ROBERT FINNEGAN – Many a Monster. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1948. Bantam #363, paperback, May 1949. Stark House Press, softcover, 2022 (three-in-one edition also including The Lying Ladies and The Bandaged Nude).
Dan Banion’s a reporter. His editor sics him on the story of an escaped lunatic from the insane asylum — a recently convicted serial killer of women.
Dan looks into the story, but the further he looks, the more it seems like the kook is innocent: The serial murders continue to mount irrespective of whether the kook’s in custody.
Dan solves the case, but not before tussling with the KKK, quitting his job, and witnessing more grisly murders.
Dan Banion’s cool, the writing’s great, but the story’s nothing to write home about. It’s one of those where a cagillion suspects are rounded up and the writer settles on one of them seemingly at random as if he was running low on paper.
IF SCIENCE FICTION, July 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Full text and illustrations available at archive.org. Overall rating: ***½
PHILIP JOSE FARMER – The Felled Star. Serial, part 1 of 2. See review later after both parts are available. [The entire two-part serial is a section of Farmer’s novel The Fabulous Riverboat.]
E. A. WALTON “Pelandra’s Husbands. First story. Love proves stronger than possible immortality. (1)
ANDREW J. OFFUTT “Population Implosion.” Novelette. The plague hits only old people, in direct correspondence to the birth rate. Excellent idea suffers [is marred] only by jumps in the story. (5)
C. C. MacAPP “A Ticket to Zenner.” Novelette. A thief leaves behind a ticket, in a SF intrigue story, reminiscent of Eric Ambler, but without the convincing background. (3)
ALAN DIRKSON “Adam’s Eve.” Novelette. A world without humans has only waiting robots, but two find how to obtain services for themselves. (3) [His only published SF story.]
KEITH LAUMER – Spaceman! Serial, part 3 of 3. See review coming up soon. [Book publication as Galactic Odyssey.]
so when I learned that they were doing a TV series of it, I was naturally curious.
To me, it seems that the cast the lead characters perfectly. I remember not a lot about the story itself, but the little I do and the little I see in the snippets below, the synchronization seems well within very close range. Given who the author is (Death in Paradise, obviously), adapting the book to TV I’d say was a project that was meant to be done.
PRESS RELEASE:
MASTERPIECE Mystery! today announced that The Marlow Murder Club, adapted by author Robert Thorogood from his best-selling novels, premieres on PBS Sunday, October 27th at 9/8c. Along with the airdate, MASTERPIECE also announced that the cast and crew are already in production on Season 2.
THE JANUARY MAN. MGM, 1989. Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello, Rod Steiger, Alan Rickman. Writer: John Patrick Shanley. Director: Pat O’Connor. Streaming online with ads on various platforms. Available for rent on Amazon Prime as well as other outlets.
You have been unjustly fired from a job you did well,and now your ex-employers, faced with a crisis Only You Can Handle come crawling to ask you back. Along the way they almost interrupt you in a casual act of heroism, but you agree to come back, whereupon the Red Carpet is rolled out, you meet a sexy young girl who falls madly in love with you, your ex-girlfriend suddenly wants you back, and everybody who ever talked nasty to you is now at your beck and call.
And wouldn’t it be great if they all brought Beer?
Well, I suppose there are worse male fantasies, and although The January Man is neither as suspenseful as it should be nor as amusing as it could be, it still deserves some credit for realizing its limited aspirations in a light-hearted and relatively non-violent way. In fact, for a movie about a serial killer of women, it’s surprisingly un-sadistic in concept and execution (no pun intended — honest).
The January Man also offers some decent thespic opportunities to its performers, who try not to look too surprised at getting them. Kevin Kline is engagingly off-beat as the Cop-turned-Fireman Hero called back to solve the Calendar Girl Murders, Danny Aiello and Rod Steiger are appropriately choleric as his superiors, and Susan Sarandon purveys her own brand of predatory sexuality as Kline’s ex-sweetie.
Best of all is Alan Rickman, looking more than ever like a young Vincent Price, as the Maynard Krebbs to Kline’s love-happy Dobie Gillis.
— Reprinted from The Hound of Dr. Johnson #34, September 2004.
ED LACY – Moment of Untruth. Toussaint M. Moore #2. Lancer 73-554, paperback original, 1964. Later printing, 1967.
The phrase ‘the moment of truth’ comes from bullfighting. It refers to the moment that the matador makes the kill.
Toussaint Moore is a retired detective. He’s a happily married postal worker. But his wife gets preggers and he’s strapped for cash. So he goes back to his old detective agency looking for some work to supplement his income.
The old PI firm is happy to see him. They just got a call from a rich Mexican lady who wants to hire an American PI for $100 a day. Plus expenses, Touie should be able to pocket close to two grand for a couple of weeks work. She won’t say what the case is — but they figure its just a wandering husband or something.
When Touie makes it to Mexico it turns out the case is much more sinister. The client’s husband has just been murdered by a poisonous snake planted in his bed. He’d been working on an expose of the most famous matador in Mexico. He found evidence that the matador was a fraud — but before he could publish his story, he was killed.
Touie cracks the case and everything turns out copacetic. For those that survive.
I like Toussaint Moore quite a bit — but the story is just okay.
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Robert J. Randisi & Bill Pronzini
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Sugartown. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1984. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1985. ibooks, softcover, 2001. Winner of the PWA Shamus award for best novel of 1984.
Since the publication of Motor City Blue in 1980, Estleran and his tough Detroit private eye Amos Walker have been a formidable team, combining to create an average of one high-quality PI novel per year. Walker has been called “hard-edged and relentless”; Estleman has been lauded as “having put Detroit on the detective map.” Both encomiums are accurate; and in Sugartown, author and Eye carry on the tradition.
Walker is hired, first, by an elderly Polish immigrant to find her grandson, who has been missing for nineteen years:
He disappeared following an ugly, tragic incident where his father shot his mother, his sister, and then himself-a scene of carnage that the boy discovered upon returning home from school. Later the old woman also asks Walker to find a family heirloom, a silver cross — a job that leads him directly into a murder case.
Walker’s second client is a Soviet defector and famous author who thinks a Russian spy is out to kill him. After an investigation that takes Walker through the dark underbelly of Detroit, he escapes a trap that almost takes his life and establishes a connection between the two cases.
Plenty of action and solid writing in the Chandler tradition make Sugartown (which won the PWA Shamus for Best Novel of 1984) the same kind of potent book as its predecessors in the Amos Walker series. The others are Angel Eyes (1981), The Midnight Man (1982), and The Glass Highway (1983).
The versatile Estleman has also written two novels as completely different from the hard-boiled private eye as it is possible to get: a pair of Sherlock Holmes pastiches pitting the Great Man against two legendary Victorian “monsters,” Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula(1978) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes(1979).
HOLLOW TRIUMPH. Eagle-Lion, 1948. Also released as The Scar (Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett; directors: Steve Sekely, Paul Henreid).
Murray Forbes’ Hollow Triumph has an interesting idea for a book: Henry Mueller is a failed medical student and small-time chiseler with an over-sized ego, fresh out of prison when he discovers he bears an amazing resemblance to Viktor Bartok, a prominent psychologist.
Readers of this sort of thing will figure at once that Mueller will kill Bartok and take his place, and that’s pretty much what happens, but Forbes gives it a cute twist: Mueller’s impersonation becomes a greater success than he figured on (The American Dream: if you fail at one thing, re-invent yourself as something else.) and as time passes, he wins even greater fortune and honor… and he can’t stand the fact that the murdered man is getting all the credit for his killer’s work: Mueller rubbed out Bartok, but it was Mueller who got erased, and his overweening pride leads him to….
It’s a clever thought, and somebody should write a book about it someday; Murray Forbes just didn’t seem too interested. Time and again he just tells us about things when he should be showing them. So we get lines like “She felt suspicious,” or “He was scared,” which ain’t exactly deathless prose. There are even points where Forbes seem to lose interest entirely, and instead of storytelling, he resorts to synopsis, resulting in passages like, “He went to New York to received the honor, then came back and continued work with his patients …”
I kept reading, but I’m not sure why.
Fans of Old Time Radio may recall Forbes as an actor on Ma Perkins and other programs, but this was his only novel, and in 1948 the Movies bought it, discarded most of the plot, noired up the rest, and released it under the original title and as The Scar. Like Forbes’ writing Paul Henreid’s acting is just perfunctory, but there’s fine photography by john Alton, and Daniel Fuchs’ script makes intelligent use of a plot twist that would have been a facile punch-line in lesser hands.
— Reprinted from The Hound of Dr. Johnson #34, September 2004.
OTHER WORLDS SCIENCE STORIES. June-July 1951. Editor: Raymond A. Palmer. Cover art: H. W. McCauley. Overall rating: *
RUSSELL BRANCH “Time Flaw.” Novelette. The love betwen Captain Hunter of the S. S. Stella and one of his passengers is interrupted by disaster and application of Einstein’s theories. Poor writing keeps plot from any depths it might have been capable of. (1)
POUL ANDERSON “The Missionaries.” Alien worship of machines is carried to its logical conclusion, cannibalism. (2)
R. BRETNOR “The Fledermaus Report.” Martin Fledermaus, chosen as first human to fly to the moon, discovers that the beauty of one’s wife is relative. Tripe. (0)
ROBERT BLOCH “The Tin You Love to Touch.” Low-grade comedy about the female robot maid that comes between Roscoe Droop and his domineering wife, This is really low. (0)
RAY PALMER “Mr. Yellow Jacket.” Galactic census-takers discover that some humans have the power yo make thoughts real, Included (page 81) is one of the silliest theories of meteors ever. (0)
S. J. BYRNE “Beyond the Darkness.” Novella. Intrigue aboard one of a fleet of FTL ships seeking new worlds for humanity. The passengers are subjected to a memory-erasing device so that the rebellious navigators can return to contest for already inhabited worlds. Nad, our hero, finds the ex-captain still alive; the plan fails, escape, discovery, loss of heroine, villain returns from oblivion, cowardly brother redeems himself. People don’t really talk and act this way, do they? *½
JAMES CURTIS – The Gilt Kid. Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1936. Penguin Books, UK, paperback, 1947. London Books, UK, hardcover, 2007.
Kennedy’s a burglar. A wide boy. A wise guy. And wide boys never work.
He’s read just enough of Das Kapital to think surplus value is theft. So he’s just taking from the capitalists what doesn’t belong to them in the first place.
He just got out of the clink and he’s ready for some action. He meets up with some of the boys he met in stir. They’ve got a job for him.
So he does a job. Gets some coin. And promptly gets nicked again.
Good, catchy slang. Sad sack tale. The prose is dazzling but the story’s ho hum.
BRICK. Focus Features, 2005. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brendan Frye, Nora Zehetner as Laura Dannon, Lukas Haas as the Pin, Noah Fleiss as Tug, Matt O’Leary as The Brain, Emilie de Ravin as Emily Kostich, Noah Segan as Dode, Richard Roundtree as Assistant V.P. Trueman, Meagan Good as Kara, Brian White as Brad Bramish. Written and directed by Rian Johnson.
If there is or ever has been a category of films called “high school neo-noir” – or let’s put it this way, if there isn’t, there should be, even if there’s only one film in it, and that film would be this one, a small little gem called Brick.
Emily, the former girl friend of Brendan, a loner if not loser in high school, has left him for the higher “societal” levels of that same institution, calls him and asks for help, giving him hints that she’s over her head, and she has gotten into serious trouble. But se gives him only hints as to what that trouble might be, using the words “pin,” “tug,” and “brick.”
Soon enough she is telling him to back off, but of course he does not. Following her trail through paths that only those of us who have managed to survive high school, except that was then and this is now, Southern California style, Brendan does find her, but alone, dead, next to a ditch filled with water leading to (or from) a circular sewage tunnel.
“When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the detective business.”
And so is Brendan, whether he realizes it or not, a detective, as he (very painfully) struggles to avenge Emily’s death. This being a contemporary high school story (although not a single scene is filmed in a classroom) drugs are involved, and Brendan’s investigation leads straight to (and not through) the local kingpin of the local drug trade, as well as other well-hidden secrets, or so they thought.
Most striking is the language, a local slang used in a combination of (yes) Dashiell Hammett and William Shakespeare, flowing like poetry in this small but ever expanding drama, and thanks to IMDb, I’ll finish the rest of the review by quoting some of it:
Brendan Frye: Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.
Laura Dannon: Do you trust me now?
Brendan Frye: Less than when I didn’t trust you before.
Brendan Frye: Emily said four words I didn’t know. Tell me if they catch. Brick?
The Brain: No.
Brendan Frye: Or Bad Brick?
The Brain: Nope.
Brendan Frye: Tug?
The Brain: Tug? Tug might be a drink, like milk and vodka, or something.
Brendan Frye: Poor Frisco?
The Brain: Frisco? Frisco Farr was a sophomore last year, real trash. Maybe had a class a week, I didn’t know him then, haven’t seen him around.
Brendan Frye: Pin?
The Brain: Pin. The Pin?
Brendan Frye: The Pin, yeah?
The Brain: The Pin is kinda a local spook story, you know, the King Pin.
Brendan Frye: Yeah, I’ve heard it.
The Brain: Same thing, he’s supposed to be old, like 26. Lives in town.
Brendan Frye: Dope runner, right?
The Brain: Big time. See the Pin pipes it from the lowest scraper for Brad Bramish to sell, maybe. Ask any dope rat where their junk sprang and they’ll say they scraped it from that, who scored it from this, who bought it off so, and after four or five connections the list always ends with The Pin. But I bet you, if you got every rat in town together and said “Show your hands” if any of them’ve actually seen The Pin, you’d get a crowd of full pockets.
Brendan Frye: You think The Pin’s just a tale to take whatever heat?
The Brain: Hmm… So what’s first?
Brendan Frye: Show of hands.
Brendan Frye: Maybe I’ll just sit here and bleed at you.
Kara: You better be sure you wanna know what you wanna know.
Emily: Brendan, I know you’re mad at these people because you think I went away from you and went to them but, you need to start seeing it as my decision. Stop getting angry because where I want to be at, is different from where you want to be at.
Brendan Frye: Who fed you that line, Em?
Emily: Stop picking on Dode. He’s a good guy.
Brendan Frye: The pie house rat?
Emily: He’s a good friend.
Brendan Frye: So, what am I?
Emily: Yeah, I mean what are you? Just sitting back here, hating everyone? Who are you to judge anyone? God, I really loved you a lot. I couldn’t stand it. I had to get with people. I couldn’t have a life with you anymore.
Laura Dannon: Listen, you’re scratching at the wrong door. I didn’t know Em well enough to know what she was in. I just got wind of the downfall.
Brendan Frye: If you haven’t got a finger in Em’s troubles, why did her name get me into your rather exclusive party?
Laura Dannon: Keep up with me now. I don’t know, but it sounded like you did. And a body’s got a right to be curious. Now I’m not so sure.
Brendan Frye: Oh, put that body to bed. I don’t know a damn thing about whatever troubles and that works for me. Just in fun.
Laura Dannon: Coffee and Pie.
Brendan Frye: Coffee and Pie, Oh My?
Laura Dannon: You didn’t hear it from me.
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
