January 2010


JEREMIAH HEALY – Yesterday’s News. Harper, hardcover, July 1989. Reprint paperback: Pocket; 1st printing, September 1990.

JEREMIAH HEALY Yesterday's News

   A lot of people think highly of Boston-based PI John Francis Cuddy, and I wish I were one of them. I find both him and his cases rather bland, although I’m always hopeful whenever I decide to try another of them.

   This one falls into the same category, unfortunately, and it’s difficult to say exactly why. He’s hired by a female newspaper reporter to help her uncover a leak that led to the death of one of her sources — she’s working on a story involving corruption in the small seaport town of Nasharbor.

   She’s dead before he can get there. Suicide, the local police say. Cuddy knows better.

   Thus, a good beginning, a good picturesque locale, and the story seems only to inch on from there. Cuddy goes through the usual motions, gets a break on page 219, follows it up, and solves the case. And once he makes a deal — which he doesn’t call a deal– the whole affair is over, to everybody’s satisfaction, but mine.

   And there in a nutshell, I think maybe I answered my own question.

– This review first appeared in Deadly Pleasures, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer 1993 (slightly revised).


[UPDATE.] 01-19-10.   I wish I could tell you that I read another one in the series and really enjoyed it, but I can’t. It’s my fault, though, since (as far as I can recall) I haven’t read another in the series, and I ought to.

       The John Francis Cuddy Series:

1. Blunt Darts (1984)

JEREMIAH HEALY

2. The Staked Goat (1986)
3. So Like Sleep (1987)
4. Swan Dive (1988)
5. Yesterday’s News (1989)
6. Right To Die (1991)
7. Shallow Graves (1992)
8. Foursome (1993)

JEREMIAH HEALY

9. Act Of God (1994)
10. Rescue (1995)

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11. Invasion Of Privacy (1996)
12. The Only Good Lawyer (1998)
13. Spiral (1999)
14. The Concise Cuddy [Collection] (1998)
15. Cuddy Plus One [Collection] (2003)

JEREMIAH HEALY


REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


LOVE DETECTIVES. Columbia, 1934. Frank Albertson, Armand Kaliz, Betty Grable, Gloria Warner, Tom Dugan, Heinie Conklin and Blanche Payson. A “Musical Novelty” directed by Archie Gottler. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    Lest you think I’ve returned to my Southern Baptist roots in my enthusiasm for the spiritual virtues of The Miracle Man [reviewed here not so very long ago], I recommend to you (on the happy chance that it turns up on a cable channel in your vicinity), a sprightly musical short with no redeeming quality other than its obvious attempt to please.

    It certainly pleased me with its dancing chorines, slightly risque situations and repartee, and a story line of little consequence. This preceded the screening of The Miracle Man and is an example of the program committee’s wacky and rather endearing habit of scheduling entertainments of vastly different natures, in this case opening Friday’s screenings with a sexy romp that left the audience completely unprepared for the spiritual drama that followed it.

A REVIEW BY RAY O’LEARY:
   

COLIN DEXTER – The Dead of Jericho. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1981. UK edition: Macmillan, hc, 1981. Reprinted many times, including Ivy, pb, December 1996 (shown).

COLIN DEXTER The Dead of Jericho

   Inspector Morse is attending a party where he meets Anne Scott and they begin a mild flirtation. Just when they are on the verge of leaving together, Morse is called away on police business. Anne gives him her address in Jericho, a section of Oxford (the town, not the university).

   It isn’t until six months later that Morse finds himself back in her neighborhood to attend a lecture. Calling on her, he finds her front door open but no one answers his calls. He leaves, though he suspects someone is in the house.

   After the lecture he discovers a commotion in her neighborhood and learns she has been found hanging in her kitchen. Though the official verdict is suicide, he decides to poke around on his own. A few days later, the local handyman who recently repaired a garden wall for her is found with his head bashed in.

   Morse is placed in charge and realizes that the two deaths are probably connected since the handyman recently deposited money in his account — money gained by blackmail.

   I suspect that this is one of Dexter’s lesser efforts in the series. Though the writing is serviceable, the plotting is weak, including the fact that [WARNING:] there are twins involved, a fact I realized long before Morse did.

   Also, there must be four or five times that Dexter uses the dreaded “had he but known” or words equivalent to that phrase. That’s something to be avoided.

A TV Review by MIKE TOONEY:


“Twixt the Cup and the Lip.”   An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 2, Episode 27). First air date: 3 June 1965. Larry Blyden, Charles McGraw, John Hoyt, Ethel Merman, Jean Hale, Joan Blackman, John Harmon, Lee Patterson, Lane Bradford. Teleplay: Don Brinkley; based on a story by Julian Symons (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1965). Director: Leon Benson.

    Imagine being fired for being too honest. That’s what happens to Lester Pennell (Larry Blyden), however, when Mr. Orbin (John Hoyt), his boss at an up-scale art gallery, catches Lester being too forthcoming about the value of an item they’re displaying for the French government: a silver sceptre once wielded by Louis XIV. Mr. Orbin and the French say it’s worth $2 million; Lester says it couldn’t be worth a penny over $1.5 million — tops.

    Not only has he been given his two weeks’ notice but Larry also has a falling out with his girl Lucille (Joan Blackman), who accuses him of being a “doormat.”

    Meanwhile, back in Lester’s apartment house his neighbor across the hall, Nick Stacey (Charles McGraw), has stolen two rare books from Lester. Nick, you see, is an ex-cop who got caught taking bribes and is presently, as he says, “at liberty.” (How he missed jail time for his graft is never explained.)

    Down the hall Clara Lovelace (Ethel Merman) and her daughter Lambie (Jean Hale) are under-employed actors waiting for a job.

    Lester is in a dark mood when he catches Nick with his stolen books, dark enough indeed to see how Nick can be of enormous help in exacting revenge on Mr. Orbin. Lester is intimately familiar with the security systems at the gallery — and that silver sceptre just seems to be begging to get ripped off.

    And so Lester evolves a shaky caper that involves Nick and his fence, Pogo (John Harmon), Clara, Lambie, and himself. When you consider that they never have a chance to do a full rehearsal of the robbery because the French ask for the sceptre back days sooner than expected and that Nick and Lambie have ideas of their own for the boodle, you may have already concluded this caper won’t go off anywhere near as planned ….

    However, while you might anticipate the outcome of this one, I seriously doubt you’ll be able to foretell exactly what happens in the fourth act — and why.

    Larry Blyden was a regular fixture on American TV in the ’50s and ’60s, playing amiable yet somehow sinister characters; he also hosted several daytime game shows. He appeared in a couple of episodes of Twilight Zone, one where he winds up in Hell and another in which he’s a ham actor in a TV Western who gets an education from a real cowboy. Blyden even won a Tony Award on Broadway.

    Gruff and gravelly-voiced Charles McGraw is the legendary film noir star (T-Men, Border Incident, Armored Car Robbery, The Narrow Margin, etc.) who could also register integrity if the role called for it (The Bridges at Toko-Ri). He and Ethel Merman appeared together in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World two years earlier.

    Always dependable character actor John Hoyt’s career stretched from the ’40s to the ’80s. He could handle comedy or drama equally well. Science fiction fans may remember him from When Worlds Collide, in which he played a devious, wheelchair-bound billionaire, and as the friendly doctor in the first Star Trek pilot film.

    Julian Symons, upon whose story this show is based, is famous — or infamous, depending on your viewpoint — for the opinions he expressed in his critical survey of mystery fiction, Bloody Murder (a.k.a. Mortal Consequences).

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


ACE DOUBLE D-59:

    ●   DAVID ALEXANDER – The Corpse in My Bed. Revised edition. Originally published in hardcover as Most Men Don’t Kill (Random House, 1951). Reprint hardcover, under the latter title: Unicorn Mystery Book Club, June 1951.

    ●   ROBERT BLOCH – Spiderweb. Paperback original; 1st printing, 1954. Reprinted by Hardcase Crime (#42), pb, April 2008, backed with Shooting Star, also by Bloch.

DAVID ALEXANDER

   On the shelf right next to the Robert Bloch book [reviewed here not so long ago] was something I couldn’t remember reading for the life of me, so I took Ace Double D-59 with me on vacation.

   Ace Doubles in those days consisted of one original novel — usually by some competent hack — and a reprint. In this case, the reprint was The Corpse in My Bed (originally Most Men Don’t Kill) by David Alexander, which is the sort of thing you’d expect from David Goodis, if David Goodis wrote screwball comedy.

   Terry Rooke is a shell-shocked veteran and ex-bowery-bum, now tyro P.I. who finds himself framed for murder and forced back into his erstwhile skid-row milieu while he finds the real killer.

   Alexander never really evokes the vagrant ethos like Goodis did, and his attempts at comedy are more funny-weird than funny-ha-ha, but the eccentric sleuth of the piece — who enters the story like some figure lowered onstage by ropes in a Greek Play — is in the best tradition of Golden Age Eccentric Sleuths: Tommy Two-Toes is an obese ex-tramp turned millionaire who surrounds himself with a menagerie of exotic animals and bindlestiffs, whom he employs as his legmen.

ROBERT BLOCH

   He also does his cogitating while smoking an obscene pipe, between fits of gluttony. An engaging character, but I’m afraid I figured out whudunit before he even entered the story.

   Spiderweb, on the flip side, is no more surprising, perhaps, but it’s much more inventive. Basically, it’s Robert Bloch’s take on [William Lindsay Gresham’s] Nightmare Alley, with Hollywood wanna-be Eddie Haines recruited to play life-style guru/front-man for a coterie of extortionists and blackmailers led by an Evil Genius straight out of Von Stroheim: a pudgy, bald guy with a monocle and German accent no less.

   If the characters aren’t terribly original, Bloch at least puts the plot across quickly enough to keep it diverting, as Haines finds himself framed for murder and thrust into the defense of the suckers he’s supposed to be fleecing. Some of this is quite good, actually, and makes one wonder why more of Robert Bloch’s early work never got reprinted.

Editorial Comment:   Tommy Two-Toes, the gent who does the detective work in the Alexander book, also appears in Murder in Black and White (Random House, 1951).

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment to Disaster. Gold Medal 491, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1955.

EDWARD S. AARONS Assigment to Disaster

   This is the very first of the Sam Durell adventures, of which there were 42 by Edward S. Aarons through 1976, plus another six by Will B. Aarons which appeared between 1976 and 1983. (For an overview of the series by Doug Bassett, a compete listing of all the books and the complete story behind “Will B. Aarons,” see the primary Mystery*File website, located here.)

   In Assignment to Disaster, Sam’s means of tracking down a missing scientist, the second in command in overseeing an extremely hush-hush project (an orbiting bomb), is through his sister. Of course that means that the baddies are quickly onto her also, and the race is on to see who finds him first.

   I probably don’t need to say that the sister is extremely good-looking, do I? Sam is smitten, which has far reaching consequences for him long after this book is over, and if you’ve dabbled into the series recently, as I have, you’ll know what I mean. (I know, I should read them in order, but they’re not stored that way, and I haven’t.)

   And some of the things I was looking for while I was reading my way through this one, though, were signs that might indicate whether or not it was actually intended to be the first of a series. I’d guess that it was, but that’s all I have, a guess.

   As for any other comments I have, I’ve re-read Doug Bassett’s review of the book (follow the link above), and I think he says everything I was going to, and maybe even better. So why don’t I let him say it?

    “This is the first of Durell’s adventures, and it’s pretty good. It isn’t typical of the series as a whole, though. The action takes place in the States (most installments occur in exotic climes), Durell is seemingly not nearly so well respected in his organization, and most amusingly, Durell is far less of a superhero, taking a terrific amount of abuse and harboring all sorts of doubts and inner turmoil.

    “Still, the basic setup is here: Durell works for a supersecret section of the CIA headed by the pro forma crusty old man (here General McFee). We learn that Durell’s a Cajun, and we eventually meet Durell’s improbable grandfather who improbably lives on a beached riverboat – he was the last of the riverboat gamblers, apparently – and who gets ever more improbably ancient as the series progresses.”

THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS Lizabeth Scott

THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1951. Lizabeth Scott, Jane Greer, Dennis O’Keefe, Fay Baker, John Hoyt. Director: John Cromwell.

    I picked this one to watch for two reasons. First, Lizabeth Scott was in it. Secondly, because Jane Greer was in it. And if you’d like me to keep going into thirdsies, with both of the aforementioned two ladies in it, the movie had to be a noir film, not so?

    Not so, or if it is, it’s the most borderline of touchy-feely noir films I’ve ever seen. Not that that’s so bad, I hasten to add, but in no way nor at no time did this movie go in a way I thought it was going to go, and I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.

    The movie opens with Jane Greer’s character (Mildred Lynch, later to be known as Diane Stuart) up for parole at the women’s detention center where she’s serving an indeterminate sentence. She’s polite, she’s mild, she’s humble, and she convinces the three or four old biddies on the board. The one male member is not so sure.

THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS Lizabeth Scott

    And sure enough, once she’s out, her real personality comes to the fore, and taking the brunt of her built-up frustration and anger at society is one of the kindest, most understanding parole officers the world has ever seen, Joan Wilburn (Lizabeth Scott).

    How understanding is that, Steve? Try this. When Diane steals Joan’s fiancé right out from under her, does she (Diane) get mad? Does she get even? I won’t tell you, but maybe if I hint loudly enough, you will get the idea.

THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS Lizabeth Scott

    Nor does the world treat Diane all that well, either, which is maybe where the noir aspect might come in, but no, I’ve been thinking about this overnight, and it’s not really enough. Jane Greer might overplay her role just a little, but if one can act with only facial expressions to indicate his or her thoughts, she does it in this movie, and extremely well.

    As for Lizabeth Scott, she may underplay her role, that of an Ice Princess who sees and knows what her duty is, and goes ahead and — well, I won’t say, but I’m sure that if you read any other review of this movie, you can find out easily enough anyway, without having to watch this movie, which you should.

    Part of Joan Wilburn’s problem may indeed be the Ice Princess part of her make-up. If she weren’t so cool and collected even with her fiancé (Dennis O’Keefe, by the way), their relationship may have meant more to him than it appears it does. I don’t think he even ever got to First Base with her, if they had Bases back in 1951.

Reviewed by MIKE DENNIS:

   

DOUGLAS FAIRBAIRN – Street 8. Delacorte, hardcover 1977. Reprint paperback: Dell, 1978.

    “Nobody wants to come downtown anymore. They tell you it’s like coming to a foreign country.”

FAIRBAIRN Street 8

   That’s the sentiment expressed by a Miami native in Street 8, a hot-blooded 1977 noir novel by Douglas Fairbairn.

   The title street, an English translation of Calle Ocho, the main drag of Miami’s Little Havana, is the site of Bobby Mead’s used car lot. Out of habit, Bobby still calls it by its original name, Southwest 8th Street, and from the office window of his lot, he’s seen Miami transformed from a sleepy, one-season tourist town into a vibrant Latin city.

   The Cubans are everywhere. They’re even buying cars from him, so for the first time, he hires a Cuban salesman, Oscar P?rez, to accommodate them. Oscar, however, soon becomes embroiled in the hornets’ nest of exile activity, and the trouble begins.

   The problem with Miami’s exile community in 1977 is that, while they’re committed to eliminating Fidel Castro, they also want to wipe out his sympathizers and spies who have infiltrated their organizations. But exactly who is who?

   Told entirely from Bobby Mead’s point of view, Street 8 allows him no letup. His world is contracting around him, threatening to choke him, and not even his ratty South Beach hotel room offers him any sanctuary. He has a teenage daughter, but his incredibly twisted relationship with her only serves to further cut him off from the city he once loved.

FAIRBAIRN Street 8

   Fairbairn deftly ushers the reader through the dark fringes of the byzantine world of Miami Cubans in 1977, and we eventually learn that some of them are more interested in acquiring power in Miami itself than they are in retaking their homeland to the south.

   This little-known novel is an excellent noir tale, highly recommended, as it offers an uncompromising look at one man caught up in a city’s convulsive transition.
   

Bibliographic Data:   While he has a number of other novels and creenplays to his credit, Douglas Fairbairn has only one other crime novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. That novel, Shoot (Doubleday, 1973) was also the basis for a movie of the same name.

   The film version stars Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine. Here’s a short synopsis from the one found on IMDB: When a hunter is shot dead by another party also hunting in the Canadian hills, retaliation is the order of the day.

REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


THE MIRACLE MAN 1932

THE MIRACLE MAN. Paramount, 1932. Sylvia Sidney, Chester Morris, Robert Coogan, John Wray, Ned Sparks, Hobart Bosworth. Lloyd Hughes, Virginia Bruce, Boris Karloff, Irving Pichel.

Screenplay by Waldemar Young and Samuel Hoffenstein, based on the novel by Robert Hobart Davis and the play by George M. Cohan. Director: Norman Z. McLeod. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    A remake of a silent film with Lon Chaney Sr. (and which is today a lost film except for two short fragments), the sound version has a dramatic power that transcends its sentimental story of four con artists (Sidney, Morris, Sparks, and John Wray recreating the Chaney role) who fall under the spell of a charismatic faith healer.

    The miracle man is played by Hobart Bosworth, whose restrained, moving performance is extraordinary in the sense of spiritual grace it communicates. The only other film performance that I can recall that rivals it is that of another fine silent actor, H. B. Warner, who starred in Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical drama, King of Kings.

THE MIRACLE MAN 1932

A TV Review by MIKE TOONEY:


“Who Needs an Enemy?” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. First air date: 15 May 1964 (Season 2, episode 28). Steven Hill, Joanna Moore, Richard Anderson, Barney Phillips, Dee Carroll, Paul Baxley, Wally Rose. Teleplay: Arthur A. Ross; story: Henry Slesar, based on a story in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (title and issue unknown). Director: Harry Morgan.

   Charlie Osgood (Steven Hill) has been embezzling money from his firm to the tune of $60,000; his partner Eddie Turtin (Richard Anderson) has found out and isn’t at all happy about it. In the opening scene, in fact, Eddie literally has a gun to Charlie’s head and wants him to return the money — or else he’ll go to the cops, which would mean seven felony counts and thirty-five years in prison for Charlie.

   What’s a fella to do? One solution Charlie explores is to kill his partner — but things don’t quite work out as planned.

   Plan B, although complicated and risky, seems to have more promise of succeeding. With his blonde girlfriend Danielle (Joanna Moore), Charlie fakes his own “suicide.” The plan is going along smoothly until Charlie decides to share the wealth; then he finds out who his friends really are ….

   This brief synopsis may give the wrong impression of the show’s tone. It’s not as grim as it sounds; indeed, it comes close to being a screwball comedy, with all the main characters not being too tightly wrapped.

   Steven Hill (Mission: Impossible, Law and Order) is surprisingly funny as Charlie, a guy who expects loyalty from people he cheerfully cheats. Joanna Moore proves that not all blondes are dumb. And Richard Anderson, normally cast as a stolid authority figure, steals the show with his frazzled businessman portrayal.

   Two highpoints: Moore’s interview with a policeman (Barney Phillips) as she tries to say “I don’t know” a half dozen different ways, and Anderson’s hilarious eulogy for his “dead” partner at a memorial service as he manfully struggles to say good things about a guy who has consistently driven him crazy over the past twenty years.

   The show ends with a bang — literally — which, all things considered, seems entirely just.

   You can see “Who Needs an Enemy?” on Hulu.

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