It’s been less than three months since Part 38 was added to the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and yesterday fifty more pages of corrections and additions were uploaded as Part 39.

   Following the link will lead you to updated information on hundreds of authors and their books, and I hope you do. Much is relatively minor — birth or death dates and settings of novels — but a good deal is more substantial, consisting of biographical data, newly discovered pen names and previously unknown series characters. In a few cases, author entries have undergone a nearly complete overhaul.

   And once again I’m pleased to say that some of data is generated from posts on this blog, and the followup comments. As an example, based on one that was left following Walker Martin’s memoir of Michael Avallone, it has been verified that he wrote the first Nick Carter “Killmaster” novels alone, rather than in tandem with Valerie Moolman, as was previously stated. A movie version of one his tie-in novels has also been identified.

   These are but two small examples of the updating and correcting that’s still going on — Part 40 is already in progress — with input from many sources and contributors. Thanks to all!

J. B. O’SULLIVAN – Someone Walked Over My Grave. T. Werner Laurie Ltd., UK, hardcover, 1954. No US edition.

   As I often do, I’ll append a list of all of J. B. O’Sullivan’s Steve Silk mysteries at the end of these comments. There are a few of them, as you’ll see, but only two have even been published in the US.

   Silk himself is described on the Thrilling Detective website as “a former boxer turned un-licensed PI. Quick with a wisecrack and quicker with his fists, he dresses well and chases women with vigor,” but there are no signs of fisticuffs in this book, and no woman chasing either.

   Silk is usually based in New York, so maybe the difference is that when he visits Ireland, as he does in Someone Walked Over My Grave, he’s on his best behavior. In fact the murder that’s solved in this book is a country manor affair, one much more suited for the likes of Supt. George Tubridy than a smooth as silk operator like Steve.

   There is a point in time, however, at which the reader (this one, anyway) will suddenly realize that is going on is a competition between the two. Who (and which approach) will solve the case first? Amusingly, though, the two end up asking the same questions of the same people and each in their own fashion, coming up with very much the same answers.

   Dead is the father of a would-be bridegroom, and the number one suspect is the wayward brother (on the other side of the Irish political divide) of the would-be bride when it appears the wedding is off (therefore all of the would-be’s). Telling the story is Jimmy (no last name noted), a local reporter who spent some time in the US chronicling some of Silk’s earlier adventures.

   In the grand Golden Age of Detection fashion, there are lots of suspects, some with alibis, some not, and some of the alibis are suspicious if not outright flimsy. There are several decent twists before a suspect admits to having done the crime, then an even better one before (PLOT ALERT, and maybe I shouldn’t even be telling you this) the last three paragraphs turn everything around again.

   An amazing feat. I was on cruise control at the time, and it made me stop on a dime, sit up and take notice, I’ll tell you that.

The Steve Silk novels —     [Adapted from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

       Casket of Death (n.) Grafton 1945
       Death Came Late (n.) Pillar 1945
       The Death Card (n.) Pillar 1945

       Death on Ice (n.) Pillar 1946
       Death Stalks the Stadium (n.) Pillar 1946
       I Die Possessed (n.) Laurie 1953. US: Mill, 1953

       Nerve Beat (n.) Laurie 1953
       Don’t Hang Me Too High (n.) Laurie 1954. US: Mill, 1954

       Someone Walked Over My Grave (n.) Laurie 1954
       The Stuffed Man (n.) Laurie 1955
       The Long Spoon (n.) Ward 1956

       Choke Chain (n.) Ward 1958
       Raid (n.) Ward 1958
       Gate Fever (n.) Ward 1959
       Backlash (n.) Ward 1960

       Make My Coffin Big (n.) Ward 1964
       Murder Proof (n.) Ward 1968

The Supt. George Tubridy novels —

       Someone Walked Over My Grave (n.) Laurie 1954
      Pick Up (n.) Ward 1964

       Lunge Wire (n.) Ward 1965

R. C. ASHBY – He Arrived at Dusk. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1933. Macmillan, US, hc, 1933.

   Truly a little masterpiece of a book. Reminiscent of Christie at the height of her powers in its brilliant use of misdirection. William Mertoun, an antiquarian, is hired to catalog the estate of a bed-ridden colonel. He is doing this at the behest of the colonel’s nurse and housekeeper, Winifred Goff, a woman who seems terrified of strange poltergeist activities in the house and keeps a close guard on her patient whom she allows no one to see.

   Recently the colonel’s brother fell to his death off a cliff and there is talk that it was no accident. While cataloging the dreary and seemingly worthless library, Mertoun learns from the colonel’s nephew Charles Barr of a local legend. The area is haunted by the ghost of an ancient Roman soldier and the village townspeople are deeply superstitious of it – so much so that no one will set foot on the grounds.

   However, Mertoun soon discovers that a brazen shepherd has dared to ignore all the warnings of the townspeople and has set up a home for his flock amid the ruins of the haunted tower a few yards from the Barr estate.

   Soon the shepherd is discovered dead – an ancient Roman sword sticking in his back and all believe that the ghost has murdered him.

   The supernatural aspects pervade the first third of the book which is narrated by Mertoun who slowly begins to believe in the existence of the ghost – especially after a seance in which something resembling the ghost manifests itself in the manor and later he does see the ghost on the grounds.

   He runs to confront it and that is when he discovers the body of the shepherd. And only a few days later the colonel seems to vanish from his room.

   The second portion of the novel takes the form of a diary written by Miss Goff’s brother, Hamleth, in which we learn of an investigation into the death of the shepherd and the real reason for the disappearance of the colonel.

   Finally the last section is narrated by a Scotland Yard inspector who finally unravels the mystery of the ghost, who killed the shepherd and what happened to the colonel.

   What is so remarkable about He Arrived at Dusk is the use of the narrator Mertoun and his perceptions of everything, and the role of Miss Goff behind the scenes, which is perhaps the best part of the book. Much of what occurs is through her orchestration. That it fails to produce what she had intended is no fault of her own.

   Really a classic of its kind. One of the best blending of supernatural and detective novel genres written in the 1930s. Interestingly, this pre-dates Du Maurier’s Rebecca by several years and yet has quite a bit of similarity in that book’s use of a frightened narrator whose interpretation of events may or may not always be perfect.

   Bibliography:   The author’s crime fiction only. Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

ASHBY, R(uby) C(onstance Annie).   1899-1966.
      Death on Tiptoe (n.) Hodder 1930.
      Plot Against a Widow (n.) Hodder 1932.
      He Arrived at Dusk (n.) Hodder 1933.
      Out Went the Taper (n.) Hodder 1934.

  As Ruby Ferguson, her married name, she became quite well known as the author of a number of children’s “pony books,” among many other works of fiction. See Wikipedia for more information.

   J. F.’s review of Death on Tiptoe will appear here on this blog soon.

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH —

       ● The Trouble with Fidelity. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1957. Paperback reprint: Dell #999, 1959.

       ● The Lady Finger. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1962. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1962.

   The Nutmeg Indemnity Company employs Lenny Painter to apprehend defalcators unfortunately bonded by that insurance company and to retrieve whatever monies they might have left. In The Trouble with Fidelity, this is going to be a bit difficult, since Homer W. Gillespie has made off with over $500,000 from the Fordyce Management Company and has killed himself.

   Nonetheless, Painter begins backtracking, with the aid of Gumbus, the C.P.A. from the district attorney’s office, and O’Brien, an investigator for the D.A., who never thinks, just turns up stones.

   Gillespie turns out to have been a much more interesting man than appeared on the surface. His embezzlement is a work of art, though his method of concealing it is a bit less so. Following down the money, Painter goes to Newark, Buffalo, Detroit, Boston, and Maine, and discovers some surprising information about Gillespie.

   While the ending is implausible, what leads up to it is excellent. Not a great mind, Painter’s, but he’s very good at what he does.

   When in The Lady Finger the Massasoit National Bank & Trust Company of Boston is robbed of $200,000 during a well-planned heist, claims investigator Otis Minton is sent to that city to pursue the investigation in the hope that at least some of the funds that the Nutmeg Indemnity Company has had to payout can be recovered.

   Although usually one or more steps behind the FBI in their pursuit of the bank robbers, Minton does have one advantage — the lady finger of the title. It seems the robbers, for reasons uncertain, had doused her boyfriend, a hairdresser, with peroxide and placed him under the hair dryer, which did him no good at all. She is miffed, and the reward offered by Indemnity is an added attraction.

   Again Malcolm-Smith has produced an amusing and lively novel.

    Bio-Bibliographic Data:

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH, GEORGE, 1901-1984. Living in Connecticut in 1950s; editor of an insurance company periodical.    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

      The Square Peg (n.) Doubleday 1952. Reprinted as Mugs, Molls and Dr. Harvey, Graphic #104, pb, 1955.

      The Trouble with Fidelity (n.) Doubleday 1957.
      If a Body Meet a Body (n.) Doubleday 1959.
      The Lady Finger (n.) Doubleday 1962.
      Come Out, Come Out (n.) Doubleday 1965.

   Malcolm-Smith also has a short page on Wikipedia, where it is said that “George Malcolm-Smith was an American novelist and jazz musicologist. A 1925 graduate of Trinity College, he hosted a jazz radio program on WTIC-FM in Hartford, Connecticut for many years.”

WINIFRED PECK – The Warrielaw Jewel. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1933. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1933.

   In 1933, Catholic priest and writer Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, one of the talented Knox siblings, children of Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, former Anglican Bishop of Manchester, published Body in the Silo, a detective novel.

   This is not really news. Father Knox, best known in the mystery genre today for having formulated an influential set of “rules” for the writing of detective fiction, had before 1933 already published three well-received detective novels and been admitted as an original member of the Detection Club in 1930.

   There was a five year lag between The Footsteps at the Lock (1928) and The Body in the Silo (1933), but, still, the appearance of the latter could not exactly be called a surprise.

   But another Knox sibling also published a detective novel in 1933: one of Ronald Knox’s sisters, (Lady) Winifred (Knox) Peck. Entitled The Warrielaw Jewel, this mystery tale by Peck, a once successful though today mostly forgotten mainstream novelist, received quite favorable reviews and holds up well today.

   Three years ago, the excellent Persephone Books reprinted Peck’s House-Bound, a mainstream novel with a World War Two period setting, with an introduction by her (and Ronald Knox’s) famous niece, the late novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. The Warrielaw Jewel deserves reprinting as well.

   Jewel is notable as an early example of a Golden Age mystery that, in its shifting of emphasis from pure puzzle to the study of character and setting, helped mark the gradual shift from detective story to crime novel which Julian Symons famously celebrated in his history of the mystery genre, Bloody Murder .

   A tale of Victorian/Edwardian familial dysfunction, Jewel rather resembles Margery Allingham’s Police at the Funeral (1931) and More Work for the Undertaker (1948), as well as S.S. Van Dine’s The Greene Murder Case (1928).

   While the puzzle certainly is not as intricate as Van Dine’s in the latter novel, the writing is excellent, in my view on a level with that of Allingham and her Crime Queen contemporaries Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. (There also is some similarity to American Mary Roberts Rinehart’s mystery novel The Album, published the same year, though thankfully The Warrielaw Jewel is without all Rinehart’s Had-I-But-Known digressions.)

   As one pleased reviewer noted of Peck’s mystery novel, “the writing, atmosphere, and characterization” made the story “something quite distinct.”

   The Warrielaw Jewel actually is set in the Edwardian era, 1909 specifically ( “that period, so far away from modern youth, when King Edward VII lived, and skirts were long and motors few, and the term Victorian was not yet a reproach”).

   The narrator, Betty Morrison, wife of the lawyer for the eccentric, decaying gentry family of Warrielaws, tells the tale from the vantage point of the early 1930s, looking back over those shocking events in the vicinity of Edinburgh, Scotland, including the death of elderly family head Jessica Warrielaw and the trial of her favored nephew for murder.

   Involved in the affair is a family heirloom, a so-called fairy-jewel, said to have been given to the Warrielaw family centuries ago by a glittering enchanted lady carried off and married by a dark and brooding laird ancestor. A curse is said to have been laid upon the jewel. Certainly dreadful happenings, whatever the cause, overtake the family in the present day.

   There is investigation and detection, performed by an retired policeman friend of Betty Morrison’s husband; yet it is Betty herself who provides the final, crucial piece of evidence. The mystery itself is engrossing, though the best elements of the tale are found in the characters — particularly the various odd Warrielaws and their remaining retainers –and the Edwardian Scottish atmosphere.

   I hope that one day Winifred Peck’s The Warrielaw Jewel is republished and honored as a member of the company of better-written, literate mysteries of the period, for it certainly deserves to be so designated.

   When one reviewer declared The Warrielaw Jewel “in a class by itself” and added that “it looks as if [Mrs. Peck] were going to bear [Father Knox] at his own special game,” he was not, in my view, exaggerating.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Winifred Peck, 1882-1962, was born and educated in Oxford and lived in Edinburgh, according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. His bibliography includes only one other mystery novel that she wrote, the provocatively titled Arrest the Bishop? (Faber, 1949).

   While copies of the latter may be found offered for sale online (although with asking prices of $50 and up), none of The Warrielaw Jewel were seen, even with a US edition.

DICK CLUSTER – Return to Sender. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1988. Reprint paperback: Penguin, 1990.

   Dick Cluster, a Bostonian newcomer to our field, offers Return to Sender. Alex Glauberman, 40, repairs foreign cars in Boston. He’s divorced with one child who lives with her remarried mother.

   Alex’s current bedmate is a professor, on sabbatical in London. He’s going through chemotherapy for recently diagnosed cancer, and his life and thinking and physical condition are much influenced by this.

   One day, while he is waiting in line at a post office, an elderly man asks him to mail a package to his daughter in Berlin. Alex does so. Later, after Alex sees him being escorted away by a pair of strongarm types, the man returns to ask Alex, for $2500, to go to Germany and retrieve the package.

   Alex had thought to visit London anyway, and agrees. But this proves a most deadly assignment. Sender, with its fresh and intriguing plot and central character, is well worth your attention.

Bibliographic Data:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

CLUSTER, DICK.   1947- .     Alex Glauberman in all:

        Return to Sender. Dutton, 1988.
        Repulse Monkey. Dutton, 1989.
        Obligations of the Bone. St. Martin’s, 1992.

Editorial Comment:   I thought the contrast between the two covers is very interesting. As usual for mystery novels of this era, the one on the hardcover is about as stark and minimal as you can get. The cover of the paperback is far more colorful, although perhaps hard to make out what’s really pictured, unless you can look at it closely, but at least (to me) it has something to it that also says Pick Me Up At Least and Look Inside.

   There’s no need to think I’m disparaging Dutton, who published the hardcover. Artists cost money, and I suspect 90% of the sales of this mystery, by a first-time writer, went to libraries sight unseen, and another 9% went to the author’s friends. (A small laugh, hopefully at no one’s expense.)

   By the way, you can’t make it out, but the quote on the paperback is by Tony Hillerman: “Gripping… raises the Mystery into the realm of Literature.”

PAUL HAGGARD [STEPHEN LONGSTREET] – Dead Is the Door-Nail.   J. B. Lippincott, US, hardcover, 1937.

   One of the many problems associated with a lack of a sense of humor by a reviewer is the inability to tell when an author is teasing the reader. What is one to make of this: “The paunch and jowl of raffish apartment houses catapulted their elegant heights above the streets in a pageant of foppish decadence.”

   And yet it is closely followed by: “…to the wise mob of drunks, hop-heads and flamboyant slatterns of both sexes, it was a sanctuary and first-aid station. In Hilton’s electric cabinets, steam baths, needle showers and sun booths, the elect were tried and found wanton.”

   In the first of four novels featuring Mike Warlock, sports reporter for the New York Globe, and his faithful companion and cameraman, Abner Gillaway, they are assigned by the paper to cover the murder of Doris Castle, rich and the World’s Champion Lawn Tennis Player.

   Lots of suspects here, despite a few getting knocked off along the way. Did Castle’s husband, crooner Ira Wells, kill her because the marriage was unconsummated after three months? Or one of Wells’s many lovers? Or the odious Professor Ott, who once peddled a combination cough medicine and dandruff cure? Or Ott’s assistant, a coward and a blackmailer? Or the devilish Dr. Delcro, up to who knows what?

   Considerable action in an amusing hard-boiled novel in which the author just may have had his tongue in cheek. And if he didn’t, it’s still funny.

      Bibliographic Data:    [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HAGGARD, PAUL. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Henri Weiner.
      Dead Is the Door-Nail. Lippincott, 1937. Mike Warlock
      Death Talks Shop. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

      Death Walks on Cat Feet. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Also published as: The Case of the Severed Skull, as by Henri Weiner.
      Poison from a Wealthy Widow. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

LONGSTREET, STEPHEN. Born Chauncey Weiner; 1907-2002. Pseudonyms: Paul Haggard & Henri Weiner. Also a screenwriter.
      The Crime. Simon & Schuster, 1959.

       -The Pedlock Inheritance. McKay, 1972
       The Ambassador. Avon, pb, 1978.

WEINER, HENRI. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Paul Haggard.
      Crime on the Cuff. Morrow, 1936.   “Introduces one-armed sleuth John Brass, former Secret Service man who is also a popular cartoonist, creator of the comic strip, ‘Georgie the G-Man.'”
      The Case of the Severed Skull. Mystery Novel of the Month, pb, 1940. Reprint of Death Walks on Cat Feet, as by Paul Haggard.

   Uploaded earlier this morning was Part 38 of the Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. It’s another huge installment, well over 80 printed pages long, or approximately 163K online.

   And of course you’re certainly welcome to stop by and look around. Much of the data consists of the usual: corrections to previous data, added birth and death dates — always more of the latter in each new upload, alas — identities behind pen names discovered, settings and series characters added. Even though the closing date of the Bibliography remains fixed at the year 2000, there is no end to the flow of information coming in.

   I’m pleased to say that some of data is generated from posts on this blog, and the followup comments. As one such example, a thorough review of the series characters in Mignon Eberhart’s books and short stories was conducted in the comments following Curt Evan’s review of her novel The Pattern.

   Al checked them out, and in Part 38 of the Addenda he’s added the ones he’s decided as having played major roles in Eberhart’s work. This is one small example of the updating and correcting that’s still going on — Part 39 is already in progress — with input from many sources and contributors. Thanks to all!

JOSEPH HONE – The Valley of the Fox. St. Martin’s Press, US, hardcover, 1984. Reprint paperback: Collier, US, 1989. First edition: Secker & Warburg, UK, hardcover, 1982.

   Joseph Hone has written some fine espionage novels — The Oxford Gambit, The Sixth Directorate and The Private Sector — so The Valley of the Fox comes as a surprise.

   Peter Marlow, retired spy featured in the earlier Hone books, marries a beautiful but mysterious widow named Laura whose anthropologist husband was killed in Africa. Laura has a daughter named Clare who doctors have pronounced “autistic” but who holds many surprises.

   Marlow’s life is idyllic until a masked man enters his house and kills Laura and attempts to kill Peter. Marlow, finding out he’s being framed fqr his wife’s murder, flees into the surrounding English countryside. There he meets a bizarre woman named Alice who helps him rescue Clare from the nearby hospital and allows Peter and Clare the run of her strange estate.

   The plot continues to twist and turn as Marlow investigates his dead wife’s past and the deadly secrets Clare holds. This is not an espionage novel in the conventional sense but Hone manages to pull off an off-beat novel about a retired spy in an incredible plot.

   Recommended!

   Bibliography [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HONE, JOSEPH. 1937– .
       The Private Sector (n.) H. Hamilton 1971. Peter Marlow.
       The Sixth Directorate (n.) Secker 1975. Peter Marlow.
       The Paris Trap (n.) Secker 1977

       The Flowers of the Forest (n.) Secker 1980. US title: The Oxford Gambit. Peter Marlow.

       The Valley of the Fox (n.) Secker 1982. Peter Marlow.

LENORE GLEN OFFORD – The Smiling Tiger. Duell Sloan & Pearce, hardcover, 1949. Hardcover reprint: Unicorn Mystery Book Club, December 1949. Paperback: Harlequin #159, Canada, 1952.

   Although Todd McKinnon, who writes fictional short stories based on true cases, is having a writing slump, he is not interested in the tale presented to him by Hugh Hartlein. According to Hartlein, someone in Beyond-Truth, a cult opposed to any marriage that will produce children since the world is shortly to end, is bumping off its members who disobey that tenet.

   Since some of the bumpees are Hildegarde Latham, Harriet Withers, and Grace Vane, McKinnon naturally is not duped.

   Still he does take an interest in the leader of the cult. When Hartlein either commits suicide or is murdered by means of an inhaler containing crystalline cyanide, McKinnon gets somewhat involved. Later, after his wife, Georgine, is threatened, he takes the whole matter very seriously.

   Another fine novel by Offord.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Besides being a mystery writer, although not a prolific one, Lenore Glen Offord (1905-1991) was, I have discovered online, the long time mystery critic for the San Francisco Chronicle (1950-1982). She and the newspaper received the Mystery Writers of America Edgar award for best criticism in 1952.

   Mike Grost has a lengthy commentary of several of her books on his Classic Mystery and Detection website. (He has placed her in the Mary Roberts Rinehart school of mystery fiction.)

    Crime Novels:     [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

# Murder on Russian Hill (n.) Macrae-Smith 1938 [Bill Hastings; Coco Hastings; San Francisco, CA]

# The 9 Dark Hours (n.) Duell 1941 [San Francisco, CA]
# Clues to Burn (n.) Duell 1942 [Bill Hastings; Coco Hastings; Idaho]
# Skeleton Key (n.) Duell 1943 [Todd McKinnon; San Francisco, CA]

# The Glass Mask (n.) Duell 1944 [Todd McKinnon; California]
# My True Love Lies (n.) Duell 1947 [San Francisco, CA]
# The Smiling Tiger (n.) Duell 1949 [Todd McKinnon; California]
# Walking Shadow (n.) Simon 1959 [Todd McKinnon; Oregon; Theatre]