LEE THAYER – Out, Brief Candle! Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1948. No paperback edition.

   The life of Emma Redington Lee Thayer is more fascinating than any of her novels. Born in 1874, she quickly established herself as a painter of murals on the walls of private homes, and some of her work in this field was displayed in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair. Later she specialized in doing the designs for stamped bookbindings, and countless early-twentieth-century titles were made visually more appealing thanks to her skill.

   It was only after World War I that she started writing books herself, turning out a total of sixty mystery novels, for all but the last three of which she also designed the dust jackets. Apparently she holds the record for both professional and personal longevity in the mystery field, for her last book, Dusty Death (1966), came out when she was ninety-two, and she lived to be ninety-nine.

   She seems to have been a nice, refined, well-to-do old lady. Unfortunately she wrote her novels for an audience she thought of as exactly like herself, with no attempt to widen her appeal.

   Fifty-nine of Thayer’s sixty books deal with redheaded gentleman detective Peter Clancy, a dinosaur among sleuths if ever there was one. Imagine a stick figure from Edwardian times adrift in the decades of depression, war, angst, and civil rights, and trying desperately to pretend that nothing has happened, and you have something of the flavor of a Peter Clancy exploit.

   Thayer’s novels move with the speed of an arthritic snail trying to cross a piece of flypaper. Her plotting is abysmal, her style unbearable, her characters impossible. In most of his adventures, Clancy is attended by an ever-deferential valet named Wiggar, a Jeeves clone without a drop of humor, who is constantly getting off bons mots like “Oh, Mr. Peter, sir!”

   Her favorite device for bringing a book to climax was to have God Almighty himself strike down the killer from on high, while Mother Nature whipped up a furious storm and the rhetoric swirled and squalled. Those who might think this description is exaggerated are referred to Accessory after the Fact (1943) and Still No Answer (1958), as well as to our main entry.

   Out, Brief Candle! takes its title from Macbeth and its kickoff situation from Agatha Christie: Like Poirot in Death in the Air (1935), Clancy investigates a murder aboard an airliner on which he was a passenger.

   Like all Thayer novels, this one is twice as long as necessary; but a slightly ingenious solution, combined with a truly grisly encounter between a little girl and a body in a coffin, lifts it to the ranks of Thayer’s best, whatever that means.

   Lee Thayer is a highly specialized taste, but if for no other reasons than her industry and longevity, she deserves better than to be totally forgotten.

         ———
   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.

Editorial Comment:   Complementing this review, or to be more precise, the impetus for my posting it here, is one covering Lee Thayer’s first book, The Mystery of the 13th Floor (1919), by J. F. Norris on his blog. You should go read it.

CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – Rest You Merry. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. Avon, paperback, 1979; reprinted many times.

   Every Christmas the New England agricultural college where Peter Shandy is a professor attracts people from far and wide to view the mammoth Grand Illumination covering the campus. All but Shandy’s house, up until this year, and then his uproariously flamboyant form of rebellion has an unexpectedly murderous backlash.

   No book with an undertaker named Goulson and a ubiquitous blond student named Heidi Hayhoe can be entirely serious, and it should be noted that the key to the first murder is a missing marble (no kidding).

   Nevertheless, even seasoned mystery readers will fall all over themselves in trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle before Shandy and his disarmingly amateurish sleuthing. Uncommonly enjoyable.

     The Professor Peter Shandy series —

Rest You Merry (1978)
The Luck Runs Out (1979)

Wrack and Rune (1981)
Something the Cat Dragged in (1983)
The Curse of the Giant Hogweed (1985)
The Corpse in Oozak’s Pond (1986)

Vane Pursuit (1989)
An Owl Too Many (1991)

Something in the Water (1994)
Exit the Milkman (1996)

[UPDATE] 02-01-11.   Charlotte MacLeod’s last mystery novel was published in 1998, and she died in 2005 in her early 80s. Her books were very popular while she was alive, but she’s nearly forgotten today. (If I’m wrong about this, please correct me.)

   I think that books in both of her series, this and the Kellling-Bittersohn mysteries, were wacky and eccentric enough to be called “screwball mysteries,” although she was never fortunate enough to have any of them picked up and adapted into the films.

   I enjoyed this one, as you’ve already read, but wackiness is difficult to maintain over a long period of time, and later books did not seem to have the same pizazz as this one did. Or maybe it was only me.

CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – The Convivial Codfish. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1984. Avon, paperback, 1985; reprinted many times.

   The Comrades of the Convivial Codfish have had such a glorious time “Bah, Humbug-ing” their way through their annual Scrooge Day luncheon that it seems a shame it has to be spoiled by the loss of the silver Codfish from its chain around the neck of the Exalted Chowderhead.

   To Jeremy Kelling, the E.C., this is almost as bad as his subsequent fall and the deadly events at the Tolbathy’s railroad party. Max Bittersohn, Sarah Kelling’s new husband, has allowed himself to be inveigled into attending the railroad party (on the Tolbathy brothers’ private railroad) to take Jeremy’s place, and not so incidentally, to try to find out what’s going on.

   He does, but not until several people have died, and the question of motive becomes very complicated indeed. Sarah plays only a small role, unlike in some of MacLeod’s other mysteries, while Max does the detecting. The opening scene, with the Comrades at their Scrooge lunch, is worth the price of the book. Wonderful!

      The Sarah Kelling & Max Bittersohn series —

The Family Vault (1979)

The Withdrawing Room (1980)
The Palace Guard (1981)
The Bilbao Looking Glass (1983)
The Convivial Codfish (1984)
The Plain Old Man (1985)

The Recycled Citizen (1987)
The Silver Ghost (1987)
The Gladstone Bag (1989)

The Resurrection Man (1992)
The Odd Job (1995)
The Balloon Man (1998)

● PATRICK QUENTIN – Puzzle for Puppets. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1944. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #420, 1946; Avon, 1980; International Polygonics Ltd (IPL), 1989. Filmed as Homicide for Three (Republic, 1948; with Warren Douglas & Audrey Long as Peter & Iris Duluth).

   [… Among the recent offerings from IPL is the] fast-paced and even more enjoyable Puzzle for Puppets by Patrick Quentin, my choice as the best book in the Peter Duluth series.

   Wartime San Francisco is portrayed vividly, especially its hills, cable cars, and Chinatown, as Naval Lieutenant (jg) Duluth’s plans for a romantic weekend leave with Iris, his actress wife, are constantly hindered by theft and murder.

   This intemtptus-based frustration leads to even stronger emotion when he is framed for the murder and must track down the guilty party if he wishes to stay out of jail, let alone spend time with Iris.

● CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG – A Little Less Than Kind. Coward-McCann, hardcover, 1963. Paperback reprints include: Ace Double G-540, no date [1965]; Berkley S2173, 1972; IPL, 1989.

   More serious, though no less readable, is Charlotte Armstrong’s A Little Less Than Kind (1963), about the attempt of a young man to prove that his new stepfather murdered his father.

   Perhaps Pasadena is an unusual setting for a modern working out of Hamlet, but in the expert hands of Armstrong, one of the great writers of domestic suspense, the reader’s attention and emotions are grabbed early in the book, and then it is almost impossible to put it down.

Editorial Comment:   My apologies for not being able to come up with images of either of the two IPL covers. I think the two I did locate should do almost as well, however.

(1) WILLIAM JOHNSTON, 1924-2010.

    Al Hubin sent me earlier today news of the death of William Johnston, author of many movie and TV tie-in novels, including nine in the Get Smart series. He was born in 1924 and is reported to have passed away last October 15th.

    There’s a long article about Johnston on Lee Goldberg’s blog

http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2010/01/william-johnson-named-tiein-grandmaster-for-2010.html

on the occasion of Johnston’s being awarded last year’s Faust, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ Grand Master Award.

    Said Lee Goldberg: “He wrote books based on Captain Nice, Room 222, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Monkees and F-Troop, among others.

    “But his TV tie-in work extended far beyond sitcom adaptations. He wrote books based on Ironside, Dick Tracy, The Young Rebels, The Iron Horse, Then Came Bronson, and Rod Serling’s The New People, to name a few. He even adapted the cartoon characters Magilla Gorilla and Snagglepuss into books for children.

    “Johnston also penned many novelizations, including the pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon and the high school drama Sons and Daughters. His feature film novelizations include Klute, The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, The New Interns, The Priest’s Wife, Lt. Robin Crusoe USN and his final tie-in project, Gore Vidal’s Caligula (under the pseudonym William Howard).”

(2) ARIANA FRANKLIN, 1935-2010.

    From my daughter Sarah’s historical fiction blog, Reading the Past:

    “Diana Norman, who also wrote historical thrillers as Ariana Franklin, passed away on Thursday after a lengthy illness. […] Her ‘Mistress of the Art of Death’ series brought her back to the early Plantagenet era in the company of Adelia Aguilar, a Salerno-trained physician and forensic specialist (for the 12th c).”

    L. J. Roberts recently reviewed A Murderous Procession, the fourth in the series, on this blog. I added a bibliography and some cover photos.

(3) ROBERT E. W. JANSSON. 1936-2011.

    Born in England, died in Missouri January 13, 2011. A long online obituary can be found at

http://obit.schrader.com/obitdisplay.html?task=Print&id=884065

    A teacher and chemist by trade, Jansson was also the author of two crime thrillers in the 1970s, both in Hubin: Meet You in Munich (Barker, 1975) and News Caper (London: Macmillan, 1978).

    These were followed by Feet First in 2009, a detective novel, preceded in 2008 by a novel taking place in Iceland during the Viking era, Kari’s Saga.

[UPDATE] 02-04-11.   Jiro Kimura, on his Gumshoe Site, adds the fact that Prof. Stuart Warlock appeared in both of Jansson’s 1970s novels, a series character previously unknown to Hubin.

THE SCOUNDREL. Paramount Pictures, 1935. Noel Coward, Julie Haydon, Stanley Ridges, Martha Sleeper, Ernest Cossart, Alexander Woollcott, Everley Gregg, Rosita Moreno, Eduardo Ciannelli, Lionel Stander. Written & directed by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur.

   The gem of movie-watching in last October’s spooky season was an off-beat ghost story with the unlikely title The Scoundrel, written and directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (who appear as derelicts in one scene) and starring Noel Coward in his screen debut.

   This is a wonderful thing, witty, moving and quite creepy at times as it tells of Tony Mallare, a powerful publisher, unredeemed cynic and the devil with women (Coward naturally, at the top of his archly-amusing form), surrounded by back-biting sycophants and spurned lovers, who dies in a plane crash and returns to walk the earth for a month to see if he can find someone who will cry for him.

   Sounds hokey, I know, but Scoundrel has the wit, talent and imagination to carry it off. The first half of the film is brittle comedy, with everyone speaking in epigrams, topped easily by Coward at every turn, dispensing bons mots like loose change falling from his pockets as he breaks hearts with the lethal grace of a gunfighter in a western.

   Surprising, then, to see this drawing room comedy suddenly pirouette into bizarre drama when Mallare returns to seek redemption.

   Hecht and McArthur wisely use no special effects, but suggest Mallare’s otherworldliness by careful mise en scene and Coward’s remarkable acting, which somehow detaches him from the players around him.

   The contrast between his casual elegance earlier and the agonized isolation as he roams about, tired, wet and despairing, is … well, it’s haunting!

   The character of Anthony Mallare, incidentally, is playing a character based on Horace Liveright, the publisher whose name became synonymous with American Literature in the first half of the 20th century, the man who brought Dracula, with Bela Lugosi, to Broadway. But he’s chiefly remembered for his self-indulgence and lavish parties — and because his funeral was attended by only three mourners!

   I’ll just add that the supporting cast includes Lionel Stander and Eduardo Ciannelli as poets, some lovely actresses I never heard of, and Alexander Woollcott as a critic, who help make this a film whose like you will not see again.

SHONA MacLEAN – A Game of Sorrow. Quercus, UK, trade paperback, 2010.

Genre:   Historical mystery. Leading character:   Alexander Seaton; 2nd in series. Setting:   Scotland/Ireland-1628.

First Sentence:   The bride’s grandmother smiled: she could feel the discomfort of the groom’s family and it pleased her well.

    It is disconcerting enough to be accused of less-then reputable actions you know you did not commit, but even more so when confronted by a man who could be your twin.

    Alexander Seaton, a reputable teacher at Marischal College in Aberdeen, has never known any family beyond his now-dead parents until now. Near-twin cousin Sean O’Neill is about to change all that with an entreaty for Alexander to come with him to Ireland. It seems his grandfather is dying and the entire O’Neill family is under a curse which only the proven existence of Alexander can break.

    It is always frustrating when you absolutely love an author’s first book and are then disappointed in their second. Unfortunately, that was the case here. In The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, I felt great empathy for the character and came to care about him.

    In this book, other than as the “voice” of the story, and the one to whom everything happens — how many times can one get hit on the head without major concussion or brain damage — we learn little about his internal makeup. Yes, it is interesting that he is such a fish-out-of-water character being an academic caught up in conflict, but he never really came to life.

    I’ve never been to Ireland, but I did love MacLean’s descriptions. She made me feel as though I were standing next to the characters, and wished I could be. I also felt she well conveyed the sense of Ireland as a land where faith and superstition walked hand-in-hand.

    While I found the history fascinating and gained a better understanding of the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants, English and Irish, I felt MacLean became so caught up in the history, I somewhat forgot about the story.

    I was also interested to learn that a troupe of traveling players may have performed Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” in Ireland during this time.

    The story was interesting but I found it difficult to keep track of all the characters and, because most of them were simply that, there were few about whom I really cared. I am, by no means, ready to give up on MacLean. I do hope, however, her next book focuses more on telling us a whopping good story.

Rating:   OK.

Editorial Comment:   An interview with Shona MacLean can be found online here. And in case you may have been wondering, the answer is yes, sort of. Her uncle was “best-selling author Alistair MacLean who wrote The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and a host of other action thrillers.”

JOHN NICHOLAS DATESH – The Janus Murder. Leisure Books, paperback original, 1979.

   One of the pleasures that comes from doing a regular column on mysteries like this one is that once in a while a book comes along that I can point out to that you might not have known about otherwise.

   While it’s not a book all of you are going to turn somersaults over, it is one you’re probably going to have to go out and do some hunting for if you want it.

   For example, who ever reads anything published by Leisure Books? And just look at that cover. I’m no expert, but that certainly looks like a double-barreled shotgun to me, suggesting a Mafia revenge novel, or if not that, then most certainly a crime novel crammed to the cranny with violence. Even the most dedicated private eye fan is going to think twice before opening this one up.

   Surprise. Believe it or no, this is a detective story. Not a bit of blood’n’guts in the book. The private eye’s name is Casey Carmichael. He may not be the most brilliant detective in the business, but he’s honest, he’s dedicated, and he tries hard. (He works out of Pittsburgh, by the way, and it’s been along time since anyone could say that about a detective story.)

   He’s hired in The Janus Murder by a female client to exonerate a man, her fiance, who’s been accused of killing her father. It seems he made the fatal mistake of committing the murder while being overheard on an open party line.

   That there’s no easier way of framing someone doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone, and as I mentioned before, even Casey doesn’t seem always to have all his brain cells clicking at once.

   This is a novel that simply cries out for some substantial line-by-line editing, but there are some subtle clues in the midst of the telling. Remarkably, some of them are left for only the reader to catch the significance of, and as the title indicates, a number of the clues are two-faced as well, including the one of the little gray man from upstate New York who turns out to be the key to unraveling the entire case.

   This is definitely little more than raw material for the true connoisseur, but it could easily have been much more than it is. And with it all — this is the truth — I found it very much impossible to put down.

[UPDATE] 01-29-11.   Leisure was indeed a small, obscure paperback publisher when this book came out, but until its recent financial problems came along, it had survived and was doing a fine business putting out westerns, historical romances, and even more importantly, the line of Hard Case Crime novels.

   The book is probably more easily found today than when I wrote this review, what with the ease you can buy most every book on the Internet. In fact, and this surprised me, you can download a copy almost immediately to your Kindle. That’s where I got the cover image, not from the original paperback.

   As for the book itself, I can add one other thing. The letter grade I gave it back in 1979 was a solid “B minus.” Unfortunately, while Datesh has two other books in Hubin, both written about the same time, neither one is a follow-up adventure for PI Casey Carmichael.

BAYNARD H. KENDRICK – The Eleven of Diamonds. Greenberg, hardcover, 1936. Penguin #616, paperback, 1946.

   Edward Fowler is found in the poker room of the Sunset Bridge Club with a knife in his back and the eleven of diamonds in his hand: Fowler was a gambler and a lover and a burglar, and he may have been other things besides.

   Since the case is an unusual one, the police call upon Miles Standish Rice, the Hungry, for assistance. Rice is also hired by a rich man whose son, verging on the ne’er-do-well and a confirmed and not very talented gambler, owed Fowler a large gambling debt.

   In this portrait of post-boom Florida, Rice eats a lot and often and puts his life in jeopardy on several occasions as he tries to figure out not only who killed Fowler but how he was killed.

   While the characters are interesting, I was disappointed in not being able to find the spies promised by the paperback publisher. Though not as good as many of Kendrick’s novels featuring Duncan Maclain, there is sufficient action and cerebration to keep most readers entertained.

The Miles Standish Rice series —

    The Iron Spiders. Greenberg, 1936.

    The Eleven of Diamonds. Greenberg, 1936.
    Death Beyond the Go-Thru. Doubleday, 1938.

NOTE:   Deputy sheriff Miles Standish Rice also appeared in several novelettes and short stories, including “Headless Angel,” Black Mask, September 1939. See also Comments #2 and #3.

SHOW GIRL IN HOLLYWOOD. First National Pictures, 1930. Alice White, Jack Mulhall, Blanche Sweet, Ford Sterling, John Miljan, Virginia Sale, Lee Shumway, Spec O’Donnell. Based on John Patrick McEvoy’s novel Broadway Girl. Cinematographer: Sol Polito. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   Dixie Dugan (Alice White), whose first Broadway show, directed by her boyfriend Jimmy Doyle (Jack Mulhall) has just opened and closed, is given a letter by movie director Frank Buelow (John Miljan) instructing studio producer Sam Otis (Ford Sterling) to test her for a contract.

   However, when she arrives in Hollywood, she finds she’s only one of a number of Buelow’s protegees. Discouraged, she’s ready to go back to New York when Jimmy Doyle’s musical is picked up by the studio. Dixie is hired as the lead, and she seems destined for stardom.

   White is not much of a dancer or a singer, the musical numbers are undistinguished, and the two-strip technicolor negatives of the closing musical number have not survived.

   However, the unoriginal plot is enhanced by the sometimes broad but still sharply etched performances of Hollywood types, by the behind-the-scenes filming of a major musical number, and by Blanche Sweet’s moving portrayal of Donna Harris, a silent film great who’s not made the transition successfully to sound films, and who serves as a mentor to Dixie.

   There are pre-echoes of A Star is Born, and if it’s a fairly routine musical, it’s more incisive and interesting as a portrait of the instability of careers in the early days of sound films, in the wake of the cataclysm that destroyed the silent film.

   As a kind of ironic commentary on this event, there’s a small role played by Spec O’Donnell, a talented comic actor who shone briefly in a series of late silent comedies with Max Davidson (a Cinefest favorite), with both of their careers largely ending with the demise of the silent film.