REGINALD DAVIS – The Crowing Hen.

Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1936. UK edition: Gordon Bles, hc, 1936.

   The first thing you notice about Davis’s writing is his nicely wry sense of humor, you know, the kind that sort of sneaks up on you. Consider, for example, the superstitious reaction of the villagers of Hayes Coombe to the crowing of hens – wholesale slaughter in the feathered world! – and what one of a pair of real estate agents fears that this will do for the price of poultry….

   Precipitating this crisis is the impending sale of the mansion Danes Priory, said by some to be haunted, to a young couple about to be married. Warnings like footprints of blood and a dead Buff Orpington – or was it a Speckled Wyandotte? – are ignored, and mysterious death strikes, not once, but twice.

   Complicating matters is a fortune in unfenced stolen diamonds, but what Davis is more concerned with is his mystery-horror show that in no way is as intellectually gripping as a solid detective puzzle would have been. With facts as fragile as these, and a story that seems always to be heading off in the wrong direction, atmosphere just isn’t enough.

   The early promise of a reading treat in store is not kept. This was Davis’s first mystery novel. He wrote only one other.   [D]

[UPDATE] 05-20-08.  I knew this day was coming, and to tell you the truth, I’ve been putting it off for quite a while now. I wrote this review nearly 30 years ago, and I have the strongest feeling that if I were to read this book again, I’d have a strong quarrel with myself on the merits of this book.

   To me now, and from what little I remember of this book, it sounds exactly like something I’d love to read, little emphasis on the detective end of things or not. If only I could locate my copy, I’d let you know for sure.

   But since I haven’t – located my copy, that is – I’ve decided to let my younger self have his say, with only this one small hint to suggest that I may have been wrong.

   There’s one thing that I was definitely wrong on, and that’s how many mysteries Reginald Davis wrote. It must be that reference books back in 1979 hadn’t caught up with one of them, since in Crime Fiction IV now, here’s what Al Hubin lists for him:

  DAVIS, REGINALD

      * The Crowing Hen. Bles, UK, hc, 1936. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1936.
      * Nine Days’ Panic. Bles, UK, hc, 1937. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1938.

      * Twelve Midnight Street. Bles, UK, hc, 1938.

   The latter is a scarce book. I found no copies offered for sale on the Internet when I searched just now.

   There’s no biographical information about Davis I can tell you about, neither from CFIV nor the Crime Club jackets, so says Bill Pronzini about the latter. It was he who provided both of the covers you see here in this post.

   Here’s Bill’s opinion on The Crowing Hen, cobbled together from a couple of emails as we were discussing the book. (This is just his end of the conversation, you understand.)

   So there you have it. Two opinions, one of which the author is only partially standing behind. If you’ve read the book, why not add yours? I’d love to hear from you.

   A week or so ago thriller writer Ian Mackintosh was mentioned in one of the Addenda updates to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. A correction was made to the spelling of his name, from MacKintosh to Mackintosh. A minor matter, perhaps, but some of us care. There is, after all, a difference between John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald, and how they spelled their respective names.

   The matter was settled, I thought, since on all of the covers of Mr. Mackintosh’s books that I’ve been able to locate so far, that is the way his name’s been spelled. But UK mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has sharp eyes. He has an inscribed copy of one of the author’s books — see above — and while I am right and his name is spelled Mackintosh on the cover, lo and behold, he spelled his name MacKintosh in the inscription.

   Take a look and see if you don’t agree:

[UPDATE.]   Later the same afternoon. Al Hubin points out that: “On the other hand, as I recall, Ian’s brother has a web page for him and there it’s Mackintosh … I think I’ll stick with the name as presented on his books.”

   The web page that Al refers to [follow the link above] is worth your time looking into. Ian’s brother Lawrie talks about not only Ian’s early life and his work for the BBC, but also Ian’s mysterious disappearance over the Kodiak Islands in July 1979.

   A visit to the Book Barn in Niantic, one of Connecticut’s few surviving bookshops, netted me well over 100 mysteries yesterday, including a few recent hardcovers in nice shape. Of the paperbacks, so far I’ve found two (indicated with an *) from which I’ve gleaned information that Al Hubin did not have in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. He does now. These entries will appear in Part 28 of the online Addenda.

   Need I add that any additional information is always welcome? It is, and I just did.

ALLAN, STELLA. British author of six mystery novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Many of her books seem to focus on unhappy marriages and/or bad love affairs. See below.
      Arrow in the Dark. Collins, UK, hc, 1982.
      * The Communicating Door. Love Stories, UK, 1986. Avon, US, pb, 1981. Add setting: London. “Divorce is one way to end a marriage… Another way is murder.”

      A Dead Giveaway. Collins, UK, hc, 1980. St. Martin’s, US, hc, 1981. Setting: England; theatre. [A successful playwright visits the country retreat of her wealthy ex-lover on the behalf of her new lover and finds herself embroiled in kidnaping, and murder.]
      An Inside Job. Collins, UK, hc, 1978. Scribner, US, hc, 1978. Setting: London. Scribner, 1978. “It was a plan so perfect they could get away with murder..He would do anything to get rich, and she would do anything to keep him.”
      A Mortal Affair. Collins, UK, hc, 1979. Scribner, US, hc, 1979. [The lover of a woman married to a doctor is exposed as a criminal.]

      No Marks for Trying. Macdonald & Janes, UK, hc, 1975. Avon, US, pb, 1981. Setting: Spain. [A married couple’s vacation in Spain turns into a nightmare of murder and intrigue when they meet a man with whom the wife once had an affair.]

KRAUSE, KATHALYN. Author of several works of romantic fiction, two of them included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      * The Blue Key. Belmont, pb, 1980. Add setting: Los Angeles CA. “A piece of stone jade unlocked the door to violence and death.”
      Mellona. Belmont, pb, 1979. Make setting more specific: California, 1901. [A young woman, new to a close-knit coastal resort community, resembles a woman who disappeared 30 before.]

DAVID FROME – Homicide House. Popular Library; paperback reprint. No date stated, but circa 1969. First edition: Rinehart, 1950. British title: Murder on the Square. Robert Hale, 1951. US hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club (3-in-1 edition), July 1950. Previously serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in seven parts between September 24 and November 5, 1949.

   Since the subtitle of the hardcover edition is “Mr. Pinkerton Returns,” I’ll begin by listing all of the Evan Pinkerton books. While David Frome was byline listed on all of the books, you might better know “him” as Leslie Ford, author of the Grace Latham and Colonel John Primrose mysteries. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

The Hammersmith Murders (n.) Doubleday 1930 [England]
Two Against Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1931 [England]

The Man from Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1932 [England]
The Eel Pie Murders (n.) Farrar 1933 [England]
Mr. Pinkerton Finds a Body (n.) Farrar 1934 [Oxford]
Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1934 [England]

Mr. Pinkerton Grows a Beard (n.) Farrar 1935 [England]
Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue (n.) Farrar 1936 [England]
The Black Envelope (n.) Farrar 1937 [Brighton]
Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel (n.) Farrar 1939 [England]
Homicide House (n.) Rinehart 1950 [England]

   As you see, there was a gap well over ten years long between this, the last book in the series and the preceding one. There were 10 or 11 Grace Latham books that appeared in the interim. It wasn’t as though the author, whose real name was Zenith Jones Brown, 1898-1983, wasn’t doing any writing in the meantime. As Leslie Ford, her last book appeared in 1962 (Trial by Ambush) a non-series book.

   My review of Ford’s The Woman in Black appeared here on the M*F blog a while back, in case you’d like to go back and take a look.

   There are a couple of ways I could continue from here, and by flipping a mental coin, I’ll say something first about Mr. Pinkerton, whose adventures in murder mysteries I’ve now read the first I ever have. I’d assumed he was a stalwart sort of fellow, confidently solving crimes by the dozens as a friend and chief confidant of Chief Inspector Bull of Scotland Yard.

   Wrong, all the way around. Evan Pinkerton is the meekest, most afraid-of-his-own shadow detective sleuth there has to be ever been. Now a widower and owner of an small apartment building in Godolphin Square, he is afraid to tell the landlady that he is indeed the owner, disbelieving as he does that he is himself. Perhaps his penny-pinching wife will come back from the grave and take it away from him, he fears. (This is being hen-pecked to the extreme, one thinks, and rightly so.)

   And so he is stuck in a miserable room on the third floor, sharing a bath with the cook, who fortunately enough, is very seldom seen. The crimes he has solved, they must have been more or less by accident, as Bull has forcefully demanded that he quite positively stay away from any futures brushes with murder cases that need looking into.

   Which leaves the current one at hand to tell you about. What struck me most, from the very first page, is that here is a mystery that is centered about a building that has been damaged by the bombing during the war. It’s now a few years after the war, and about all that is standing in the home across the square from Mr. Pinkerton’s are a few walls and the charred remains of a stone staircase. Nerves are often still shattered and decent food is still a problem.

   I may be wrong about this, but I am pointing this out because I do not believe that very many British mysteries written during or just after the war actually dwell on how difficult a time it really was for the general population. This is one of the few exceptions I can actually think of at the moment, the other being Anthony Gilbert’s Death in the Blackout (1942). I’m sure there are more, but if there were many, it would seem that the opening scenes of this book would not have struck me as being so unusual.

   What I also found very striking is that how strong a Woolrich-ian sense of the sudden infatuation, coincidence and/or disorientation there is in the first few chapters. On page 7 Mr. Pinkerton meets Daniel McGrath hunting for the house that was damaged, seeking for the girl who had once lived there and whom he had met in a bomb shelter during the war, and here he is, six years later, having just come from America and planning to ask her to marry him, not even knowing her name.

   Of course she now lives in the same building as Mr. Pinkerton, and of course she is not yet married, and of course she recognizes him immediately, but of course she slaps his face when she learns his name, his name being the same as a noted detective she assumes has come to find and arrest her father.

   Whew. This makes for terrific reading, to be sure.

   Here from page 43 is a passage that I hope illustrates exactly what I am saying. It describes their first meeting in six years, from McGrath’s point of view, as she is getting off a train:

   No mere mystery story could top a passage like this, and while Homicide House tries, it is doomed to failure. True love prevails — is it OK if I tell you that? — but with difficulty, some by purely natural causes, and some by authorial hand only — or if not the latter, then the wonderfully funny fickleness of fate.

   Mary Winship’s father has disappeared, many years before — she now lives with her sickly mother and a truly formidable aunt in Mr. Pinkerton’s building — and vanishing at the same time was a valuable painting. And with Daniel McGrath unwittingly stirring things up, dead bodies begin to accumulate in Mr. Pinkerton’s abode.

   The latter’s not much of a detective, or at least he’s not in this book, but his activities toward that end also initiate worry and concern on the part of a blackmailer and a killer, not (it is eventually discerned) one and the same. It all works out in the end, but the first seven chapters are what I’ll remember from this book, and not the last two (with a connecting bridge of largely filler material in between).

   The entry for Tom Barling in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, has been extensively revised, and corrections, deletions and other changes appear now as you see below in Part 19 of the online Addenda.

   The other entries in this post come from Part 27, the paperbacks chosen largely because I had copies on hand to obtain cover images from. These are the ones you’ll also find below.

BARLING, TOM. 1936- . Add year of birth and full name: Thomas F. R. Barling. British author of eleven crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Series character: Charlie Dance, an ex-London gangster who in three books battles various crime syndicates and his own former mob. Tom Barling is also well-known as a comic illustrator and an animator on the 1973 TV series of The Addams Family. [Thanks to Steve Fearn for pointing out that the two Tom Barling’s are one and the same.]
      _Dance with Death. Pocket, pb, 1988. US reprint of Smoke Dragon (Corgi, 1988). Correction: Previously stated to to be the US edition of God Is an Executioner.
      _Dance with the Devil Pocket, pb, 1988. US edition of Smoke Dance (Corgi, 1991).
      God Is an Executioner. Corgi, UK, pb, 1987. Correction: There is no US edition and SC: Charlie Dance does not appear. Delete the previously stated setting. [A ruthless gang of terrorists explodes into Matthew Pepper’s new life and kidnaps his wife and son, leaving no trace of them. ]
      The Smoke. Corgi, UK, pb, 1986. Add US edition: Bantam, pb, 1986. (Delete conjecture that the US title was Dance with the Devil.) SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s.
      Smoke Dance. Corgi, UK, pb, 1991. (Correct date.) Add SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s. (Add the time period.) US title: Dance with the Devil (Pocket, 1988). [Book 3 in the series: Charlie awakens the day after his birthday party to find that his wife has been killed and his illegally accumulated fortune has been stolen.] Note: Shown is the cover of the 1991 hardcover UK Severn House edition.

      Smoke Dragon. Corgi, UK, pb, 1988. Add US title: Dance with Death (Pocket, 1988) and SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s. (Add the time period.)

DEPTULA, WALTER (J., JR.) ca.1934- . Series character: Frank Arrow, born Franco Arronelli, a professional thief who steals what others have stolen and returns it to its rightful owner for a fee. [This is a complete entry for the author. Numbers in brackets indicate the correct chronological sequencing.]
      The Death List of Rico Scalisi. Curtis, pb, 1974. Add setting: New York City. [#3.] [Arrow’s estranged father is the target of a vengeance-mad mafioso.]

      Naked Mistress. Curtis, pb, 1974. Setting: Hawaii, Mexico. [#2.]
      Wine, Women … and Death. Curtis, pb, 1974. Setting: Hawaii. [#1.] “He had hot jewels and broads on his hands and every cold killer in Hawaii on his tail.”

FREEMAN, MARY E(LEANOR) WILKINS. 1852-1930. See author’s entry under Wilkins-Freeman, Mary E(leanor).

KAYLIN, WALTER. 1921- . At one time a resident of Old Lyme, CT. Occasional short story writer in the 1950s; author of one crime novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      Another Time, Another Woman. Gold Medal, pb, 1963. Muller, UK, pb, 1964. Add setting: California. “… I had covered up manslaughter then. Now I had to cover up a murder.”

WILKINS-FREEMAN, MARY E(LEANOR). 1852-1930. Add as a new author entry. Ref: CA. Born in Randolph, Massachusetts; married Dr. Charles M. Freeman in 1902. (Her name is sometimes given as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.) Noted American writer, known best for her stories centering around New England life.
      -“Doc.” Gordon. Authors and Newspapers Association, 1906. Published in the UK as Doctor Gordon (Unwin, 1907).
      _Doctor Gordon. Unwin, UK, hc, 1907. See “Doc.” Gordon.

WILLIAMS, ALAN (EMLYN). 1935- . Son of actor-playwright (George) Emlyn Williams, 1905-1987, q.v. Brother of actor Brook Williams; briefly married to Maggie Noach, noted literary agent for children’s authors. Newspaper correspondent and author of eleven espionage-adventure novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
      The Brotherhood. Blond, UK, hc, 1968. US title: The Purity League (Putnam, 1969). Also published in England under the US title (Panther, 1970). Add setting: Europe. [Journalist Magnus Owen and a beautiful undercover agent named Maya take on a sinister network called the ‘Brotherhood of Virtue.’]
      _The Purity League. Putnam, US, hc, 1969. Panther, UK, pb, 1970. See: The Brotherhood (Blond, 1968).

WILLIAMS, (GEORGE) EMLYN. 1905-1987. Father of author Alan (Emlyn) William, 1935- , q.v. , and actor Brook Williams, who appeared in numerous films and London stage productions. Noted Welsh actor and dramatist; author of two criminous novels cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, along with three crime-related plays.

   Most of these entries are from Part 27 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. All but one of the books came from the lot I bought at the Windy City show, so the images of the covers you see were easy to come by.

   The one exception referred to in the first line above is the newly expanded entry for Alfred Mazure, which is as it appears now in Part 26.

COULTER, STEPHEN. 1914- . Pseudonym: James Mayo, q.v. British journalist and author; served in World War II as one of American General Eisenhower’s staff officers. Under his own name, the author of eight espionage/adventure novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, four of them published in the UK only.

LANCASTER, DONALD. Pseudonym of William (Leonard) Marshall, 1944- , q.v. The book below was commissioned to be written after the disappearance of the series creator, Ian Mackintosh, 1940-1979, q.v. The book is extremely scarce.
      The Sandbaggers: Think of a Number. Corgi, UK, pb, 1980. Novel based on the characters in the TV series. Add SC: Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden) & Willie Caine (Ray Lonnen).

MACKINTOSH, IAN. 1940-1979. Correct both dates and spelling of last name (from MacKINTOSH). Born in Inverness; commissioned in the Royal Navy. Author of eight crime and thriller novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV; among these, three were novelizations of TV series the author created (Warship) or wrote and produced: Wilde Alliance, and the book below, about an elite British Intelligence covert operations unit. Mackintosh himself died in mysterious fashion. According to a Wikipedia entry, during the third season of The Sandbaggers in July 1979, he and a girlfriend were declared lost at sea after their single-engine aircraft strangely disappeared near Alaska after a radioed call for help.
      The Sandbaggers. Corgi, UK, pb, 1978. Novelizes two episodes of the TV series: “Always Glad to Help” and “A Feasible Solution.” Add setting: London, Cyprus. Also add SC: Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden) & Willie Caine (Ray Lonnen). [Shown also in the cover image below is Diana Keen as Laura Dickens.] See the author’s entry for Donald Lancaster for a second book in the series.

MARSHALL, WILLIAM (LEONARD). 1944- . Pseudonym: Donald Lancaster, q.v. Under his own name, the author of many mystery novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. His best known series is the one that chronicles the adventures of the policemen who work out of the Hong Kong’s Yellowthread Station, beginning with Yellowthread Street (Hamish Hamilton, UK, 1975).

MAYO, JAMES. Pseudonym of Stephen Coulter, 1914- , q.v. Under this pen name, the author of eight spy/adventure novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, six of them with sexed-up British super spy Charles Hood, billed as “the toughest of tough agents.” Four of the Hood books were also published in the US.
      The Man Above Suspicion. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1969. SC: Charles Hood. Add setting: Windward Islands, France, Austria, London. [Shown is the cover of the 1970 Pan paperback edition.]

MAZURE, ALFRED (LEONARDUS). 1914-1974. Pseudonym: Maz, q.v. Under his own name, add the following titles. SC: Sherazad, a “sexy top agent of an ultra-secret organization,” in all titles.
      Sherazad on a Trip. Mayflower, 1972
      Sherazad Uptight. Mayflower, 1974
      Welcome Sherazad. Tallis, UK, hc, 1969. Setting: London, England. “The Mystery of the Vanishing Film Starlets.” [Also shown is the cover of the Panther paperback reprint edition.]

WHITE, ALAN. 1924- . Pseudonyms: James Fraser, Alec Haig, Bill Reade & Alec Whitney. Born in Yorkshire, England. Under his own name, the author of 18 spy and mystery novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, three of them marginally. Series characters include Detective Inspector Armstrong; and Captain Colson of the British Special Services, a veteran of numerous commando raids during World War II.
      The Long Midnight. Barrie, UK, hc, 1972. Harcourt, US, hc, 1974. Setting: Norway, World War II. Delete SC: Captain Colson. [Two men are sent to Norway, 1943, to uncover a traitor to the Nazi resistance. Shown is the cover of the 1973 Pan paperback edition.]

   Uploaded this morning, about 10 minutes ago, with no links or cover images added yet, is Part 27 of the ongoing online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   I haven’t had a chance to look through this new set of addenda carefully myself, but I recognize quite a few of the pieces of information that I’ve sent Al in the last few weeks, including data he didn’t have about some of the British espionage paperbacks I bought at the Windy City show. Lots of newly discovered settings from other sources too, along with new authors, titles and series characters, not to mention newly discovered new editions with title changes, plus a few deletions and other corrections too.

   I’ve fallen behind in the annotations which I do for the Addenda, adding images and links and so on, but as I get to them, I’ll be posting them here, as I always do. More later, in other words!

[UPDATE.]   Later the same day. The comments that follow were produced by Al’s statement in this installment of the Addenda that:

BROWN, CARTER. Note: Some books published around 1960 may have been written by authors other than [Alan Geoffrey] Yates.

   This doesn’t entirely agree with the rumors I’ve heard, which have suggested that it was the later ones that Yates may not have written. (His books began to appear in the US in 1957 or 1958, then continued until 1984 or so. Yates died in 1985.)

   See the comments for more.

TONY DUNBAR – The Crime Czar.

Dell, paperback original; first printing, November 1998.

   My first reaction, when starting to read this fifth recorded New Orleans adventure of only slightly sleazy attorney Tubby Dubonnet, is that it takes place before hurricane Katrina came along. What a sorrowful scab on this country’s face that city is now. There’s a lot of atmosphere in this book, more or less a continuation of the preceding one, and I’ll get back to that aspect of it in a minute.

   The background of eccentric native inhabitants and local cuisine is combined with a hand-brewed melange of hoodlums, crooked politicians and judges, and the laissez faire approach to life of Tubby himself to produce a potpourri of wackiness and Southern charm. (Well, I concede that crooked politicians are not charming, nor is the occasional violence that rips its way into the tale that Tony Dunbar has to tell in The Crime Czar, but there you are.)

   The Tony Dunbar novels so far, as expanded upon from the listing in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. All take place in New Orleans, Louisiana.

         # Crooked Man. Putnam, hc, 1994. Berkley, pb, 1996

         # City of Beads. Putnam, hc, 1995. Berkley, pb, 1996.

         # Trick Question. Putnam, hc, 1996. Berkley, pb, 1997.
         # Shelter from the Storm. Putnam, hc, 1997. Berkley, pb,1998.
         # The Crime Czar. Dell, pb, 1998.
         # Lucky Man. Dell, pb, 1999.
         # Tubby Meets Katrina. NewSouth, hc, 2006.

   And of course I have a couple of comments. The story in The Crime Czar seems to pick up right after Shelter from the Storm ends, leaving some open, unanswered questions as it does so. It is strange, then, to see the series switch not only from hardcover to paperback in the transition, but from one publisher to another as well.

   The other obvious comment is that I did not know about this most recent book in the series until about five minutes ago, and I want to read it. Mr. Dunbar is obviously in love with the town where he lives – even with my having read only the one book in the series so far, I know this – and I need to know what he has felt and presumably still feels about the destruction (if not the rebuilding) of the city that was New Orleans.

   I’ve ordered it online today.

   As for The Crime Czar, as mentioned up above, the story reads like a Chapter Two, and I’m sure it would have helped to have read Shelter from The Storm before it. The ongoing crime-tinged saga that is Tubby Dubonnet’s life does not seem to come in pre-packaged segments. It is, instead, continuous.

   Tubby’s target in the book at hand: the man who seems to be behind all of the crooked wheelings and dealings in New Orleans, and for one instance in particular, the death of his friend Dan, left severely wounded in the earlier book.

   Add to the tale a hooker named Daisy, boiling mad at the death of her new boy friend; a gang of Vietnamese gunmen, aiming to avenge the shooting of three of their countrymen; and Marguerite, upon whom Tubby is sweet, and another leftover from the previous book, having managed to flee with a fortune in jewelry. Don’t ask. I didn’t, and the story still went down swell.

   It — the story — isn’t a major one, mind you. A minor caper, that is all. When one judge with his hand out goes down, another one pops up immediately. When one crooked cop is caught with his pants down, another one comes along with no delay. The fun is in the reading, though — a joyous, fun-loving affair for the most part, Big Easy style.

    NOTE:  No crawfish were harmed in the writing of this review.

SARAH SHANKMAN – I Still Miss My Man But My Aim Is Getting Better.

Pocket, paperback reprint; first printing, July 1997. Hardcover edition: Pocket, April 1996.

   First of all, as you just might possibly have guessed, this is a novel about the Nashville country music business, and I’ll get back to that in a minute. Secondly, it is not one of the books in Sarah Shankman’s series of mystery novels about Samantha Adams, a “cynical crime journalist for the Atlanta Constitution,” says one reviewer of the books. I wish I knew more about them, but I don’t.

   For some reason, the series books were begun under another name. See the list below, expanded slightly from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

SARAH SHANKMAN. ca.1943- . Pseudonym: Alice Storey.
      Impersonal Attractions (n.) St. Martin’s 1985 [San Francisco, CA]
      Now Let’s Talk of Graves (n.) Pocket Books 1990 [Samantha Adams; New Orleans, LA]
      She Walks in Beauty (n.) Pocket Books 1991 [Samantha Adams; New Jersey]
      The King Is Dead (n.) Pocket Books 1992 [Samantha Adams; Mississippi]
      He Was Her Man (n.) Pocket Books 1993 [Samantha Adams; Arkansas]
      I Still Miss My Man, But My Aim Is Getting Better (n.) Pocket Books 1996 [Nashville, TN]
      Digging Up Momma (n.) Pocket Books 1998 [Samantha Adams; Santa Fe, NM]

STOREY, ALICE. Pseudonym of Sarah Shankman.
      First Kill All the Lawyers (n.) Pocket Books 1988 [Samantha Adams; Atlanta, GA]
      Then Hang All the Liars (n.) Pocket Books 1989 [Samantha Adams; Atlanta, GA]

SARAH SHANKMAN, Editor –
      A Confederacy of Crime: New Stories of Southern-Style Mystery. Signet, pb, 2001. [A partial list of authors: Jeffery Deaver, Margaret Maron, Joan Hess, Julie Smith, Sarah Shankman.]

      If Sarah Shankman has written any mysteries later than these, I’ve not discovered them, and so, I’m presuming, Samantha Adams’s crime-solving days are also over. Alas, I’ve not read any of them, but I think I shall.

      Not that I imagine any of the Adams books will be anything like I Still Miss My Man, a madcap romp that I can compare to anything I’ve ever read before. The nominal star is Shelby Kay Tate, who’s trying to make a name for herself as a singer-songwriter in Nashville. Little does she know that her ex-husband Leroy is bound and determined to get her back, even if he has to kill her to do so.

      Also little does she know that the policeman who comes to a domestic squabble with herself in the middle of it, Jeff Wayne Capshew, will appoint himself her permanent bodyguard, whether she approves of it or not. (And somewhat secretly to herself, she admits that maybe, just maybe, she might.)

      Also little does she know that a former country music great, Gail Powell, in secluded retirement for over 30 years, will see in her the means for a comeback. And least of all does she know, having been born at exactly the same second that Patsy Cline died. That a guardian angel has been watching over her ever since, pushing and prodding events to come together at one time and one place, in this solid ode to honky-tonks and Nashville bars and doughnut shops, and the agony of waiting to be discovered, from a (mostly) female point of view.

   As a brief introduction to this piece, I’ll begin by saying that mystery writer John T. McIntyre was the subject of a post you saw here last Saturday, albeit somewhat accidentally so: he was the author of “Blows in the Dark,” the lead story in Complete Detective Novel Magazine for November 1931.

   Thanks go first to Mike Grost for the comments he left after that preceding post, during the course of which in part he reviewed Ashton-Kirk: Secret Agent. According to Mike, it starts out as a pure imitation of the Sherlock Holmes stories, then dissipates its early promise into becoming a cliched and routine espionage novel. Not a surprising report, I suppose, given the lack of name recognition that McIntyre has a writer today, but still a disappointing one.

   But here is some news. I’ve conferred with Al Hubin, and in the next installment of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, the books in the following separate entry will be merged with those of John T. McIntyre. (Note the previous misspelling of the author’s name.)

MacINTYRE, JOHN THOMAS. 1871-1951. Pseudonym Kerry O?Neil, q.v.

O?NEIL, KERRY. Pseudonym of John MacIntyre, 1871-1951, q.v.

      Mooney Moves Around (n.) Reynal 1939 [Jerry Mooney; Philadelphia, PA] “Private detective murder mystery surrounding the fashion industry.” NOTE: This novel was a SEALED Bonus Mystery. The last chapter of the book, containing the solution to the murder, was tightly sealed in a paper wraparound with printed bonus certificate. The reader would have to break the seal to finish the book. If unbroken, the book could be returned for a full refund; otherwise the purchaser could redeem the coupon for 35 cents.

      Death at Dakar (n.) Doubleday 1942 [Senegal] “In which an American newspaperwoman [Patricia Cornell] trumps her opponent?s ace.” Add to setting: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

      Ninth Floor: Middle City Tower (n.) Farrar, 1943 [Jerry Mooney; Philadelphia, PA] “Jerry Mooney, a cop turned private detective, investigates the disappearance of an expensive ruby and the murder that follows.”

      Death Strikes at Heron House (n.) Farrar, 1944 [Jerry Mooney; Philadelphia, PA]

   At the moment I don’t know much more about Jerry Mooney. He’s not included in Kevin Burton Smith online directory of private eyes, and what I do know (see above), I’ll pass along to him.

   Checking out the pulp fiction written by Kerry O’Neil, I’ve discovered a story written as by him in the October 10,1948, issue of Short Stories, a work called “A Short Shot at Purdy.” Given that John McIntyre’s first entry in CFIV was In the Toils, a criminous play published by Penn in 1898, it certainly makes for a long if not entirely illustrious career.

[UPDATE.] Later the same day. Google is wonderful. I’ve found a long, meaty profile of John McIntyre online here. It’s entitled “Noir Town: The hard life of John McIntyre, the legendary Philly novelist nobody’s heard of,” by Kevin Plunkett (2006). I’d love to reprint it here on the blog, but I’ll remain content to have you follow the link and read it for yourself. Highly recommended!

   Here are the last couple of paragraphs:

    “At his death, John McIntyre was already fading into obscurity. The intervening decades took care of the rest.

    “Today his hard-edged Philadelphia novels are forgotten and ‘only hard core mystery buffs’ are aware of the gutsy writer from Northern Liberties, notes Thomas Whitehead [manager of Temple University’s Special Collections Department]. And hardly a soul peruses the John T. McIntyre Papers. And that’s a shame. Because McIntyre rendered Philadelphia’s darker edges into some of the toughest and finest fiction this city has ever seen. ‘He was the Philadelphia writer who captured the realistic parts of city life: the street life, the politics, the ethnic groups in the city, all the relationships,’ Whitehead says. ‘I think he did it well.'”