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.

E. X. FERRARS – Alive and Dead. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1975. Bantam, paperback, 1982.

   The novels of E. X. Ferrars (a pseudonym of Moma Brown, who also writes under the name of Elizabeth Ferrars) are best described as quiet and polite. The characters are usually normal middle-class British people — which is not to say they are dull: many are writers or artists or engaged in otherwise unusual professions; the women are independent and strong. But they are people to whom violence seldom happens: and when it does, they are shocked, but willingly take charge and get to the bottom of these unexpected happenings.

   Martha Crayle is a typical Ferrars heroine. Middle-aged and twice divorced, she has struggled to raise two sons while caring for an invalid aunt and running a rooming house. When the aunt dies and leaves her an unexpected legacy, she moves out all her boarders except the reserved and stem Mr. Syme (who has become her confidant and, when crime strikes, a sort of Watson) and takes up volunteer work for the National Guild for the Welfare of Unmarried Mothers.

   It is at their offices that she meets Amanda Hassall, a young pregnant woman who claims she has been deserted by her husband and impregnated by the man she is living with. Amanda does not wish to marry the baby’s father, nor does she want to put the child up for adoption as her parents have suggested. Martha takes the girl home, and a day later takes in another pregnant woman, Sandra Aspinall.

   As Mr. Syme has darkly hinted, Martha should not have given refuge to these total strangers. Before Amanda has spent two nights in the house, a murdered man turns up in a local hotel, and she is reported to have been on the scene.

   Amanda insists the victim is her estranged husband, but her parents –who appeared shortly before the body was discovered — claim the husband died in an airplane crash the year before. In addition to the parents, the boyfriends of both young women arrive, and by the Lime murder is done twice, Martha thoroughly regrets her involvement and wishes she had listened to Mr. Syme.

   The plot twists and turns (with plenty of surprises) all the way to the very end. Ferrars writes well and creates characters that are sure to enlist her readers’ sympathies. This novel is one of her best.

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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.

RUTH FENISONG – The Butler Died in Brooklyn.Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover 1943. Mystery Novel Classic #97, digest-sized paperback, 1946/47. Stark House Press, 2-in-1 edition with Murder Runs a Fever, softcover, 2024.

   Fenisong wrote thirteen books about New York Police Sergeant (later Inspector) Gridley Nelson from 1942 to 1960. They enjoyed considerable popularity and many were reprinted in paperback. In an era of uneducated but street wise fictional cops, Nelson has just about everything going for him. He is a Princeton graduate with a substantial private income that allows him to hire a full-time housekeeper who lives in Harlem and serves as an information pipeline through her friendships with other servants. This is of enormous value to Nelson since he is frequently assigned to investigate upper-class murders.

   In The Butler Died in Brooklyn, tangled upper-class family relationships arc involved when Beulah Fitch Casey Danille Roberts’s longtime butler, Shepard (who had just been fired without cause), is found murdered. “Booming Beulah” has just moved her entire household — including giddy granddaughter Marianne and her twin brothers — from Gramercy Park to a recently converted apartment house to be near her current husband’s antique shop/warehouse.

   After another family murder, Nelson’s housekeeper, Sammy, takes it upon herself to answer an ad for a maid in the household. Proper police procedure is followed, with long interrogation of suspects and extensive background checks, while Marianne complicates matters by trying to protect her brothers and getting herself kidnapped. It is the dogged, step-by-step investigation by Nelson, and Sammy behind the scenes, that finally solves the case just in time to prevent another murder.

   Fenisong’s books, even the non-series ones like Jenny Kissed Me ( l944), are a mixture of romance and suspense, and provide glimpses of how the other half lives. Her formula of the wealthy young police officer who “speaks the language” has been used by others, but never more successfully. Among Gridley Nelson’s other successful cases are Murder Needs a Face (1942), Deadlock (1952), and Dead Weight (1962).

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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.

KENNETH FEARING – The Big Clock. Harcourt Brace, hardcover, 1946. Reprint editions include: Bantam #738, paperback, 1949. Ballantine, paperback, 1962. Perennial Library, paperback, 1980. Films: Paramount Pictures, 1948; Orion Pictures, 1987. Added later: Police Python 357, French, 1976. (See comments.)

   A poet of considerable stature and ability in the Twenties and Thirties, Kenneth Fearing turned to the writing of novels in 1939 and to the psychological] thril1er in 1941 with Dagger of the Mind. (This novel, set in a summer artists colony, caused something of a stir when it was first published: Raymond Chandler, for instance, in his famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” called it “a savage piece of intellectual double-talk.”) In all, Fearing wrote five novels that can be considered criminous — by far the best of which is The Big Clock. This quintessential tale of psychological suspense is so good, in fact, that labeling it a small masterpiece would not be unjustified.

   It is told in that most difficult of narrative techniques, multiple first-person viewpoints. Most of the story, however, is related by its chief protagonist, George Stroud, a reporter for Crimeways, one of a chain of magazines put out by Janoth Enterprises. Stroud is a sensitive man, a man who hates the pressures and conformity of his job, his slavery to what he cal1s “the big clock”; he yearns to be more like his boss, Earl Janoth. Janoth, with his “big, pink, disorderly face, permanently fixed in a faint smile he had forgotten about long ago,” doesn’t have to live by the dictates of the big clock. He doesn’t even know there is a big clock, Stroud reflects.

   But that is before the night Stroud happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the night Earl Janoth murders his mistress, Pauline Delos: Stroud is the only person who knows his employer is guilty. This is only the beginning of his troubles, however — for Janoth knows that somebody saw him that night. Under the guise of performing a public service, he mobilizes his staff in an all-out campaign to find out who it is. And the man he assigns to head the task force is George Stroud himself.

   The suspense that Fearing builds from this situation through skillful intercutting of scenes told from Janoth’s viewpoint and that of other members of his staff, such as Steve Hagen, Edward Orlin, and Emory Mafferson — is the kind that keeps you up into the wee hours turning pages. But The Big Clock is more than just a fine thriller; it is a novel of character and metaphysical insight in which the symbol of the big clock takes on more and more significance and ultimately becomes the focal point of the story.

   Almost as good is the 1948 film version directed by John Farrow and featuring brilliant performances by Ray Milland as Stroud and Charles Laughton as Earl Janoth. It has been hailed, and rightly so, as one of the best noir films of the Forties.

   Fearing’s other suspense novels are worth investigating, although anyone who has read The Big Clock first will find them something of a letdown. The best is Dagger of the Mind; the others are The Loneliest Girl in the World (1951), The Generous Heart (1954), and The Crozart Story (1960).

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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.

RON FAUST – Tombs of Blue Ice. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1974. No paperback edition.

   During a mountain-climbing expedition in the French Alps, a sudden storm breaks and one of the two companions of American Robert Holmes is killed by a bolt of lightning; the other climber, a German named Dieter Streicher, is seriously injured. Unable to move Streicher, Holmes returns to the village of Chamonix to report the incident and request immediate help for the wounded man.

   A search party is sent out to the high mountain ledge where the accident occurred, but surprisingly finds no sign of Streicher, alive or dead. What could have happened to the man? Could he have managed to leave the ledge under his own power, for some unknown reason? Or has he been a victim of foul play?

   Streicher is the son of a vicious Nazi Occupation leader, and there are many in the little French valley who have good reason to want him dead: among them a woman named Christiane Renaud, whom Holmes desires; and her stepfather, the bitter old mountain guide Martigny.

   Holmes sets out on his own to find Streicher and the truth about the man’s disappearance. Most of the novel involves his determined quest, and most of it is harrowing, especially Holmes’s descent into a huge crevasse, literally a tomb of blue ice. This is high-tech adventure writing, with a simple plot, strong characters, and evocative prose that includes memorable descriptive passages about mountain climbing and the glacial Alpine wilderness.

   Ron Faust excels at outdoor crime/adventure fiction of all types, as his other novels prove: The Wolf in the Clouds (1977) which is about a pair of U.S. forest rangers and a madman on the loose in the Colorado Rockies; The Burning Sky (1978), which deals with a deadly big-game hunt in a mountain valley in New Mexico (and which John D. MacDonald called “strong, tough … with that flavor of inevitability that seasons the good ones”); and three paperback originals with Mexican settings: The Long Count (1979), Death Fires (1980), and Nowhere to Run (1981).

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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.