DENNIS LEHANE – Darkness, Take My Hand. Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro #2. Morrow, hardcover, 1996. Avon, paperback, 1997.

   Lehane won a well deserved First Novel Shamus from the PWA for 1994’s A Drink Before the War, though the book didn’t even make the Edgar short list. Why are we not surprised?

   It seemed relatively innocent. A friend of Kenzie’s had a friend with a son she was afraid was being stalked by someone who meant him ill, and she wanted them to allay her fears. Then someone got killed in a particularly messy way, and the modus operandi matched that of a  crime more than a decade old, whose perpetrator was still in prison.

   That wasn’t the last of the bloody, perverse deaths, and yes, it all turned out to be connected. Everything that either Kenzie or Gennaro held dear would be threatened and damaged before the twisted skein was unraveled.

   Darkness, I guess so. This makes his previous book seem like a fairy tale. Well, maybe not quite, but it’s tougher than the back end of a shooting gallery. Don’t read it if you’re depressed, because the pain and bloodshed are, or seemed, unrelenting.

   Lehane did not fail of the promise of his first book in terms of writing, though this is an excellently written book.  You know I don’t like serial killers, and I’m not too crazy about cowboy PIs, and there’s both here, and that tells you something about how good a job Lehane did.

   This is going to be a strong contender for both an Edgar and a Shamus, unless the judges of each go completely brain-dead. Um. Come to think of it …

DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. May 1945. Cover by Gloria Stoll. Overall rating: *

BRUNO FISCHER “Deadlier Than the Male.” Novelette. A soldier’s buddy comes home from the war to check on his friend’s wife, who seems to have changed. Murder welcomes him at the door. Fairly obvious ending. (2)

TALMAGE POWELL “The Dark, Unfriendly Tide.” A man tries to dispose of a girl’s body in the bayou, but the elements betray him. Overly melodramatic. (3)

WILLIAM R. COX “They’ll Kill Me!” Novelette. Tom Kincaid has a murderous competition in his attempt to make a movie about gambling. Low grade Hollywood all the way. (0)

CYRIL PLUNKETT “Murder on the Wing.” A man obsessed with owls suspects his wife of poisoning him. (1)

FRANCIS K. ALLAN “The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.” Novel. Duke Danube saves a girl from involvement with murder in an opium den. Could have been put down at any time. (0)

JOHN PARKHILL [pseudonym of William R. Cox] “Slips That Pass in the Night.” An ex-Marine helps an explorer’s daughter regain two stolen rubies. (1)

JOE KENT [pseudonym of Francis K. Allan] “The Madman in the Moon.” Novelette. A soldier on furlough returns to his old neighborhood and is nearly framed for murder. A certain flavor of the wartime forties enhances this less-than-average story. (3)

DAY KEENE “A Corpse for Cinderella.” Novelette. Dancing skeletons, the kiss of death, and other “supernatural” happenings are exposed by a private detective. Had promise, but much too overdone. (1)

RAOUL WHITFIELD – The Virgin Kills. Knopf, hardcover, 1932. Quill, papernack, 1986. No Exit Press, UK, paperback, 1988.

   “The Virgin” is the name of a yacht. It’s called that because there’s no first mate.

   Yacht owner Eric Vennel invites a bunch of ‘friends’ to sail from NYC to Poughkeepsie on the Hudson to watch the regatta.

   Vennel owes a bunch of money to the mob and has put in the fix on the regatta. Heavily favored California’s star rower gets stuck with a morphine syringe right before the race, spoiling their chances.

   Unfortunately, the shot was too strong and the rower OD’s. Now the cops are involved, and Vennel has vanished, presumed dead. The remaining ‘friends’ aboard the yacht immediately become suspect, and the dead college boy’s rich father spares no expense in sending a fancy pants sleuth to find the killer.

   I enjoyed it. Not my favorite Whitfield by a long shot — but it’s still Whitfield; his dialogue is credible and vintage and his prose is tight.

THE AVENGERS “Mr. Teddy Bear.” ABC (Associated British Corporation), UK, 29 September 1962 (Season 2, Episode 1). Patrick Macnee (John Steed), Honor Blackman (Mrs. Cathy Gale). Guest cast: Michael Robbins, John Ruddock, Michael Collins. Written by Martin Woodhouse. Director: Richmond Harding.

   This was the first appearance of Honor Blackman as John Steed’s new partner in crime-solving, Cathy Gale, and it’s a good one. The villain of the piece is a notorious assassin for hire with a penchant for the dramatic and flamboyance in carrying out his tasks. Prime example: the episode begins with the death of his latest victim by poisoning on live TV.

   Playing to the killer’s obvious ego, Steed comes up a plan. Set himself as bait in a plot which would have Mrs Gale as Mr. Teddy Bear’s latest client. (The name comes from the man’s communicating with his clients via a radio hidden in a stuffed “talking” teddy bear.)

   The most common way a new leading character is introduced in a TV series nowadays is to have him or her having just been hired and needing to be mentored by the old guy that’s been around a while. Not so here. It is as if Cathy Gale has always been there. No introduction takes place. The somewhat flirtatious banter between the two leads is exactly that: relaxed and friendly, and a trademark of series from Day One.

   To that end, one other reviewer of this episode wondered if the two leads spent their nights as well as days together. The characters I mean. Come on. Obviously some people want to know more than I do.

   I also read an interview with Honor Blackman that was conducted much later on in which she was asked about this episode. She said she didn’t remember it very much at all. It was just a job, was her reply. No more than that. Who knew then that The Avengers was going to become such a worldwide phenomenon?
   

HENRY SLESAR – The Thing at the Door. PI Steve Tyner #1. Random House, hardcover, 1974. Pocket, paperback, 1976.

   Even though printed by Pocket Books in its Gothic series with corresponding cover to match the title, The Thing at the Door isn’t quite in that category. Private investigator Steve Tyner is on his first [and only recorded] case for the Fiduciary Bank. He does a minimum of detecting, however, all along amorously pursuing the wealthy young heroine Gail  Gunnerson whose nightmares have seemed to come to life.

   The culprit is disclosed mid-way through the book and  it is simply a matter of seeing how long it will take before he is trapped. The “thing at. the door” actually involves a clever psychological factor that the murderer puts to his own diabolic use. The suspense is nothing extraordinary or creepy, but rather well modulated. Retribution at the end is swift and highly ironic.

   Mr. Slesar has an otherwise good plot here which just does not quite come off. Perhaps it’s because the characters lack depth and fall short of being sympathetic. He won an Edgar for Best First Novel in 1959 with his The Grey Flannel Shroud.   He also wrote the novelization of the Edge of Night television series (The Seventh Mask, 1969).

   The Thing at the Door is the author’s fourth mystery novel, but unfortunately it is not a very good one.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE. MGM, 1950. Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Anthony Caruso, Marilyn Monroe. Based on the novel by W. R. Burnett. Director: John Huston.

   Directed by John Huston, written by Huston and Ben Maddow, compared to Phil Rosen’s take on Dangerous Crossing [reviewed here ], The Asphalt Jungle mines W. R. Burnett’s novel for dramatic potential that I doubt even Burnett knew was there. It features career-capping performances by Sterling Hayden and Louis Calhern as players at the top and bottom ends of a jewel heist plotted by Sam Jaffe, backed up by a number of memorable cameos from such capable players as James Whitmore, Jean Hagen, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley and Marilyn Monroe.

   Huston’s pre-fab defeatism melds very nicely with scenarist Ben (Johnny Guitar) Maddow’s genuinely subversive left-wing sensibilities into a film that has become a well-deserved classic.

   Come to that, if you wanted a good notion of what a subversive screen-play really means, The Asphalt Jungle offers a prime example: To seemingly digress for a moment, novelist and screenwriter Borden (Red River, Winchester ’73, etc.), Chase once said that the secret of writing a good movie was to put in a part for John McIntire. McIntire appears (made up to look just exactly like the young Walter Huston) here as a Police Commissioner whose integrity stands out in sharp contrast to the corrupt tone of the film as a whole.

   Indeed, The Asphalt Jungle makes quite a point of portraying its nominal “criminals” as possessed of more honor than their “respectable” counter-parts. So one could well wonder what-the-hell he’s doing there at all, except that his whole character was probably written in as a sop to the censors.

   Yet even while making this nod to Convention, Maddow and Huston manage to sneak in a nice zinger: Late in the film, McIntire tells a bunch of reporters what a fine lot Policemen are, on the whole. And he’s convincing. For a moment, his speech almost seems to negate the whole tone of the film that preceded it. Then he concludes by characterizing Hayden, the one surviving member of the gang, as a “vicious hoodlum. A Man without human feelings or pity.”

   Cut from there to a shot of Hayden (WARNING!) racing back to his old Kentucky homestead, to die in the clean air (END OF WARNING!) and the perceptive viewer suddenly sees things that were never dreamt of in McIntire and his whole philosophy. A nice touch, just one of many in this film.

ROGER TORREY – 42 Days for Murder. Shean Connell #1. Hillman-Curl, hardcover, 1938. Mystery Novel Of The Month, nn, paperback, date? Hillman #23, paperback, 1949. Dennis McMillan Publications, softcover, 1988.

   Shean Connell, private detective, is hired by a rich dude whose wife has left him and gone to Reno for a divorce.

   The 42 days refers to the 6 weeks required for establishing Nevada residency, to take advantage of local divorce laws.

   The thing is, Mr. Moneybags can’t figure out why his wife would leave him. They loved each other, or so he thought. She never complained about a thing. And now she won’t even talk to him. He and a buddy were physically booted out of Reno by the Chief of Police after he went after her and tried to have a conversation. All Moneybags wants is a chance to talk to his wife. He’s sure that if only he can get in the same room with her and talk it over, they can work it out.

   It may sound simple, but it turns out that Moneybag’s wife has a doppelganger in a gangster’s moll, and ole mister moneybags may be worth more dead than divorced.

   It’s a tremendously confusing story in which violence is substituted for detection. Our detective, Connell, uses a similar strategy to that of the Continental OP in Red Harvest, Race Williams, and Cleve Adams’s Rex McBride: stir the pot, get everybody at each other’s throats and hope something happens.

   Something does indeed happen, as it always tends to do, and all’s well that ends well, I guess. But the writing is just okay and in the end the story is not complex enough (cf Red Harvest) to justify the messy plotting. The messiness is completely cleared up in a couple of pages of straight explication. I despise sudden thorough confessions that come out of nowhere. It’s like somebody told Torrey that the book was due and he needed to wrap it up in a hurry.

   Faster Pussycat is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1985 by vocalist Taime Downe, guitarists Brent Muscat and Greg Steele and bassist Kelly Nickels. The group has since gone through numerous line-up changes leaving Downe as the only constant member. They broke up in 1993, but reformed in 2001. […] They were a successful and influential hard rock band during the late 1980s and early 1990s, having sold over two million records worldwide.     [From Wikipedia.]

I’m not really too sure ’bout this conversation
There’s been a lot of talk but nothing said
And don’t you understand my French
What do I have to do to make a reservation
Just to talk to you and explain
That all you ever do is complain

I got no, I got no room for emotion, yeah
It’s like a cloud drippin radiation right on my head
I got no, I got no room for emotion
Now I’m tryin to make the best out of a bad situation
You take my heart, flush it down the drain
I’m easy baby, it’s such a shame
Now I’ve had it up to here with all your aggravation
That you put on me, such a crime
Baby, you’re just wastin my time

I got no, I got no room for emotion, yeah
It’s like a cloud drippin radiation right on my head
I got no, I got no room for emotion

ROBERT B. PARKER – Chance. Spenser #23. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1996.  Berkley, paperback, 1997.

   Spenser takes a job from a mob figure to find the man’s son-in-law, and quickly discovers he’s not the only one looking. Pretty soon he’s unpopular with everybody, including his employer, and he and Hawk are dodging people they didn’t know existed.

   I keep reading these, just like everybody else, and I always feel guilty about it. There isn’t any substance to them and hasn’t been for many years, and Parker’s been parodying his own brand of macho fantasy for over a decade. All that said, if Chance was the first book from a new writer it would probably be one of the better firsts of the year.

   Parker may be, is, all moves/no punch, but the moves are still slick and professional, Spenser is still the kind of character people like to root for, and Hawk is still the quintessential badass. (But Susan and the dog still and forever bite the big one.)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Finger of Doom.” First published in Detective Fiction Weekly June 22, 1940. Included in Great American Detective Stories, edited by Anthony Boucher (Tower, hardcover, as “I Won’t Take a Minute.” Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1957, as “Wait for Me Downstairs.” Collected in The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1965) as “I Won’t Take a Minute.” Radio plays: Suspense (CBS), December 6, 1945,    as” I Won’t Take A Minute” and Escape (CBS), March 19, 1949.

   It probably wasn’t the first novel or story to fit the theme, but it came early, and the movie made of it was a big hit at the time. I’m speaking of Ethel Lina White and her book The Wheel Spins (1936), and the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes (1938) that was based on it.

   Nor do I believe that “Finger of Doom” was the only time that Cornell Woolrich used the story line to good – no, great – advantage. A young man picks up his girl as she leaves from work. They are in love and the wedding day is less than two weeks away. He has an evening of fun planned for them, but first she must do a small errand for her employer. There is a small package she has to drop off for someone living in an apartment building which is on their way.

   She rings the bell, she is allowed in, she goes up – and she doesn’t come down. He waits outside, shifts his feet, walks up and down a little, and waits some more. The young man’s thoughts go from a vague unease, to worry, and finally to near panic.

   Although he has doubts, a policeman comes to help, but no one in the building has seen her, the room she was to deliver the package to is empty, and the final blow comes when they return to her place of work, and another woman working there says her name is the same as the young man’s girl.

   Cornell Woolrich is the out-and-out master of this kind of “everyday gone wrong” type of story, and even so, this is one of his best. The smallest details fit perfectly, especially in describing the young man’s thoughts standing outside the apartment building where his girl has vanished into. I suspect that everyone reading this has gone through situations similar to this, although perhaps never so serious as this. It must explain why his panic as it grows and grows is so very very contagious.

Rating: 5 stars.