare Manuscript · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1947
• Saint-Germain the Deathless · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1958
• The Stroke of Thirteen · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1953
• The Tontine Curse · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1948
• The Triple-Lock’d Room · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1952
• The Viotti Stradivarius · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Aug 1950

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LEN DEIGHTON – The Billion Dollar Brain. “Harry Palmer” #4. Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1966. Putnam’s, US, hardcover, 1966. Dell, US, paperback, 1967. Film: Lowndes, 1967 (with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer and Karl Malden as Leo Newbigen).

   Len Deighton’s first novel, The Ipcress File (1962; later filmed with Michael Caine), marked the debut of one of the major stars of espionage fiction. Since then this former photographer, illustrator, teacher, and occasional cookbook author has written a string of stylish and tightly plotted espionage novels that are thoughtful commentaries and reasoned examinations of society as well as first-rate thrillers.

   One of Deighton’s chief concerns is the morality of the world of espionage, but his treatment of this theme is never ponderous or heavy-handed. Instead he chooses to examine the ethics of the characters about whom he writes with an ironic wit; his prose has a lightness that further leavens this rather weighty subject. The books are also full of vivid description — of places, people, meals, natural wonders — that give the stories an air of authority; his use of documents and appendixes further convinces the reader that the espionage world is really as described. Along with John LeCarré, Deighton is one of our foremost contemporary writers of espionage novels.

   The billion-dollar brain of this novel’s title is a remarkable computer owned by a Texas mogul who has assembled his own private espionage network. This wild-card covert agency poses a grave threat to just about every government on earth, and what makes it tick is the incredibly complex computer, the quintessential technical-wonder successor to man’s own reason and self-asserted destiny.

   Deighton’s insubordinate, deceptively tough, unnamed first-person spy is given the task of neutralizing this menace, and along the way meets some fascinating characters. There is sensuous, champagne-swilling Signe Laine, a Finnish beauty who favors expensive underwear and has a knack and passion for besting males; Dawlish, the fumbling Intelligence chief who runs the show; Colonel Stok, of Red Anny Intelligence; Harvey Newbegin, the neurotic American agent who is in on the chase; and the maniacal General Midwinter. The action is on an international scale, swinging from Helsinki to London, Texas, Leningrad, and New York.

   This is a tightly constructed, imaginative, high-tech sort of thriller. Space Age espionage, in which Colonel Stok makes the disturbingly relevant observation “Two not very clever men will have to decide whether to extend a hand or pull a trigger.”

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD – The Theme Is Murder. Abelard Shuman, hardcover, 1967.

   Miriam Allen deFord is best known for her scholarly works on a variety of historical subjects, and for her true-crime studies — the full-length books, The Overbury Affair (for which she was awarded an MWA Edgar in 1961) and Ma Barker (1970), and the collection of short pieces, Murderers Sane and Mad (1965).

   But she was also an accomplished writer of short stories, both mysteries and science fiction (and in some cases a combination of the two); beginning in 1944, she published an aggregate of more than 1O0 until her death in 1975 at the age of eighty-seven.

   The Theme ls Murder is her only criminous collection, and a first-rate gathering it is. There are seventeen stories here, most of which first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; others were originally published in such diverse publications as Shadow Mystery Magazine, the Sixties men’s periodical Dude, and Windsor Quarterly. Most are of the quiet variety, with emphasis on character and unusual backgrounds (an actual homicide case preserved on a cuneiform tablet from 1850 B.C., for instance, in “The Judgment of En-Lil”; or Ancient Rome in “De Crimine”).

   One of her favorite themes is familial strife that builds into violence, as in such stories as ”Beyond the Sea of Death,” “The Oleander’ and “A Death in the Family.”

   Each of these seventeen tales is finely crafted and thought-provoking — a single-volume legacy from a gifted spinner of mysterious webs. Recommended.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

WILLIAM L. DeANDREA – The Hog Murders. Niccolo Benedetti #1. Avon, paperback original, 1979. Intl Polygonics Ltd, paperback, 1999.

   DeAndrea’s second Edgar-winner is a wonderfully old-fashioned puzzle mystery, complete with serial killer and a master detective reminiscent of Nero Wolfe or even the great Holmes himself. The eccentric but brilliant Professor Niccolo Benedetti is assisted by his pupil, Ron Gentry, a young private eye based in snowy Sparta, New York.

   Sparta is being terrorized by a homicidal maniac who, in the tradition of serial killers, writes notes to a local journalist, in this case likable Buell Tatham. He signs himself “Hog,” and the cover of this paperback is a particularly arresting one, showing a stocky man’s upper body topped by the monstrous head of a pig. Hog’s methods are as clever as they’re diabolical; his victims are random and almost invariably innocent — even a child is killed. But Benedetti, of course, is a little too quick for him.

   The solution is truly unexpected, yet really as obvious as who killed Roger Ackroyd; in other words, the reader is fooled but could kick himself for it. Bonuses are the trademark DeAndrea wit and the withholding of the complete solution until the very last sentence.

   In addition to his mysteries, DeAndrea has published a number of non-series suspense novels, including The Lunatic Fringe (1980), which is set in New York City during the Gay Nineties; and Cronus ( 1984), a thriller about an apparent terrorist killing in the sleepy town of Draper, Pennsylvania. DeAndrea has also published one novel to date under the pseudonym Philip Degrave, Unholy Moses (1985).

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

      The Niccolo Benedetti series —

The Hog Murders. Avon 1979
The Werewolf Murders. Doubleday 1992
The Manx Murders. Penzler 1994

WILLIAM L. DeANDREA – Killed on the Ice. Matt Cobb #4.  Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1984.  Mysterious Press, paperback, 1987.

   William L. De Andrea’s career started off with a bang when his first book, Killed in the Ratings, introducing sleuth Matt Cobb, won an MWA Edgar for Best First Novel of 1978. The very next year, his second book, The Hog Murders, won the Edgar for Best Paperback. Since then, his career has continued to blossom, with a couple of historical mysteries, a thriller, and three more Matt Cobb books.

   Matt is an engaging chap who works as a troubleshooter for a TV network; he’s gentle with women (who don’t always return the courtesy) and a good friend to his constant companion, Spot, the attack-trained Samoyed. If DeAndrea’s fans are fond of Matt, they positively adore Spot, the most appealing little scene-stealer since Asta.

   In Killed on the Ice, Dr. Paul Dinkover, “perhaps the most renowned American psychiatrist alive,” is found sprawled on the ice of a Manhattan skating rink, his stomach thoroughly ventilated with a hunting knife. The ice rink is the one where Matt’s network is filming a special on Olympic skater Wendy Ichimi. Wendy has a motive, and also a good start on capturing Matt’s ever-vulnerable heart.

   When she begins to look like a potential victim herself, he has more than a professional interest in finding the murderer. Along the way, he encounters (as usual) Detective Lieutenant Cornelius Martin, Jr., the black cop from Matt’s old neighborhood, and an intriguing new character — the Frying Nun, an assistant D.A. who left the convent for law school. Also offering a good dying message, interesting murder method, and a clever ruse during the climactic fight, Killed on the Ice is up to DeAndrea’s usual high standard.

   Matt Cobb’s other amateur investigations include Killed in the Act (l981) and Killed with a Passion (1983).

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

      The complete Matt Cobb series —

Killed in the Ratings. Harcourt 1978.
Killed in the Act. Doubleday 1981.
Killed with a Passion. Doubleday 1983.
Killed on the Ice. Doubleday 1984.
Killed in Paradise. Mysterious Press 1988.
Killed on the Rocks. Mysterious Press 1990.
Killed in Fringe Time. Simon 1995.
Killed in the Fog. Simon 1996.

   
TECH DAVIS – Full Fare for a Corpse.  Aubrey Nash #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. No paperback edition.

   The central premise of Full Fare for a Corpse is irresistible: Four days after Christmas, a transcontinental Union Pacific passenger train runs into a blizzard on the Wyoming Great Divide and comes up snowbound at a whistle-stop station in the middle of nowhere. Snowbound with it is a freight full of supplies, and nearby is a sheep ranch, so the 130 passengers and crew on board the ten-car train don’t need to worry about provisions.

   What they do need to worry about is that one of their number is a murderer. (If this premise sounds familiar, it may be because you — and Tech Davis — happened to read Agatha Christie’s  Murder on the Orient Express, which is about murder on a snowbound train in Yugoslavia and was published three years earlier than Full Fare for a Corpse.)

   Victim number one is an unidentified stranger who isn’t even on the passenger list, but is found in his robe and slippers in one of the compartments, shot to death under very unusual circumstances. Victim number two turns up not quite dead in the baggage car, laid out next to the remains of number one. There is also a victim number three. The task of unraveling all these events falls to suave, “semiprofessional” New York sleuth Aubrey Nash, with the help of an ex-Wyoming sheriff named Sargent. And unravel them they do, but not before the murderer strikes again at an impromptu New Year’s Eve celebration put on by the passengers to “ease the tension.”

   The handling of all this isn’t bad, although the novel does have its drawbacks: Davis’s prose is somewhat overblown, full of words like parturition and expatiated; Nash owes his origins (and methods) not to Hercule Poirot but to Philo Vance, though without Vance’s more obnoxious qualities; and more could have been done with the howling blizzard outside the train.

   On the plus side, the plot is tricky enough to keep one reading and guessing, and Nash’s piecing together of the puzzle is logical and well clued. There are also some good characters, some witty dialogue, and more action than you might expect in this type of whodunit. The whole thing is reminiscent of the better of those delightfully campy B-movie melodramas of the same period .. A good evening’s entertainment.

   Davis published two other novels featuring the exploits of Aubrey Nash: Terror at Compass Lake (1935), which has an upstate New York setting; and Murder on Alternate Tuesdays (1938), set in New York City.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.