THE SAINT MAGAZINE. July 1967. Editor: Hans Stefan Santesson. Overall rating: ***

FLEMING LEE “The Gadget Lovers.” Simon Templar. Complete novel (73 pages), adapted from a teleplay by John Kruse. Russian spies are being murdered by exploding equipment, and naturally enough the Western allies are suspected. The Saint is sent to stop the assassination of a Colonel Smolenko, who turns out to be a woman. It is her idea to play the part of his secretary, as he becomes the target. The trail leads to Switzerland and to a monastery taken over by the Chinese. The handicaps of TV restrictions, and the required flashy beginning, are very well overcome. If the idea of a beautiful woman as a Russian officer can be accepted, the story becomes an interesting study of East meeting West. ****

MICHAEL INNES “Imperious Caesar.” John Appleby. First appeared in MacKill’s Mystery Magazine, April 1953. A malevolent professor commits suicide during a bloody Shakespearean production (4)

HELEN McCLOY “Through a Glass, Darkly.” Novelette. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1948. Basil Wiling takes on the case of a woman who fears meeting her supernatural double. She has reason, for it is part of a plot to frighten her to death. Too many people take it too seriously, (2)

LEIGHLA WHIPPER “Death Comes of Chuchu Valente.” Miss Bennett [a recurring character], professional assassin, is hired to kill a Mexican bullfight announcer. Ridiculous. (1)

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Oblong Room.” Captain Leopold. An LSD religious experience leads to murder in a dormitory room. (3)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Screen Test.” Jimmy Galbraith. First appeared in Dime Detective, November 1934, as “Preview of Death.”. A request for police protection fails as the heroine’s dress goes up in flames on the [movie] set, but the detective solves the case by watching the film rushes. A good story. (3)

LINDA GRANT – Lethal Genes. Cat Saylor #5. Scribner, hardcover, 1996. Ivy, paperback, 1997.

   With her four previous books Grant has become one of my favorite female authors. She isn’t a glib as Grafton, or as intense and angst-ful as Paretsky, or as focused on relationships as Muller, but her stories have substance and well-developed characters, and are very well written. Her business-world settings are a refreshing change, too.

   San Francisco Pl Catherine Saylor steps into a new world when she takes a case involving a biotech lab at the University of California. Someone is sabotaging experiments in cutting-edge dot com gene research, and no one there can figure out why, much less who.

   Cat finds a fair amount of academic jealousy, and some pretty lax security procedures, but the culprit and a motive prove more elusive. Then someone dies, and someone else is killed, and the com patch becomes a deadly place.

   My only cavil first off: the villain as eventually revealed wasn’t totally convincing to me, because I didn’t think the character and motivation were nearly well-enough established. That out of the way, I thought  this was Grant’s usual excellent job. She focuses more on the crime and less on the personal life of the protagonist than do most of the female, authors, which is at all to say that Saylor is not a well-drawn and engaging character — she is. Grant’s first-person narration is smooth and paced nicely, and her prose straightforward. She remains one of my favorites.

      The Catherine Sayler series —

1. Random Access Murder (1988)
2. Blind Trust (1990)
3. Love Nor Money (1991)
4. A Woman’s Place (1994)
5. Lethal Genes (1996)
6. Vampire Bytes (1998)

JIM THOMPSON – The Criminal. Lion #184, paperback original, 1953. Reprinted many times.

   Bob Talbert is 15 years old. He raped and killed his 14 year old neighbor Josie. Maybe.

   There’s not a lot of evidence one way or the other.

   The DA’s about to let him go when he gets a heads up that the paper is about to go crazy about it: ‘DA Lets Killer Loose!’. The DA decides it would be better for job security to go ahead and force out a confession. Which he does.

   The book is a Rashomon-like POV kaleidoscope with the perspectives of the parents, the law, Bob, the witnesses, and the fourth estate each taking a turn at telling their side of the story.

   No conclusion is reached, and you’re left not knowing who committed the crime. Bob’s not even sure anymore.

   All we know is that everybody is corrupt and no one knows truth from fiction.

   At the end, the paper has played out the ‘DA Lets Killer Loose’ angle and is now ready to push a new story: ‘Innocent Youngster Victim of Miscarriage of Justice’.

   There’s no more truth behind one story than another. At the end of the day, it’s all dollar signs and the stench of mendacity.

         —

   The fact that we’re left without a denouement is disconcerting. We’re just left with a bunch of puzzle pieces of different sizes from different angles of the same scene, none of which fit together. On the other hand, I guess that’s the point. That truth is hard to find. For example, Bob names an eyewitness who, once located, says: ‘What do you want me to say and how much will you pay me to say it?’ Bob’s lawyer says: I just want the truth. They respond: I’m having trouble remembering—how much did you say I’d get paid—and who was it I’m supposed to have seen?

   It’s a unique novel and different from the Thompson’s usual pantheon on psychos on perdition’s path. Ambiguity is not something Thompson is known for. But that’s what he serves up here. Here the psychopath is the criminal justice system itself: Damned and it don’t give a damn. I dug it.

   I tested positive yesterday again for the Covid virus. I had this sh*t once before, and I thought it was one and done. Not so. So far it’s been only little worse than a bad head cold, and they’re treating me with ordinary OTC medications: ibuprofen, Flonase and some honey-based throat remedy I don’t know how to spell.

   I thought (since I don’t have much else I can do) I’d keep the blog going, but while thinking about what I could be doing, and actually doing it is another. So I’ve decided that the best thing to do is wait it out and start again fresh when it’s run its course.

   And start a New Year all over again! As to what’s happened so far this year, I’d just as soon forget it.

PAUL BOWLES – Let It Come Down. Random House, hardcover, 1952. Signet #1002, paperback, 1953. Reprinted many times since.

   Nelson Dyar is a bored bank teller in the U.S. of A. Waiting for nothing. An acquaintance has apparently established himself in the International Zone (which Burroughs calls ‘Interzone’) of Tangier and invites Dyar to work at his travel agency. Dyar accepts. Nothing else to do.

   The phrase “Let It Come Down” is from MacBeth. One of the characters is scheduled for a hit. He walks by his hit man, saying: ‘Looks like rain’. The hit man says, swinging his sword upon his neck: ‘Let It Come Down’.

   Dyar arrives and his buddy is not all that friendly. In fact, his buddy is just using him as a money laundering mule. British Sterling is strictly controlled in Morocco. And sneaking it in is worth its weight in silver.

   Dyar suspects precisely what is happening, and lets it happen anyway. Let’s himself be seduced by a countess, let’s himself be taken in by a whore. He had nothing going on anyway. So why not?

   And then he finds himself with a shitload of money. And decides, for perhaps the first time in his life, to do something: He steals it.

   He absconds to a hovel in Spain where he waits, smoking more and more hashish, getting more and more stoned, more and more paranoid. And waits. For it to come down.

   Which it does. Inevitably.

         —

   Starts off promising, ends with a meh. I picked this one because I’d just read Peter Rabe’s The Box which got me in the mood for more North African island intrigue. However, as the book goes on, as Dyar gets more and more stoned, as his attentions start to blur and glaze, the book starts to meander too. Like Dyar. Like the camera’s eye. Which is realistic. Just not enjoyable for this reader.

   So the thing is well executed, I guess. I just prefer straight, hardboiled execution. And when the character and narrative start to fall apart, so did my attention.

   I read that a fan once knocked on Bowles’s door excited to visit Tangier, and Bowles, upon opening the door, responded: If you’d read my books, why would you want to visit Tangier? He paints a portrait where everyone and everything is for sale in the International Zone. That there’s nothing too perverted, for a price.

   It’s a place where, if you have no values, you’ll be sucked into intrigue quicker than a duck in a jet engine. But for me, this book was more quack than pâté. And I never liked pâté anyway.

MICHAEL CONNELLY – Trunk Music. Harry Bosch #5, Little Brown, hardcover, 1996. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1998

   Connelly is to me one of the strongest authors to emerge in this decade, and I am a bit surpassed that he hasn’t been nominated for more awards. The Black Echo did win a Best First Edgar, but what I thought was his best, The Concrete Blonde, went almost unnoticed.

   Harry Bosch is back in homicide, after a disciplinary assignment away from trouble and the limelight His first case after he returns is a sleazy filmmaker’ s body in a trunk, one that has all the earmarks of a Mafia hit. The LA Organized Crime boys want no part of it, though, and this makes Harry a little suspicious. He gets even more so when the trail leads to Las Vegas and some mob figures. He follows it there, and finds a troublesome lady from his past, and more suspicions, and a lot more problems than he wanted, needed, or could comfortably deal with-but that’s par for Harry.

   [A line I spotted:] “He smiled glibly.” I’ve always wanted to do that, but never knew how.

   I think this is the first time I’ve given a Connelly book less than a [double star rating], but this was a very ordinary book for Connelly — which means it was above average, and better than most [authors] can  write.  One of the plot elements — his Achilles heel from the first book — wasn’t believable to me, and there wasn’t anything really exceptional about any part of the story.

   It was nevertheless a good book, because Connelly is good enough to be readable even at half speed,  On the whole, though, it was a little disappointing, if only because of the high standard he’s set.

RICHARD ABSHIRE – Dallas Deception. PI Jack Kyle #3. William Morrow, hardcover, 1992. Penguin, paperback, 1993.

   Jack Kyle is one of those oh-so-common PI’s who’s barely squeaking by. He sleeps in his office, for example, and his secretary (named Della) works for the occupants of all the offices on the same floor as his. He’s hired on this case (pro bono) on behalf of a cop friend who’s currently laid up in the hospital. It seems that the daughter of the latter’s very close lady friend has been caught on videotape in some very X-rated activity, and not voluntarily.

   Kyle makes with the rough tough scene, gets the tape, makes sure it is the original (but of course the number of copies can’t be determined for sure, but the frightened Freddy, who orchestrated the scene, tells Kyle that that’s all there is. Maybe, maybe not, but Kyle later finds he has a problem to deal with when he finds Freddy dead, with the very naked daughter in the same room.

   That’s pretty much it. The basic plot line. When spelled out like that, it doesn’t seem like much — not to fill nearly 300 pages of small print in the paperback edition — but I haven’t yet gone into the motive, which verges into very nearly science fiction territory, of the “mad doctor” variety, or at least it was back in the early 1990s, and personally, I didn’t find it very interesting, I have to admit, though, it was certainly different.

   Jack Kyle, who tells the story in good old-fashioned first person, is a likeable lunk of a guy. When he’s actually working on the case, the action scenes are well-described and orchestrated, but the banter between Kyle and his friends and associates often come off as forced and lame. Maybe it was just me, but the best I can do on my H/B scale is a meager 4.7.

   That’s out of 10.
   

      The Jack Kyle series —
1. Dallas Drop (1989)
2. Turnaround Jack (1990)
3. The Dallas Deception (1992)
   

[NOTE]: This is the last of four reviews that went missing during the loss of service undergone by this blog over this past weekend. Unfortunately all of the comments for it have permanently disappeared.

BILL PRONZINI. “Booktaker.” Nameless PI. First appeared in Shosetsu Shincho, 1982, apparently a Japanese collection of four novellas, presumably in English. Also collected in Casefile, St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1983; PaperJacks, Canadian paperback, 1988. Reprinted in Locked Room Puzzles, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini (Academy Chicago, paperback, 1986).

   Nameless is hired in this one by a bookseller friend to investigate the recent thefts of several etchings and old maps, $20,000 worth in 1982 money. (This from the store where Nameless built the bulk of his pulp magazine collection, back when they could still be obtained at reasonable prices.)

   There are only three keys to the room, the owner’s and those of two employees. There are also security devices at all of the ways in and out of the store. It must be an inside job, but which of the store employees is responsible, and the even bigger question is how is he doing it?

   To keep an eye on the situation, Nameless goes undercover in the shop as a new employee, using the name Jim Marlowe. And lo and behold, another rare map disappears, almost literally under Nameless’s eyes and nose.

   It is indeed quite a mystery. Only a chance comment by Nameless’s girl friend Kerry helps lead to the solution to the case, but the culprit is not named until both she and Nameless are nearly run off a dangerous canyon road by another car.

   Wonderful! Without trying to exaggerate too much, this one has everything. Who doesn’t love a bookstore mystery? And a locked room mystery built right into it?
   

[NOTE]: This is the third of four reviews that went missing during the loss of service undergone by this blog over this past weekend. Unfortunately all of the comments for it have permanently disappeared.

PETER RABE – The Box. Gold Medal 632, paperback original, 1956 (cover by Barye Phillips). Stark House Noir Classics, softcover, 2003 (published in a 2-for-1 edition with Journey Into Terror).

   Quinn is a mafia lawyer who screws up. Not quite big enough for the long ride, so he’s given an all expenses paid trip around the globe instead.

   The way it works is this: They knock you out and stick you in a box, about the size of a coffin. They fill it with plenty of food and water and put holes in it for air. Then they nail it shut and stick you on a freighter from NY Harbor to NY Harbor, by way of the world entire.

   Somewhere about halfway thru the voyage, the box top breaks and it starts to smell of human filth. A smell the sailors can’t handle — so they dump the box out at tiny harbor port in Northern Africa.

   Quinn’s got amnesia and doesn’t know what the hell is going on. The locals clean him up and go about trying to get some papers from the consulate on him so they can send him on his merry way.

   But soon enough he gets the lay of the land and his gangland persona kicks in. He decides to take things over in this island town and make his own gangland kingdom by the sea.

   The local corruptor in chief (the mayor) doesn’t take too kindly to this outsider coming in and threatening his take. And so the matter comes to a head: the NY gangster enlists some of the local oppressed Arabs against the African mayor and his cronies. And comes the showdown.

         ————–

   I enjoyed it but it was a bit on the light side in the end. I also didn’t like how hard Rabe tried to push the metaphor of “The Box.” The idea is that humans have “boxes” that they create for themselves. Even with the “benefit” of amnesia, a NY gangster has habits of character created by “The Box” he has caged himself within that will inevitably cause him to become a gangster in whatever environment he finds himself in.

   Not sure I buy it myself. On the other hand, Rabe was a practicing psychologist so he probably knows better than I do. Still, overwrought metaphors are annoying to this boy in the box. I preferred Anatomy of a Killer and Kill the Boss Goodbye.
   

[EDITORIAL NOTE]: This is the second of four reviews that went missing during the loss of service undergone by this blog over this past weekend. Unfortunately all of the comments for it have permanently disappeared.

JACK EARLY – A Creative Kind of Killer. Fortune Fanelli #1. Franklin Watts, hardcover, 1984. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1995, as by Sandra Scoppettone (the author’s real name).

   Fortune Fanelli, the first-person narrator of A Creative Kind of Killer, is a former cop who inherited money, made a lucky investment, and left the force. He’s now a private investigator, but not exactly the usual kind. He’s a single parent, trying to bring up his two teenage children and work on murder cases at the same time.

   His ex-wife, a soap-opera producer, has no real interest in raising children, so Fortune gets the job. He lives in New York’s SoHo district, and the first murder in the book takes place right in his neighborhood. The killer is “creative,” posing the corpse in the window of a boutique so artfully that Fanelli himself admits he must have passed the body six limes without noticing it.

   His investigation of the case leads him both into the arty crowd and into the more sordid world of runaways and kiddy porn.

   A Creative Kind of Killer is a promising debut. Fanelli is an interesting character, and his relationship with his children makes for a different kind of subplot. The love interest is provided by a young woman who is a dead ringer for Meryl Streep; and Father Paul, the handsome local priest. is a strong character.

   Early is particularly good in his descriptions of SoHo, and Fanelli’s feelings about the changes in his old neighborhood are an effective commentary on one man’s desire to remain involved in his community. The mystery is a good one, too, and the resolution satisfactory. It seems likely that Fanelli will appear in other cases in the near future.

   Early’s second novel, Razzamatazz (1985), is a straight thriller sans Fanelli, however.

         ———
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.
   

[UPDATE]: In spite of Bill’s suggestion that it might happen, a second recorded case for Fortune Fanelli never occurred.
   

[ADDED NOTE]: This is the first of four reviews that went missing during the loss of service undergone by this blog over this past weekend. Unfortunately all of the comments for it have permanently disappeared.