THEODORE STRAUSS – Moonrise. Viking Press, hardcover, 1946. Serialized before book publication in Cosmopolitan, August-September 1946. Bantam #889, paperback, 1951, as Dark Hunger. Stark House Press, softcover, 2024. Film: Republic Pictures, 1948 (with Dane Clark, Gail Russell).

   Danny’s daddy was in the noose before Danny got out of the cradle.

   Danny’s mother was sick. So Danny’s daddy called the doc. Twas the middle of the night, goddamn it. Said the doc. She’ll be fine til morning.

   Cept she wasn’t. So then it was Danny’s daddy made the housecall. Payback. And the noose.

   So Danny’s a bit of an orphan, then. With a chip.

   Don’t make fun of Danny’s daddy either. So Jerry learned.

   Jerry was a dick. His daddy ran the bank. And Jerry drove a cute little trick of a red sportscar or something. Convertible.

   And Jerry was a bully. Back in 1st grade when Danny started school, Jerry kicked the crap out of him with the whole school rooting him on.

   Danny didn’t forget. So when Jerry, at the big dance, pretty Gilly, the new schoolteacher in tow, starts ragging Danny bout his daddy in the noose, Danny says come on down to the pond and let’s settle this.

   And Danny gets him this time. Beats him up but good. Only Jerry won’t give up. And picks up a rock and tries to hit Danny. Only Danny takes the rock away. And hits Jerry. Hard. On the head. Too hard.

   So Danny throws Jerry in the swamp. Goes back to the dance and picks up Gilly. And drives her home.

   Only murder don’t go away that easy. There’ll be a reckoning, I reckon.

   Decent little 40’s noir. Almost said ‘descent’. And it is. But ambiguous. With a strange sort of redemptive end. Where one may want to be caught. For the truth of it. And the peace.

DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Gutting of Coufignal.” First published in Black Mask, First published in The Black Mask, December 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   An island in San Pablo Bay, the home of wealthy retired businessmen, is attacked by bandits with machine guns and grenades, The Continental OP is on hand, guarding wedding presents. It is not difficult for him to suspect an inside job at once. The observant reader will also. (4)

DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Big Knockover [edited by Lillian Hellman]. Random House, hardcover, 1966.

   Nine adventures of the anonymous Continental Op, plus an unfinished portion of a novel titled “Tulip.” The Op was [among the first] hard-boiled detectives in fiction, so the effectiveness of the writing may have become diluted by the appearance of all those who followed. The confused younger generation of characters in the stories this collection contains has a great role in the stories, as well as the usual underworld population at the time.

Rating: *****

         ____

Note: I reviewed the stories separately, and these will be posted here on this blog individually over the next few days and weeks ahead. Also, in my original review of the collection itself, I referred to the Continental Op as the first hard-boiled fictional detective. The actual very first may  have been Carroll John Daly’s Terry Mack, or if not him, then certainly the same writer’s Race Williams, neither of whom I may have heard of at the time I wrote this review.

STUMPTOWN. “Forget It Dex, It’s Stumptown.” ABC, 25 September 2019. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Cobie Smulders (Dex Parios), Jake Johnson, Tantoo Cardinal, Cole Sibus. Based on a series of comic books by Greg Rucka (story) & Matthew Southworth (art). Director: James Griffiths. Currently streaming on Amazon and Apple TV.

   First thought: What an ugly title for a TV show. I didn’t find out until quite a while later that the TV show was preceded by a series of comic books later  collected in graphic novel format. I also later discovered that “Stumptown” is a nickname for the city of Portland OR. (This may be the only time that Portland OR is the home of a (non-licensed) PI.)

   Said PI is female, a former Marine in Afghanistan named Dex Parios. She is now suffering from PTSD, gambling debts, and caring for a younger brother with Down’s Syndrome. Offered a job to find a missing granddaughter, she hesitates at first, then decides to take it. She can use the money.

   The plot suffers a bit from trying to tell a story along with filling us in with all of the people in her life, most of whom will show up again over the course of  the rest of the season. Stumptown was successful enough in its first season to be renewed for a second season only to be cancelled when Covid comes along.

   Cobie Smulders is an actress new to me, but she’s been around for a while, including long stints on the CBS series How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014) and as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill in the Marvel movies. (I’ve never watched either.) I also haven’t watched any of the other shows in the TV series to see which way the wind blew after this one, but based on this one, its future success, if any, would of course depend almost totally on her performance.

   Which, to coin a phrase, better than satisfactory. Smulders does, I thought, overdo it at time in terms of portraying a woman living a lousy life and being sour and witty and clever about it, but otherwise she is just fine. The young lady, at the end of this first episode, sort of decides she likes the job she has just done, and it is clear that, when offered another, she is almost assuredly going to take it.

THE WEB. Universal International, 1947. Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, William Bendix, Vincent Price, Maria Palmer. Directed by Michael Gordon.

   A mild-mannered mystery movie which with a little stronger punch might be remembered by more of us fans of old black and white films than I think is the case. To wit: Edmond O’Brien’s brashness as a small hick attorney garners him a job as a bodyguard for a rich man (Vincent Price) who tells him that a former business associate, just released from prison, has been making threats against him.

   Also in the story, as it plays out, is Ella Raines, who plays the rich man’s (very) personal secretary, and whom Edmond O’Brien’s character takes a strong liking to. She’s the sleek kind of young lady who holds secrets well, and whom we the viewer are never quite sure exactly how close to her boss (the rich man) she is.

   The problem is is that Edmond O’Brien is as always a very good actor, but let’s face it, he just isn’t in Ella Raines’ league. Vincent Price is, of course, as smarmy and unctuous player as he always is, and when his newly found bodyguard kills the former business associate (see paragraph one), we know there’s something going on that our hero is slow in catching up with.

   Enter William Bendix as the tough guy detective handling the case. Even though there’s a previous connection between them, he handles Mr. O’Brien a lot tougher than the circumstances seem to warrant. It is a puzzle, but not a overly challenging one.

   It all makes for a good movie, but in the mind of no one, I imagine, is The Web more than a mere entertainment, once seen and soon forgotten. Watch this one for Ella Raines’ elegant grace, aloof and yet most charming.

CHARLES ALVERSON – Not Sleeping, Just Dead. Joe Goodey #2. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1977. Playboy Press, paperback, 1980.

   Joe Goodey, private eye. Former cop. Fired for shooting the wrong guy, the mayor’s nephew, or some such.

   He gets hired by some gramps. Gramps wants to know what happened to granddaughter.

   Granddaughter, a beauty, a druggie, leapt, or fell, or was pushed off a high tower of a Monterey mansion. A cult lives there. ‘The Institute’. Of which she was a member. A very wealthy member, bequeathing a considerable sum upon them.

   Gramps wants to know who at the Institute killed her. Because if he can prove the Institute killed her, the money goes to him.

   So Goodey heads to the Institute. Hangs around. Insults everybody with his hardboiled repartee and scabrous wit. And solves the case.

   Decent 70’s PI yarn, with California vibes. Recommended.

   Available now for pre-ordering is Jon’s book, The Nuremberg Papers:

         https://www.amazon.com/Nuremberg-Papers-Jonathan-Lewis/dp/B0DJV521GQ.

    “Private investigator Mike Levinas’s life has stalled. All that changes when a desperate Southern woman enters his office, asking him to find her dissolute older husband. What begins as a standard missing persons case reveals itself to something far more nefarious. Mike soon finds himself embroiled in intrigue and the target of a dangerous international conspiracy.

    “As Mike traverses the seedy streets of 1980s Manhattan on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal, he encounters an array of shady characters and lonely souls. When the cops prove to be less than helpful and the violence rises to a fever pitch, Mike toughens up and takes matters into his own hands.”

ANALOG SF – September 1967. Editor: John W. Campbell. Cover artist: Kelly Freas. Overall rating: **½

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “The King’s Legion.” Novelette. Federation of Humanity #19. Continuation and perhaps final episode of Anvil’s Paradise series. (*) Roberts, Hammell, and Morrissey take on pirates, the Planetary Authority, and the Space Force before realizing that have been recruited into the famed Interstellar Patrol. The series is getting tiresome. (2)

(*) Footnote Added: I do not know whether what I then called Anvil’s “Paradise” series coincides with what was his larger “Federation of Humanity” series, which did continue on for another couple of dozen more stories.

JACK WODHAMS “The Pearly Gates of Hell.” A deadly comic story of suicide in a world where suicide is definitely forbidden. (5)

MACK REYNOLDS “Fiesta Brava.” Short novel. A United Planets story. Section G sends out four unlikely looking agents to help in the overthrow of a reactionary planetary government similar to that of Spain’s. The big feature is their choice of leader through bullfight competition. Part of Reynolds’ thesis is that people get the government they deserve. Only moderately entertaining. **

E. G. VonWALD “Important Difference.” Contact Scouts discover that the monster aliens have human form. (2)

VERGE FORAY “Lost Calling.”After 20 years of schooling by alien teachers, Mirni does not know what he has been trained for, but he is successful at it. (3)

On a short vacation. Typing on my phone. Back home to CT on Tuesday. No new posts until then!

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

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

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

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

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

     ———
   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.