VICTOR CANNING – A Fall from Grace. Wm. Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1980; Pan, UK, pb, 1982. William Morrow, US, hardcover, 1981; reprint hardcover: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, June 1981.

   Beginning with Polycarp’s Progress in 1935, Victor Canning has written over fifty novels. After World War II, he turned his efforts to espionage fiction, a genre at which he is now acknowledged to be one of the best practitioners.

   Fall from Grace, however, is anything but an international thriller. Halfway through this psychological mystery, Canning’s main character, private investigator James Helder, is asked how a calm, good-hearted man such as himself got into his somewhat unsavory line of work.

Part of Helder’ s explanation is that he feels himself to be “a sort of gray shape living a gray, humdrum life like so many people. So, to escape from all that, I mix in other and more unorthodox people’s lives to add a little crude color to my own.”

   The unorthodox person Helder is trailing here is the totally amoral John Corbin, about whom Helder observes, “The John Corbins of this world felt compelled to make the occasional obligation to the gods of chance. A little not-too-expensive kindness here, a rare good deed to assuage self-disgust, even at times an isolated self-sacrifice to bring them close to the shriving of some sin.”

   That really is all this novel is about, but it is enough. Canning gives us an engrossing, incisive study of the world’s Corbins, the selfish and impulsive people who charm those close to them and sometimes even themselves, predators with engaging smiles and talent for deception.

   This John Corbin lands a job writing the history of the gardens of Illaton Manor, long tended by the family of Corbin’s employer, the bishop of Testerburgh. Included in the job are a cabin, extensive research facilities, and circumstances which make it easy to seduce beautiful coworker Rachel Harrison.

   Corbin takes advantage of all these conveniences, for a while even convincing himself that he genuinely loves Rachel. But an unexpected opportunity for profitable mischief proves that Corbin’s new leaf is only ego-supported self-delusion, a strained hiatus from reality. He enthusiastically reverts to type.

   This is a meticulously written, revealing glimpse into the mind of a man who is the serpent in his own Garden of Eden.

   Especially good among Canning’s early novels are The Chasm (1947) and The House of the Seven Flies (1952). Other noteworthy titles among his later works include Firecrest (1972), The Rainbird Pattern (1973), which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot, and Birds of a Feather (1985). Also excellent is a collection of four suspense novelettes, Oasis Nine (1958).

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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.

[UPDATE] 07-16-09.   Jamie Sturgeon has just pointed out the existence of a website devoted to Victor Canning, including of course a detailed bibliography. It’s at http://www.victorcanning.com/, and it is a work of art, to say the least. In terms of the bibliography, not only are covers of each edition of every book shown, but photos of places mentioned in each of the books are often included as well.

GIL BREWER – The Red Scarf. Mystery House, hardcover, 1958. Paperback reprint: Crest 310; 1st printing, July 1959. First published in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1955 (quite likely in shortened form).

   Motel owner Ray Nichols, hitchhiking home in northern Florida after a futile trip up north to raise capital for his floundering auto court, is given a ride by a bickering and drunken couple named Vivian Rise and Noel Teece.

   An accident, the result of Teece’s drinking, leaves Teece bloody and unconscious. Unhurt, Nichols finds a suitcase full of money in the car. Vivian, also unhurt, urges that they leave with it together before the police come, saying it belongs to her and offering to pay Nichols for his help. Against his better judgment, he agrees.

   It is only later, back home in the town of Lakeview, that Nichols discovers Teece is a courier for an underworld gambling syndicate and that the money really belongs to them. While he struggles with his conscience, several groups begin vying for the loot, including a syndicate man named Wirt Radan, the police — and Teece. Nichols and his wife, Bess, soon become targets, and Brewer leads us through a couple of neat plot turns on the way to a volatile climax.

   There is considerable suspense here, some strong characterization, and the various components mesh smoothly. Brewer’s prose is leaner and more controlled than in any of his other novels.

   Anthony Boucher said in the New York Times that The Red Scarf is the “all-around best Gil Brewer … a full-packed story.” This reviewer agrees.

   Nearly all of Brewer’s thirty other novels (all but one of which, are paperback originals) are worth reading. Especially good are And the Girl Screamed (1956), which has some fine chase sequences; The Angry Dream (1957), the second of Brewer’s two hardcovers and a tale of hatred out of the past, in a wintry northern setting; and The Three-Way Split (1960), a well-done story of charter boats and sunken treasure in a style reminiscent of Hemingway’ s To Have and Have Not.

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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.

GIL BREWER – A Killer Is Loose. Gold Medal 380, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1954.

   In the 1950s and 1960s, Gil Brewer occupied a major stall in the stable of writers of Gold Medal paperback originals, along with John D. MacDonald, Richard S. Prather, and Charles Williams.

   Brewer’s work was uneven but usually interesting and evocative, and quite popular from 1951 to 1958; his first novel, 13 French Street (1951), sold more than a million copies. Much of his fiction is built around the theme of a man corrupted by an evil, designing woman; but his two best novels, this one and The Red Scarf, are departures from that theme.

   Set in Florida, as is most of Brewer’s fiction, A Killer Is Loose is a truly harrowing portrait of a psychotic personality that comes close to rivaling the nightmare portraits in the novels of Jim Thompson.

   It tells the story of Ralph Angers, a deranged surgeon and Korean War veteran obsessed with building a hospital, and his devastating effect on the lives of several citizens. One of those citizens is the narrator, Steve Logan, a down-on-his-luck ex-cop whose wife is about to have a baby and who makes the mistake of saving Angers’s life, thus becoming his “pal.”

   As Logan says on page one, by way of prologue, “There was nothing simple about Angers, except maybe the Godlike way he had of doing things.”

   Brewer maintains a pervading sense of terror and an acute level of tension throughout. The novel is flawed by a slow beginning and a couple of improbable occurrences, as well as by an ending that is a little abrupt — all of which are the probable result of hasty writing. (Brewer once said that he wrote most of his early novels in a white heat of seven to ten days.)

   But its strengths far outnumber its weaknesses. Two aspects in particular stand out: One is the curious and frightening relationship that develops between Logan and Angers; the other is a five-page scene in which Angers, with Logan looking on helplessly, forces a scared little girl to play the piano for him — a scene Woolrich might have written and Hitchcock should have filmed.

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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.

RUSSELL H. GREENAN – The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton. New York: Random House, hardcover, 1973. Paperback reprint: Fawcett Crest, 1974. Film: Marano, 1997, as The Secret Life of Algernon.

   Algernon Pendleton hears voices from unexpected sources — from philodendrons, for example. But his favorite voice source is Eulalia, a Worcester porcelain pitcher, and it is only with Eulalia that he carries on long conversations.

   In fact, this is pretty much the essence of Algernon’s existence — chatting with his pitcher and leading a quiet, contemplative life in his large old house in Brookline, Massachusetts. Of course he has to earn money occasionally, and this he does by selling, one by one, his late grandfather’s collection of Egyptian artifacts (his grandfather was a famed and eccentric Egyptologist).

   Still, Algernon is falling farther and farther into debt, and Eulalia fears the day may come when she, too, will be sold.

   Then one summer, outsiders begin to force their way into Algernon’s normally quiet and isolated fife. First comes an old navy friend who has left his wife, has a suitcase full of money, and has seriously considered suicide.

   Well, anything for a friend. At Eulalia’s urging, Algernon fulfills the suicide wish by blowing his friend’s brains out, helping himself to the money, and burying the body in a graveyard behind the house.

   Alas, two other people discover this secret and attempt to blackmail Algernon. A Turkish antique dealer wants money; and a beautiful, but pushy, female archaeologist wants access to all the treasures and secrets of Algernon’s late grandfather. The antique dealer is killed in a struggle (and also buried in the graveyard).

   And the beautiful archaeologist? Well, that would be telling.

   Suffice it to say that her fate fits in perfectly with Algernon’s voices, with her obsession for Egyptian lore, and with the whole ambiance of the strange old house in Brookline.

   Like Russell Greenan’s other novels — the highly acclaimed It Happened in Boston? (1968), Nightmare (1970), The Queen of America (1972), Heart of Gold (1975), The Bric-a-Brac Man (1976), and Keepers (1979) — this is a most unusual book with elements of black humor and underplayed horror.

   There is nothing else quite like a Greenan novel of suspense, as you’ll see if you read this one or any of the others.

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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.

PATRICIA MOYES – A Six-Letter Word for Death.

Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1983. Holt Rinehart and Winston, US, hc, 1983. US paperback reprint: Holt/Owl, 1985.

   In the late Fifties, as many of the Golden Age masters of the British mystery were retiring or expiring, new blood (so to speak) entered the field. Many of the younger generation turned their hands to more realistic mystery forms, but a few novices stayed with the old ways and true.

   Such a writer is Patricia Moyes, whose dedication to the classic British puzzle has been a comfort to cozy fans since Dead Men Don’t Ski (1959).

   A Six-Letter Word for Death is but the latest in a long-running series featuring Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard and his wife, Emmy. It is a classic country-house mystery set on the Isle of Wight. A publisher invites a group of pseudonymous mystery authors called the Guess Who for a weekend house party.

   Meanwhile, Henry (invited as guest expert and lecturer) has received a series of clues by mail crossword-puzzle sections indicating that the party guests may an have skeletons in their closets. When murder follows, Tibbett’s investigation intensifies to a classic, if overly melodramatic, confrontation with suspects and murderer.

   Moyes manages to poke a bit of affectionate fun at mystery fiction and its creators. She also creates a traditional tale much more satisfying than some of her recent work set in the West Indies. Moyes takes a touch of the police procedural, a dash of the husband-and-wife mystery/adventure, and creates a very pleasing product in the style of the Golden Age.

   A Six-Letter Word for Death is one of Moyes’s best mysteries of the last ten years. Other notable Tibbett cases are Murder a La Mode (1963), Johnny Under Ground (1965), and Seasons of Snows and Sins (1971).

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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.

CLARISSA WATSON – The Fourth Stage of Gainsborough Brown. David McKay, hardcover, 1977. Reprint paperbacks: Penguin, 1978; Ballantine, 1986.

   Clarissa Watson is co-owner and director of an art gallery on Long Island, and she puts her knowledge of the art world to good use in her three novels about artist and gallery assistant Persis Willum.

Her depiction of the art world — its trendiness, petty jealousies, passions, and intrigues — is sure, and fleshed out with memorable characters. While many of the eccentrics Watson portrays are representative of real types who frequent museum openings and galleries, they are never stereotypical; and Persis herself, an independent but vulnerable thirty-six-year-old widow, is a delight.

   The title character of this first novel, Gainsborough Brown, is an artist of flamboyant reputation — and definitely not a delight. Painters go through many “stages” in their work; at the time the book opens, “Gains” is in his third major stage; before he reaches his fourth, he is dead.

   After Gains drowns in the swimming pool at a birthday party that Persis’s Aunt Lydie (an art patron and another extremely appealing character) has thrown for herself, Persis decides his death was no accident. And as an employee of Long Island’s North Shore Gallery, which handled the artist’s work, she feels compelled to find out who killed him and why.

   Armed with an unusual detective’s tool — a sketch pad — Persis moves in what she hopes is an unobtrusive manner through the chic art world, from Manhattan to Paris, from elegant galleries to a studio full of cruelly satiric sculpture. Unfortunately, her investigative efforts have not gone unobserved, and she comes upon the solution to her first case at considerable danger to herself.

   Watson’s writing, like her heroine, is witty and stylish, and her plot is full of surprises. The other Persis Willum novels are The Bishop in the Back Seat (Atheneum, 1980) and Runaway (Atheneum, 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.

         Bibliographic update:

   There were two additional books in the series, both published after the 1986 edition of 1001 Midnights. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin: Last Plane from Nice (Atheneum, 1988) and Somebody Killed the Messenger (Atheneum, 1988).

JOSEPH WAMBAUGH – The Choirboys. Delacorte, hardcover, 1975. Reprint paperback: Dell, 1976. Reprinted many times since. Film: Lorimar, 1978; screenwriter: Christopher Knopf; director: Robert Aldrich.

   The powerful opening of this novel takes place in a cave in Vietnam in 1967. Two unnamed marines have taken shelter there from the enemy, and one of them suffers a severe emotional break. Although we do not learn their identities until much later in the book, we can surmise that this incident provides the fuel for future tragedy.

   The scene then shifts to Los Angeles nearly ten years later The “choirboys” are a group of policemen who attend “choir practice” — otherwise known as drinking binges — in MacArthur Park after going off night duty . We are told that a tragedy has taken place during one of these sessions and that a young man has been shot to death.

   Wambaugh then goes into flashback and takes us through the months prior to this final choir practice, introducing us to the participants, allowing us to glimpse their routine — and not-so-routine — tours of duty.

   We come to know intimately such characters as Roscoe Rules, the meanest and probably most despicable man in the precinct; Aaron Mobley, a twenty-five-year-old alcoholic who somehow still manages to function on the job; Francis Tanaguchi, a Nisei who feels more Mexican than Japanese; Spermwhale Whalen, a veteran cop who has a big stake in making it to his twenty-year retirement date; Sam Niles and Howard Bloomguard, physical opposites who nonetheless complement one another as partners; Spencer Van Moot, who can wangle a “freebie” out of any merchant he meets; Baxter Slate, whose “different” quality is hard for his fellow cops to pin down.

   With frequent black humor, Wambaugh shows us both the strengths and weaknesses of his characters, as well as the daily strains, sordidness, and departmental hypocrisy with which they must cope. And when tragedy finally befalls them, the only surprise is that it hasn’t happened sooner.

   This is a first-rate novel that goes several steps beyond the standard police procedural. It was filmed in 1977, starring Charles Durning and Perry King. Among Wambaugh’s other novels of the police world are The Black Marble (1978) and The Secrets of Harry Bright (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.

COLIN WATSON – Just What the Doctor Ordered.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1969. Paperback reprint: Dell, US, 1982 [Murder Ink #37]. Published earlier in the UK as The Flaxborough Crab; Eyre, hc, 1969.

   One measure of accomplishment for any writer of fiction is how successfully he or she transports us to his/her own individual world of imagination. Certainly one of the more successful in this regard is Colin Watson and his fictional town of Flaxborough.

   Much to our delight, and to the chagrin of Inspector Purbright of the Flaxborough Police Department, an amazing amount of crime seems to occur in this English village.

   Just What the Doctor Ordered begins with a number of sexual assaults on the women of the town. Miss Butters is accosted in Gorry Wood; Miss Sweeting on Heston Lane; Miss Pollock by the reservoir; and at St. Hilda’s a man threatens to “pollinate” Mrs. Pasquith.

   The fact that the attacks are perpetrated by elderly gentlemen, who make their escape by running sideways, only adds to the puzzlement. Inspector Purbright at first suspects an herbal concoction that promises amazing renewed virility. But few cases are quite so simple, as any Colin Watson fan will tell you, and this one takes several additional turns, including murder, before a solution is found.

   Inspector Purbright –flanked by his superior, Chief Constable Chubb; his subordinate, Sergeant Love; and his perpetual thorn-in-the-side, Miss Lucilla Teatime — is at the center of the Flaxborough novels, but the real stars are the amusing and eccentric townspeople themselves.

   This and the other novels in the series are recommended without reservation. Those other novels include Hopjoy Was Here (1963), Charity Ends at Home (1968), Six Nuns and a Shotgun (1975), Plaster Sinners (1981), and Whatever Happened at Mumbleshy? (1983).

   Colin Watson is also the author of an excellent sociological study of the British crime novel between the two world wars, Snobbery with Violence (1971; revised edition, 1979).

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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.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   Flaxborough fans — and I’m sure you already know who you are — will have already recognized this particular adventure — under its British title, of course — as the third of four Inspector Purbright cases that were adapted for TV by the BBC in 1977. The first two in the recently released box set were reviewed here not so very long ago.

[UPDATE] 06-17-09.   Check the comments for a complete list of all of the Inspector Purbright novels, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

ROSS THOMAS – The Cold War Swap. William Morrow, 1966. Paperback reprints include: Avon, 1967; Pocket, 1976; Perennial Library, 1984,1986; Mysterious Press, 1992.

   Mac’s Place is a bar located in Bonn, West Germany. It is run by McCorkle and Padillo, two expatriate Americans. The only trouble is that Padillo, from time to time, has to assume his other role as an undercover agent, take a leave of absence from the bar business, and travel to some country or another on some mission or another. Padilla never tells McCorkle where he’s going or what he’s up to, and that’s the way they both want it.

   However, in this story, that arrangement begins to come unraveled. Padillo is off on another trip (nothing new there), but just as he is leaving, there is a killing in the bar that seems somehow related to his departure. And just as the furor over the killing is beginning to die down, there is an urgent message for McCorkle — a message from Padilla, trapped in East Germany and asking for Mac’s help.

   This is the first of several fine international adventure/ espionage novels from Ross Thomas, and with each successive book he has established himself more and more firmly as a master of the genre. His stories, moving at a fast and intricate pace, are peopled with an amazing array — some critics might say an almost distracting array — of characters.

   A typical Thomas protagonist is seldom young; rather, he is flirting with middle age, is a little world-weary but still able to take care of himself, and should know better than to get involved in the situation that confronts him. But, for personal and/or professional reasons, he does become involved.

   And indeed, McCorkle does become involved. He travels to East Germany to be met by betrayal, a certain amount of failure, and a certain amount of success. The scenes that take place during his stay behind the Iron Curtain are especially palpable and nerve-racking.

   Other novels featuring McCorkle and Padillo are Cast a Yellow Shadow (1967) and The Backup Man (1971).

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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.

MIKE ROSCOE – One Tear for My Grave.

Crown, hardcover, 1955. Paperback reprints: Signet #1358, November 1956, cover: Robert Maguire; G2432, 1964.

   Mike Roscoe’s tough Kansas City private eye Johnny April appeared in five novels between 1951 and 1958. Although the first four went through various printings and editions, neither Roscoe nor April is much remembered today.

   Both are due for revival and reassessment, as the handful of Johnny April stories are among the best produced in the wave of hard-hitting PI fiction that followed the big splash made by Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.

   One Tear for my Grave finds April in the presence of millionaire Avery J. Castleman and a corpse. This prologue (“The 23rd Hour”) is followed by a flashback (“The First 22 Hours”) that comprises the bulk of the book.

   The lure of a fat retainer coaxes April out of bed at two in the morning to aid bookie Eddie Norris and his moll, Nicky, who have a corpse on their hands — or, actually, in their back seat. Norris claims innocence — somebody dumped this stiff in his car, says the bookie. From the cops April learns the corpse is a society type named David Matthews.

   Over the coming hours, various bookies — all of them owed money by Matthews — begin to die, and not of natural causes. Among them is Norris. April bumps heads with one particularly nasty bookie named Carbone, who trashes April’s office to convince him to “lay off” this case, which only serves to enrage the detective.

   April then meets with Ginny Castleman, the delicate, sympathy-arousing society girl engaged to the late Matthews; he also meets her mysterious Oriental servant, whose quiet concern for his mistress seems strangely obsessive. While bobbing and weaving between bookies and their thugs, April encounters Carbone’s moll, Lola, and a love/hate relationship blossoms.

   Eventually he finds that Matthews had paid off all the bookies before their deaths; and at the Castleman mansion, April has a final confrontation with Carbone as the convoluted, ultimately tragic mystery unravels. An epilogue (“The 24th Hour”) brings the book full circle.

   What sets such Roscoe mysteries as One Tear for My Grave apart from the crowd of would-be Spillanes is a studiously spare style. The novel is stripped for speed, consisting mostly of crisp dialogue and one- and two-sentence paragraphs.

   Despite this, the language is often vivid and evocative; witness the four opening lines (and four opening paragraphs) of the novel:

         There are two times when a man will lie very still.

         When he is finished making love with a woman.

         When he is finished with life.

         The man on the floor lay still with death.

   Roscoe was two men — Michael Ruso and John Roscoe — who were real private eyes, employed by Hargrave’s Detective Agency in Kansas City.

   The team’s first three books — Death Is a Round Black Ball (1952), Riddle Me This (1953), and Slice of Hell (1954) — are also excellent.

   The last Johnny April novel, The Midnight Eye, did not appear till 1958, half an Ace Double. While some of the poetic touches were still present, this marked a dropping off in quality over the first four, and a near absence of the dialogue/short paragraph approach.

   Perhaps the team had broken up and only one of them recorded this last Johnny April case.

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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.