J. LANE LINKLATER “Mystery of the Mexicali Murders.” PI Alan Rake. First published in 10-Story Detective, January 1941. Reprinted in The Noir Mystery Megapack (Wildside Press, Kindle edition, 2016).

   Although the author of several hundred stories for the pulp fiction magazines, J. Lane Linklater, the pen name of Alexander William Watkins (1892-1971), certainly qualifies as an unknown author today.

   He did write seven hardcover mystery novels, all with a private eye character named Silas Booth. I’ve always meant to read one, but for some fault of my own, I never have.

   One series he wrote for Detective Fiction Weekly had lawyer Hugo Oakes as the leading character, and Monte Herridge wrote about him earlier on this blog here.

   He had few other recurring characters in the stories he wrote for the pulp magazines, but as far as I know, “Mystery of the Mexicali Murders” is the only appearance of private eye Alan Drake, a fellow who reminds me a bit about a fellow who Dashiell Hammett often wrote about.

   Here is the first paragraph of the story:

   This is, of course, Alan Rake. He is here in the area along the border between California and Mexico after receiving an urgent telegram from the head of a big fruit shipping outfit, but when the man is shot dead in front of him when he first meets him, he decides to stay on the case and see if there’s some way he can still get paid the $5000 that was promised him.

   The case is a complicated one, with lots of suspects and a setting that is over 100 degrees during the day and not much better at night. One girl in particular, a young spitfire with flashing eyes named Edna, catches his attention.

   But more than the characters, and who it was who killed Warnbecker, takes second place to the setting, a cantaloupe-growing area that Linklater must have known well to describe it in as much depth as he does, including its vast underbelly of criminal activity. Rake mixes in well, seeing and observing, and quite remarkably, thinking too.

   Linklater was no Hammett — I should make that totally clear — but a better editor could have helped make the ending a lot tighter, and if so, this might be the small gem of a story that it almost is.

R. DJÈLÍ CLARK “A Dead Djinn in Cairo.” Novella. Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi #1. First published online by Tor.com. Also available in Kindle format, May 2016.

   In an alternate history version of Egypt, circa 1912, Fatma el-Sha’arawi, a special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities has a problem to solve: who, or what, killed the djinn, twice as tall as a human with aquamarine scales, whom the authorities have found lifeless and drained of blood in his apartment.

   The first thought is that he has been killed by the ghuls that have been infesting the city, but if that were the case, they would never have left his body behind. A closer look suggests that he committed suicide, but since djinns are nearly immortal, the question as to why has no answer.

   Fatima’s world is now a strange steampunk conglomerate of exotic Cairo and demons from another plane of existence. It seems that forty years ago, a mystic by the name of al-Jahiz bore a hole to the Kaf, another-realm of magic, allowing not only the djinns and ghuls to cross over, but angels (of some variety) as well, perhaps better described by the following paragraph:

   There are flying machines, mechanical beings, and a clockwork threat to Fatima’s entire world, but with a kickass female priestess’s assistant named Siti, worldwide catastrophe is narrowly averted at nearly the last instant.

   I apologize for giving the ending away, in a very general sense, but it’s the telling that’s the more important here. This is a world of enchantment that Fatima lives in, one that is fascinating to visit but you really wouldn’t want to visit there:

   There is a definition of the word “enchantment” that describes what’s happening here, isn’t there?

PAUL BISHOP “Bandit Territory.” PI Blue MacKenzie. Novelette. First published in Paul Bishop Presents… Bandit Territory: Ten Tales of Murder & Mayhem, edited by Paul Bishop (Wolfpack Publishing, paperback, 2019).

   What I cannot tell you, first of all, is whether or not this is Blue MacKenzie’s first appearance in print, or if it so happens that it is, whether there are or will be future cases for him to tackle.

   Blue may be the first fictional PI to also be a bodybuilder, as well as a Vietnam veteran and a former CIA agent. Now at a formidable 275 pounds of pure muscle, he certainly isn’t the kind of guy I’d care to have been hired to track me down.

   In “Bandit Territory,” the lead story in the anthology edited by Bishop with the same name, he’s been hired by a music producer to find his number one client, a singer by the name of Charity Ross. Her latest CD is almost ready to released, but she’s disappeared and is now completely out of sight.

   The trail leads Blue to a defunct bodybuilding outfit being investigated for fraud by the FDA. While the connection is not clear, the owner has disappeared the same night as Charity. No coincidence that.

   Paul Bishop, the author and a 25 year veteran of the LAPD, has also written a number of full length crime novels, and his smooth, easy style of telling a tale, even short ones, goes down well, with an every so often knack of coming up with an especially pungent observation or clever choice of phrasing. If there are other stories about Blue MacKenzie, I’d definitely like to know about them.

JOHN L. FRENCH “Message in the Sand.” PI Matthew Grace. First published in the collection Past Sins: The Matthew Grace Casebook (Padwolf Publishing , paperback, March 2009).

   The collection Past Sins that includes this story contains 17 stories about Matthew Grace, but in how many of them he’s working as a PI, I do not know. In the first few I skimmed through, he’s a crime scene investigator for the Baltimore police department.

   Since that the job that the author also has had for many years, I’m sure the details are right, and that’s the expertise that carries over to the cases that Grace is involved in when he starts his new career as a PI.

   This one begins with the discovery of the arm (only) of a notorious gangster buried in the sand along a stretch of the Maryland shoreline. That has nothing to do with the case that Grace is hired to work on, that of a missing daughter working a summer job in the same area before heading off to college in the fall. Or does it, as you may very well ask.

   It’s by the numbers from this point on, but sometimes the numbers add up to a very good story, and that’s what we have here, one on the grittier side. Grace has the right connections to do the job well, and is more than tough enough when the going gets a little rough. You can’t ask for much more from PI story, can you?

C. L. MOORE “Shambleau.” Novelette. Northwest Smith #1. First published in Weird tales, November 1833, First reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader #7, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (Avon, softcover, 1948). First collected in Shambleau and Others (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1953).

   It begins as a well-constructed space opera should, taking some place in the future, but somehow ineffably combined with the legends of the past:

   The story than continues with Northwest Smith rescuing a strange female but still alien creature from a mob intent on destroying her. Once they are both safe, Smith sees her in the passage that hints at even more eroticism to come. This would have been heady stuff back in 1933.

   The attraction between Smith and the Shambleau (for that is who she is) continues, until two nights later, as they share living (and sleeping) space, straight from pages of H. P. Lovecraft:

   What comes next I leave to your imagination. But read it yourself, you should. You’ll never forget it. It is difficult to believe that this was C. L. Moore’s first published story. I do not know how long it took SF fans of the day to learn that “C. L.” stood for “Catherine Lucille,” nor what their reaction was wen they did, but I am indeed curious.

BRYNN BONNER “Jangle.” Novelette. Session Seabolt #1. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May 2007.

   Many of you, and I’m willing to wage a majority of you, are collectors of one thing or another: books, magazines, records, DVDs, comic books, Lego sets, Star Wars toys, whatever. And even if you’re not, I think you can identify with those of us who do haunt library sales, old used book and record stores, tag sales (garage sales, perhaps, where you live), hoping that the next place you visit will be The One.

   Such is the case in this short tale. Session Seabolt is the owner of a used record store, and when she’s not in the shop, she loves to go browsing all of the garage sales in the area:

   It’s happened to me. I know the feeling. The author (not her real name) has nailed it perfectly.

   What Session has found is almost irrelevant at this point, but since I’m sure you’d like to know — I know I was, and Ms Bonner puts off telling us for as long as she can. An early pressing of Bob Dylan’s first LP, the one containing several tracks that didn’t appear on the version finally released to the public. Some of the early ones did get into circulation, and they’re worth thousands of dollars.

   To assuage her guilt, Session also takes an old stereo set, complete with turntable and speakers. I might have done the same.

   The rest of the story is not nearly as good as the beginning — it gets a little too complicated, and I don’t think I need to go into it. Well, here’s a hint: it has more to do with the other stuff she bought than the Dylan LP. I’ve told all there is to know about the really good part.

      —

PostScript:   According the introductory notes, this was to be the first of series. It was, but the second known Session Seabolt story didn’t come along until “Final Vinyl,” which appeared in the Sept-Oct 2012 issue of EQMM.

CARROLL JOHN DALY “The Egyptian Lure.” Novelette. Race Williams #18. First published in Black Mask, March 1928. Reprinted in The Snarl of the Beast: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams, Volume 2 (Altus Press, 2016).

   Race Williams doesn’t call himself a Private Eye. He’d rather be thought of as a Confidential Agent, and in fact that’s what it says in the lettering clients see on his office door. By the time this story appeared, Williams was already a long-time fixture at Black Mask magazine. Readers had been enjoying — and heartily approving — his adventures since the first June issue of 1923.

   In “The Egyptian Lane” he’s, well, lured to the dive / strip joint of the same name by an envelope stuffed with money, with no name attached to the brief note accompanying it. It’s a tawdry joint — the owner of the joint is a Greek by the name of Nick — and it takes Williams a short while to track down the beautiful dancing girl who once lived in a convent but who is now his new client.

   He takes her under his wing, but thanks to a clever ruse of the men who are after her, he loses her again. Calling himself a dunderhead, there’s no way in hell the thugs who’ve abducted her can escape his wrath. Nor do they! The hunt the follows, urged on by his anger and consuming desire for vengeance, is what readers of Black Mask were waiting for, and that’s exactly what they got.

   And so did I. Race Williams is correct is not thinking of himself as any kind of “detective.” His methods are crude but effective, and a gun is his constant companion. The story is well told, the settings (from the dirty streets of Manhattan to the barren wastes of New Jersey) are well described, and the pace? It never lets up.

RICHARD S. PRATHER “Sinner’s Alley.” Shell Scott. First published in Have Gat — Will Travel. Reprinted in The Young Punks, edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid G271, paperback original, 1957).

   This story takes LA-based PI Shell Scott out of his usual milieu of young blonde and busty Hollywood starlets into the much edgier world of juvenile delinquency, or hoodlums on the loose. Even though the latter come straight from standard casting, they sure give Shell Scott Scott all he can handle, if not more.

   His client is a man whose daughter has been found murdered and raped, her face so badly damaged that Shell is the one who has to identify her in the morgue. His boiling point is so over the top that he makes the bad mistake of trying to confront the young hoods in their den. Not a good idea.

   The resulting couple of melees are well choreographed, I can tell you that. You needn’t worry that the equally tough Shell Scott will come out on top in this one or not, though, but in the telling, there’s not much humor in this one. Prather plays it straight and tense until the very end, when — well, I won’t tell you, but the ending does fit the pattern of most of his fiction after all.

Postscript:   The subject matter of The Young Punks, the anthology n which I read this one should be obvious from the title. Most of the stories come from Manhunt, written by such authors as Gil Brewer, Evan Hunter, Richard Deming, Jonathan Craig and so on. It’s well wortht he small amount of money it would take to obtain a copy today, if JD fiction has any kind of appeal to you at all.

ROBERT LESLIE BELLEM “Suicide Scenario.” Novelette. Nick Ransom #6 (*). First published in Thrilling Detective, February 1948. Collected in Nick Ransom, Confidential Investigator (UPDproductions, Kindle edition, 2018).

   If you thought this was going to be a review of one of Bellem’s “Dan Turner” stories, I can hardly blame you. After all, one source I found says that he wrote over 300 of them. But that’s only a small percentage of Bellem’s output, estimated by that same source to be in the 3000 range, almost all of it in the form of short fiction.

   After appearing in a run of five stories in the early 40s, Nick Ransom took up shop in the pages of Thrilling Detective in 1948 for a run of nine more tales, beginning with “Suicide Scenario” in the February 1948 issue. Previously a Hollywood stunt man with is own business called “Risks Incorporated,” Ransom has decided that business wasn’t good enough and has changed the sign on he door to “Nick Ransom, Investigations.” Hollywood being the town it is, not only have bit players come calling, but so have producers, directors, stars, and “assorted geniuses of every size and gender.

   He doesn’t have a client in this tale, however. While driving back to his office through the streets of Los Angeles, he stopped by a frantic woman who needs him to stop her husband from committing suicide. Which he does, cleanly and efficiently. It turns out (not surprisingly) that there’s more to the story. The man whom he stopped from shooting himself turns out to have been hired to play the part, and then the real husband is found, his face blown away.

   This is not all. There are more twists and turns ahead. This is a real detective story, with lots of clues and red herrings to follow and be sorted out. Plus Bellem’s usual skill with the English language, somewhat toned down from the Dan Turner stories, and no emphasis at all on various parts of the female anatomy which took up a lot of space to describe back in Turner’s Spicy Detective days.

   Well, not completely. Quoting from the first page:

   —

       The Nick Ransom series —

Peril for Sale (ss) Detective Dime Novels Apr 1940
Danger’s Delegate (ss) Red Star Detective Jun 1940
Hazard’s Harvest (ss) Red Star Detective Aug 1940
Jeopardy’s Jackpot (ss) Red Star Detective Oct 1940
Risks Redoubled (nv) Double Detective Aug 1941
Suicide Scenario (nv) Thrilling Detective Feb 1948
Mahatma of Mayhem (nv) Thrilling Detective Apr 1948
The 9th Doll (nv) Thrilling Detective Aug 1948
Serenade with Slugs (nv) Thrilling Detective Dec 1948
Homicide Shaft (nv) Thrilling Detective Apr 1949
Preview of Murder (nv) Thrilling Detective Jun 1949
Puzzle in Peril (nv) Thrilling Detective Oct 1949
Blind Man’s Fluff (nv) Thrilling Detective Feb 1950
Murder Steals the Scene (nv) Thrilling Detective Aug 1950

(*) There is a Nick Ransom in the story “Short Cut to Vengeance” in the December 1939 issue of Variety Detective as by John Gregory, but the latter is known to be a house name and no one seems to have connected it up with Bellem.

FLETCHER FLORA “Loose Ends.” Novelette. Percival ‘Percy’ Hand. First published in Manhunt, August 1958. Reprinted in The Second Pulp Crime Megapack (Wildside Press, Kindle edition, 2016).

   Fletcher Flora had one only series character in a long career of crime fiction writing, a policeman by the name of Lt Joseph Marcus, who appeared in six stories for the digest mystery magazines of the 1950s. He missed a bet, though, in not writing another story about Percy Hand. “Loose Ends” is a good one.

   He’s hired In this one by Faith Salem, a very good looking woman, especially while tanning herself outside on her terrace. It seems as though he’s thinking of becoming wife number four to man with whom she presently has an understanding. She is wondering, though, why wife number three just suddenly disappeared without a trace. The police didn’t work very hard on the case, though, since the man she presumably was having an affair with disappeared at exactly the same time.

   What Faith Salem wants Percy Hand to do is the obvious. Find out what really happened. And so he does, with adeptness and efficiency. Roots in the past are involved, as is true for a good percentage of all good PI stories.

   And not only is Hand very good at his job, but author Fletcher Flora is also very impressive as a wordsmith whose words I ought to have reading all this time, and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t.

   Some examples:

   And:

   One more. Percy has gone to see the missing man’s brother, a high class gangster. In the room is Robin Robbins (not her real name):