LESLIE FORD – Ill Met by Moonlight. Colonel Primrose & Grace Latham #2. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1938. Dell #6, paperback, mapback edition, 1943.  Popular Library, paperback, 1964.

   Leslie Ford (a pseudonym of Zenith Brown. who also wrote as David Frame,  has often been accused of being one of the leading practitioners of the “had-I-but-known” school. and it is true that a great many of these leading and tension-spoiling statements appear in her novels. However, shortsighted critics have overlooked her carefully delineated exploration of life among people who are not too different from the average reader except in the fact that, through familial associations, political affinity, or geographic accident, they invite more than their fair share of murder and well-bred mayhem.

   This is the second adventure of Colonel John T. Primrose and Sergeant Phineas Buck, one in which the unlikely but highly successful combination of retired officer and retired enlisted man is teared with a thirty-eight-year-old widow, Grace Latham.

   Grace is of a distinguished Georgetown family, and her elegant home forms the backdrop for many of the books in this series. Ill Met by Moonlight takes place in another setting — April Harbor, Maryland, a summer playground for an inbred group of upper-crust families, where Grace and her relatives have been vacationing for years. Primrose and Buck are guests at Grace’s cottage when she finds a neighbor dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in the garage next door.

   An old romance, a troubled marriage, a new love affair, and relationships with the folks in the neighboring town are all woven together in this engrossing and charming tale of love and murder.

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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.

STANTON FORBES – If Laurel Shot Hardy the World Would End. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1970.

   During Mime Day at Shenley College, a small eastern school, students from the Classical Cinema Department all decide to dress up as Laurel and Hardy for their annual high jinks. One pair of actors takes the opportunity to murder the president of a nearby electronics corporation, Sacheville, Inc., and newly hired PR director Larry Evans is implicated in the crime. In order to save his bacon, Evans undertakes an investigation of his own, pokes around among a bunch of rather quirky (to say the least) suspects, and eventually unmasks the culprits.

   This is a fine idea for a mystery, but the execution is poor. Forbes’s style is a cross between eccentric and sophomoric; so is her humor. Some might find this sort of thing clever and amusing, but this reviewer isn’t one of them. (The best thing about the book, in fact, is its wraparound dust jacket depicting thirteen sad-faced Laurels against an orange background — one of the niftiest jackets on any contemporary crime novel.)

   Forbes is the author of numerous other novels, among them the likewise fancifully titled Go to Thy Death Bed (1968), The Name’s Death, Remember Me? (1969), and The Sad, Sudden Death of My Fair Lady (1971). She has also written numerous mysteries under the pseudonyms Tobias Wells  and Forbes Rydell (collaborations with Helen B. Rydell).

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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.

KEN FOLLETT – Eye of the Needle.  Arbor House, US, hardcover, 1978. Signet, US, paperback, 1979. First published in the UK as Macdonald and James, London, 1978, as Storm Island. Reprinted many times since. Film: United Artists, 1981, with Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan.

   Eye of the Needle is one of the best of the recent spate of World War II espionage novels. Ken Follett combines a very believable plot based on astounding. historical fact with excellent pacing and-a real boon in this type of thriller-well-rounded. sympathetic characters.

   The historical fact is that in 1944 the Allies created a fake army in southeastern England. To Nazi reconnaissance planes. it looked like a huge encampment set to invade France at Calais. But seen from the ground, the “barracks” had only one side and a roof; the “airplanes” were mere carcasses sunk into the ground. with no engines or wheels. It was a hoax of gigantic proportions that convinced the Nazis to concentrate their defenses at Calais instead of Normandy, and it affected the outcome of the war.

   But this outcome would have been very different had there been one German spy who saw the phony encampment al ground level and reported it to Berlin. Suppose there had been such a spy. a master spy, an upper-class German, somewhat of a rebel, who refused to join the Nazi party but still had the ear of Hitler. Suppose such a spy had lived in London long enough to pass as an Englishman ….

   This is the central premise of Eye of the Needle. Here Follett gives us Die Nadel — the Needle — who uses a stiletto to kill anyone who threatens his mission or his cover. He kills as a soldier; he doesn’t enjoy it. In a moment of self-inquiry. he wonders if his personality — the ever-present wariness that keeps him at a distance from everyone else — has really not been foisted upon him by his occupation, as he likes to suppose; perhaps, he thinks, he has instead chosen his profession because it is the only type of work that can make him appear normal, even to himself.

   Such self-doubt (although it is a luxury the Needle rarely permits himself) has us at least nominally on his side for much (but not all) of the novel, even as the British agents — a typically tweedy ex-professor named Godliman and a former Scotland Yard man named Bloggs — match him in intelligence and quickly realize he has discovered their great hoax.

   With this discovery, the chase becomes faster and more desperate. Circumstances lead Die Nadel to a storm-battered island in the North Sea, where a frustrated young woman, Lucy Rose, and her wheelchair-bound husband (he lost both of his legs in a traffic accident) live in bitter isolation and where much of the novel’s action takes place.

   Lucy’s attraction to the Needle, her fear and revulsion when she finds out what he is, and finally her desperate struggle to keep from becoming his latest victim make for some the best edge-of-the-chair suspense writing of the past decade. (The 1981 film version starring Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan has its moments but unfortunately falls far short of the novel.)

   Follett’s success with Eye of the Needle led to a number of other best sellers, none of which has the same raw powe1 and tension. Those other thrillers include Triple (1979), The Key to Rebecca (1980), The Man from St. Petersburg (1982), and On the Wings of Eagles (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.
   

J. S. FLETCHER – The Middle Temple Murder. Knopf, hardcover, 1919. Reprinted many times.

   Julian Symons, English author and critic, coined a good name for the multitude of middle-rank mystery writers who lacked literary skill and ingenuity — the Humdrums. J. S. Fletcher stood in the front rank of the prolific English phalanx of Humdrums. He wrote over a hundred books on a variety of subjects, and the majority were detective stories. These melodramas are extremely conventional, with the not-too-brilliant central puzzle dominating the story.

   They are a comfortable confirmation of decency and lawfulness for the moneyed middle class. Snobbery descends to racial prejudice (with several Chinese villains), and despicable, evil foreigners have dark complexions and comical accents. Not much scientific detection is involved, and the tenets of the Golden Age arc not closely followed. There is too much reliance on coincidence, detectives missing details, failure to follow up clues, and mysterious figures who appear to wrap up the plot at the end.

   It is a trifling triumph to select one of Fletcher’s detective stories as his best. From The Amaranth Club (1926) to The Yorkshire Moorland Murder (1930), there is not much to choose from, except for The Middle Temple Murder. While the plot is fairly pedestrian, many of Fletcher’s defects are absent. It is one of his earliest works, and attracted the first real notice for Fletcher in the United States when it was championed by Woodrow Wilson.

   The story concerns Frank Spargo, subeditor of the Watchman, who happens to be present when a bludgeoned body is found in the Middle Temple. The hotshot reporter (he’s as bright as any latterday Flash Casey) teams up with Ronald Breton, barrister, to follow the clues in this devious mystery.

   The victim is John Marbury, from Australia, who was struck down on his first night back in London after an absence of many years. This photo=procedural novel is a case of complicated theft, legacy, parentage, and includes a suspected empty coffin. A major motif (as in many Fletcher tales) is railway travel checking timetables; confirming alibis; zipping around to discover clues; getaways and pursuits.

   Fletcher has been praised for his novels set in the English countryside, but the atmosphere in most of these is overwrought and the descriptions dull. Novels such as The Middle Temple Murder and The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) are vivid because most of the action takes place in the streets, byways, squares, stations, and buildings of London, and is reported in factual detail.

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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.

IAN FLEMING – Casino Royale. James Bond #1.  Macmillan, hardcover, 1959. Reprinted many times. TV episode: 1954 starring Barry Nelson as Bond. Films: (1) 1967 ensemble satirical film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. (2) 2006 with Daniel Craig as Bond.

The spy novels of Ian Fleming made James Bond — Agent 007 of British Intelligence — a household name and spawned a large number of films, as well as imitators both good and bad. This great escape fiction seemed just what was needed by the 1950s world — still austere after the sacrifices of World War II and newly frozen in the grip of the cold war-and the public’s reaction was tremendous. Fleming gave his readers richly detailed descriptions of exotic locales, exclusive hotels and resorts, fine foods and wines, expensive cars, luxury consumer goods, and beautiful women.

And for the first time, sex — illicit, hedonistic, and sophisticated — came to the forefront in the British mystery. Bond’s basic character was nothing new lo the genre, since he is very much in the tradition of the snobbish, urbane gentleman, but the villains were something new and so hideously evil and inventive in their wicked ways as to often strain the reader’s credulity. The Bond novels, even with their rampant sexism and fervent anticommunism, can be great fun if read with the context of their times in mind.

As Casino Royale opens, we find Bond at the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, watching a powerful agent of the Opposition (SMERSH) play baccarat. Bond is acting undercover, posing as a rich client of a Jamaican import-export firm, and his mission is to see that the agent, Le Chiffre, who is reported to be on the brink of financial disaster, is “ridiculed and destroyed.” Bond has been chosen for this assignment by his boss-known throughout the series only as M — because 007 is the finest gambler in the Secret Service.

Much to Bond’s dismay, the Service also sends him a “Number Two”: a woman named Vesper Lynd. Bond’s comments are telling on this point: Although Vesper is a beautiful woman, 007 is “not amused …. Women were for recreation.” A true professional, however, Bond eventually establishes a rapport with Vesper and comes to respect her abilities –and, inevitably, also becomes romantically involved with her.

Fleming gives his reader excellent glimpses into the operation of the grand casinos and the people who frequent them; a high-stakes baccarat game in which Bond becomes enmeshed with Le Chiffre holds even the attention of those who know or care nothing about cards. If you want to experience th thrill of playing casino games, you may visit online 1 dollar deposit casino real money platforms. Casino platforms like conquestador casino ontario also offer exciting bonuses, a wide selection of games, and big prizes.

There are car chases, a literally torturous confrontation with the villain, and an ending that combines success with disillusionment in a manner characteristic of the series.

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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.

IAN FLEMING – Goldfinger. James Bond #7. Macmillan, hardcover, 1959. Signet #S1822, paperback, 1960. Reprinted many times.  Film: United Artists, 1964 (with Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Fröbe).

   This is perhaps Fleming’s wildest plot, involving a maniacal criminal with a lust for gold and a plan to rob Fort Knox. Bond’s association with Auric Goldfinger begins in Nassau when he encounters Junius Dupont, a rich American who feels he is being cheated while playing two-handed canasta with Goldfinger.

   Bond agrees to watch their games and soon discovers that Goldfinger — whose desire is to sport a golden tan at all times — has a very effective method of cheating his opponent. An excellent card-player himself, Bond quickly extricates Dupont from the man’s clutches, and considers the matter closed. Weeks later, however, Goldfinger surf aces in the files of British Intelligence as a possible international threat, and Bond finds himself once more involved with the man, this time professionally.

   There is the usual complement of beautiful girls, luxury clubs, and odd methods of torture and murder, but what this novel points up about the Bond series is that there is also a lot of low-key action: long, detailed card games, golf matches, and conversations. Those not interested in Fleming’s passions (cards, politics, golf, and business) may find some parts of these books tedious, but the author was skillful enough to hold the reader’s interest, at least minimally.

   Goldfinger was made into an immensely successful film in 1964, with Sean Connery as Bond. Connery appeared as Bond in other films, notably Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1964 ), and Thunderball ( 1965). The character of James Bond has also been portrayed by Peter Sellers (Casino Royale, 1967), Roger Moore (Live and Let Die, 1973, among others), and George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969).

   The novel on which this latter film is based is notable because here we see Bond at his most human — in love and planning to be married. Agent 007 also appears in two short-story collections, For Your Eyes Only: Five Secret Occasions in the Life of James Bond (1960), and Octopussy, and the Living Daylights (1966). The Bond series was continued by John Gardner after Fleming’s death.

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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.

IAN FLEMING – Doctor No. James Bond #6. Macmillan, hardcover, 1958. Probably millions of reprint editions, mostly in paperback. Film: United Artists, 1962, with Sean Connery & Ursula Andress.

   Agent 007, on the road to recovery following a long convalescence after a particularly rough case (From Russia with Love, 1957), is sent to Kingston, Jamaica, to look into the disappearance of fell ow agents Strangways and Trueblood. Both have vanished without a trace while working on a case involving a nearly extinct bird, the roseate spoonbill, which lives in a sanctuary on a private island, Crab Key.

   The key is owned by a half-Chinese, half-German called Dr. No, who claims to have bought the island for a guano factory. Members of the Audubon Society have become concerned about the birds’ welfare, but investigators they have sent to the key have died in mysterious circumstances. Bond goes to Jamaica and arranges to be put ashore on the key, but not before he has a chilling encounter with a poisonous tropical centipede.

   Once ashore, he meets with a naked girl, killer dogs, hostile “Chinese Negroes,” and Dr. No himself- – a man whose ever-present “thin smile” disguises his truly sinister designs.

   The novel proceeds to a slam-bang ending that includes a vicious torture scene, a harrowing encounter with a giant squid, and a clever coup de grace aptly labeled in the chapter heading, “A Shower of Death.”

   This entry in the series is a fine example of the standard plot structure Fleming employed, and ends on a more positive note than many of 007’s adventures.

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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.

STEVE FISHER – Saxon’s Ghost. Sherbourne, hardcover, 1969. Pyramid, paperback, 1972.

   Steve Fisher had a long career of writing mystery fiction. He wrote for the pulps — Black Mask, Adventure, and Argosy, among many others – and for the leading slick magazines: Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and the Saturday Evening Post. Fisher also wrote more than thirty motion picture screenplays, including Lady in the Lake (1946), Johnny Angel (1945), The Big Frame (1953), I, Mobster (1959), Johnny Reno (1966), and Rogue’s Gallery (1968).

   Steve Fisher’s writing style can best be described as hardboiled laced with sentimentality: His characters are prone to strong emotions; his plots are action-packed and melodramatic. But Fisher’s strengths are his professional style and honest presentation of characters pushed to their limits.

   The arguable best of Fisher’s twenty novels is Saxon’s Ghost. Joe Saxon. one of the world’s best stage magicians, known as the Great Saxon. finds himself involved in the occult arts when his beautiful young assistant, Ellen Hayes, disappears. Saxon has to use all his arts of legerdemain to arrive at the chilling truth: The ESP powers he and Ellen fooled audiences into believing in are real. When Saxon learns Ellen has been murdered. he uses these ESP powers to reach out to her beyond the grave to deliver a special brand of earthly justice.

   Other recommended novels by Fisher include The Night Before Murder (1939) and his most famous novel, Wake Up Screaming (1941; revised edition, 1960), which was filmed in 1942 starring Victor Mature and Betty Grable.

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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.

ROBERT L. FISH – The Incredible Schlock Homes: 12 Stories from Bagel Street. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1966. Avon, softcover, 1976.

   Only the most humorless Sherlockians could object to the way their hero is treated in these enormously funny parodies, all twelve of which were originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Because Fish clearly knew the canon, these stories arc also excellent pastiches of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has captured Doyle’s style in having a Dr. Watson narrate the events, and the cases generally start with the same time-tested devices used to begin the Sherlock Holmes tales. A distressed potential client appears, and Homes, who has never seen him or her before, uses his best deductive methods to guess pertinent facts. He is totally wrong, but hilariously so.

   Starting with a decidedly cockeyed chronology, “Watson” proceeds to refer to past successes of Homes’s, and these are merely excuses for some of the most outrageous puns ever to appear in the mystery genre. For example, Homes’s efforts on behalf of a Polish group are included as “The Adventure of the Danzig Men.” The detective’s involvement with a British lord who, because of dishonesty, had to resign from his clubs is called “The Adventure of the Dismembered Peer.”

   Obviously, nothing is to be sacred here, including the names of the famous characters. Watson goes under the name “Watney,” Mrs. Hudson becomes “Mrs. Essex,” and Professor Moriarty operates as “Professor Marty.” The action starts at 221B Bagel Street.

   “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” Fish’s first published story, is probably the best in the collection, but it is only minutely superior to “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clark,” “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” and “The Adventure of the Snared Drummer.”

   Another group of stories, almost as good, was collected and published as The Memoirs of Schlock Homes (1974). All are delightful to read as they lovingly spoof the methods and idiosyncrasies of the most famous character in all of literature, exposing the frequently tenuous reasoning by which Sir Arthur’s hero came up with his solutions. Schlock’s methods are very similar-except he is always wrong, to our comic delight.

   It is proof of the permanent appeal of Sherlock Holmes that a talented writer like Robert L. Fish can take him apart, giving us great pleasure. and yet at the same time make us anxious to read the original stories once again.

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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.

E. X. FERRARS – Frog in the Throat.  Virginia Freer #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1980. Bantam, paperback, 1981. Felony & Mayhem Press, softcover, 2021.

   Virginia Freer, heroine of Frog in the Throat, is staying with craftsmen friends Helen and Andrew Boscott (he’s a furniture restorer, she’s a weaver and tapestry worker) for a much-needed holiday. On a quiet afternoon, in walks the big mistake of Virginia’s life — Felix Freer, her estranged husband. Felix is one of those charming people who have few scruples and an overwhelming capacity for lying-even when he thinks he’s telling the truth. He is now lying about his reasons for dropping in at the Boscott house, and Virginia wonders why.

   The events of the evening only complicate matters. At a neighbor’s cocktail party, novelist Carleen Fyffe (half of a famous sister team of historical-romance writers) announces her engagement to poet Basil Deering (whom Felix has expressed an interest in meeting). Shortly after the Freers and Boscotts return home, Olivia Fyffe arrives, saying she has found her sister on the floor of their den, murdered. When they all go to the Fyffe cottage, however, there is no body.

   Almost everyone thinks Olivia is being dramatic for some reason of her own, or perhaps hysterical. It takes a second body and the discovery of her sister’s corpse to prove otherwise, and a certain amount of detection on Virginia’s part to determine Felix’s connection with the murders.

   The pace of this novel is slow, with good characterization of all participants except the heroine. The plot unfolds in the best tradition of the British country-house mystery, with plenty of suspicion and all ends tied up nicely at the conclusion. One wishes, however, that Virginia Freer were as well characterized as her enigmatic and complex husband and hosts. It is a little hard to care what happens to any of them when the viewpoint character is so lacking in substance.

   Ferrars has been writing mysteries for over forty years; many of her tales are set in such locales as Greece, Africa, Mexico, and Australia, as well as in England. Other notable titles include Give the Corpse a Bad Name (1940), Hunt the Tortoise (1950), The Busy Body (1962), The Seven Sleepers (1970), The Cup and the Lip ( 1976 ), and Crime and the Crystal (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.