JAMES ANDERSON – The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy. McKay Washburn, hardcover, 1975. Avon, paperback, 1978. Poisoned Pen Press, trade paperback, June 2006.

   Fans of the typical English house party mysteries of the 1930s, rejoice — the Golden Age is back! James Anderson’s book has it all, including a list of characters and a plan of the house and, as the worried Inspector Wilins puts it: “Foreign envoys. International jewel thieves. American millionaires. European aristocracy.”

   Though he keeps saying he is not sanguine, Inspector Wilkins manages to unravel the many-stranded plot and sort out a head-spinning series of complications, with the help of a (semi-)amateur assistant.

   Guests at the Earl of Burford’s stately home include his diplomat brother Richard and some foreign envoys trying to work out an agreement; an American oil millionaire interested in the Earl’s fabulous gun collection and his wife; a strangely enigmatic and beautiful Baroness; society bore Algy Fotheringay, who gets his just desserts; an early-Christie type ingenue, down on her luck; and possibly the Wraith, a society jewel thief.

   As might be expected, Anderson has a lot of fun with this, though he does it affectionately without playing for laughs. There are ultimately two murders, which naturally take place during a violent thunderstorm when no one stays in his room.

   Egg Cosy has all the joys, and some of the weaknesses, of the classic mysteries of the Golden Age. The latter include a few poorly delineated characters and the convention of having a culprit launch into a long and detailed confession upon being accused, rather than clamming up and sending for a lawyer.

   On the plus side are the situation itself, the marvelously convoluted plot and its multi-part solution, somewhat reminiscent of early Queen. There is even a secret passage!

   If the the events of the night in question and the whereabouts of all the people and guns are just about impossible to keep straight, that’s all part of the game. There are indications of a possible sequel at the end — I hope there is one, as it’s a fun book, well worth reading.

       The Inspector Wilkins series —

1. The Affair of the Blood Stained Egg Cosy (1975)
2. The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat (1981)
3. The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks (2003)

FUGITIVES FOR A NIGHT. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Frank Albertson, Eleanor Lynn, Allan Lane, Bradley Page, Jonathan Hale, Russell Hicks, Paul Guilfoyle, Ward Bond. Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo, based on a story Richard Wormser. Director: Leslie Goodwin.

   Matt Ryan (Frank Albertson) is a would-be actor who ends up as a stooge for the studio [a “yes man” who does anything he’s asked], pushed around by studio head Maurice Tenwright (Russell Hicks) who assigns him first to arrogant heart throb John Nelson (Allan Lane), who wants out of his contract with Tenwright, then fading but charming and gentlemanly leading man Dennis Poole (Bradley Page), who Tenwright is using as weapon against Nelson.

   Poole is a real change from Nelson, he can’t even stand to use the term stooge when referring to Matt, but his star is rapidly blinking out, and his only real value is to be held over Nelson’s fat head as a threat since his last two films did terrible box office.

   Matt’s girl, publicist Ann Wray (Eleanor Lynn), has seen enough of Hollywood and just wants Matt to open a hamburger stand and get out of the dirty racket. Anything other than stay in the demeaning job as stooge — a menial and soul-numbing position as a punchline for everyone else’s joke.

   And she may be right. At an illegal casino in the desert where all the studio big wigs are gathered along with nasty gossip columnist Monks (Paul Guilfoyle), there is a police raid, and in the confusion Tenwright is shot and killed.

   Wry police Captain Jonathan Hale suspects Matt, who with help from Ann escapes into the desert night. Now wanted by the police for murder, Matt has to prove he didn’t kill Tenwright and reveal who really did.

   The suspects, along with the police Captain, gather at Poole’s house as Poole tries to stall them to give Matt a chance to escape, but Matt and Ann are headed right for Poole’s because they think they know the killer.

   There is nothing special here; this is a solid B movie with an attractive cast and capable direction, moving at a pace, but what’s notable is how much of Trumbo’s voice makes it onto the screen. The film is cynical, bitter, sardonic, and almost no one is decent or even likable.

   Tenwright is manipulative and backstabbing, Nelson arrogant and self absorbed, Monks a snarling coward, and for most of the film Matt all too willing to be everyone’s doorstep. Even Hale is star struck, vain, and full of himself, last seen in the film admiring himself in the mirror while quoting “all is vanity.”

   This is by no means film noir, but it is bitter, cynical, and fairly nasty in tone for a B programmer, and you have to imagine that was Trumbo’s doing.

DECOY. Syndicated TV. First aired October 14,1957; 39 30min episodes aired at various times around the country. Cast: Casey Jones: Beverly Garland. Executive producer: Everett Rosenthal; technical advisor: Margaret Leonard, Detective 1st Grade (Ret.).

   Decoy is best remembered as the first American TV series to feature, as its main character, a policewoman.

   The series’ episodes were “based upon true and actual cases.” Decoy was dedicated to the Bureau of Policewomen of the city of New York. The stories had little humor and were thick with melodrama. Decoy was much like Dragnet, but with a more feminine point of view. As Joe Friday did, Casey Jones narrated the episodes.

   Decoy featured crime stories dealing with the social issues of the times. Often the villains were portrayed as victims themselves. It was common for at least one bad guy to find redemption in the end.

   In “High Swing,” Casey goes undercover replacing a murdered ‘Come On’ girl, a woman who picks up guys in a bar and leads them to a place to be mugged. The killers were a nice old couple trapped by a tragic past that left the wife hooked on morphine.

   Casey did not have a regular partner, instead she was assigned to a different department every week. She might be in uniform, undercover, or the officer in charge. She worked on any type of crime and in any area of the city. Her fellow male officers accepted a policewoman as routine and treated her with respect.

   While little is revealed of Casey’s life beyond being a policewoman, we do see the effects each case has on her. At the end of every episode, Casey would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, often sharing how the case had affected her.

   The series was filmed, some of it outdoors in the New York area. The productions values were on par with network television of that time. Most of the episodes remain entertaining, yet dated, crime melodrama.

   The writing was weakened by the melodrama. It is hard today not to laugh at lines such as in “The Sound Of Tears”: “There were no kisses in the park that night (pause) unless you want to count the kiss of death.”

   The direction was adequate for its time except for the episode “Across the World.” Casey goes undercover to find a killer, but she is found out, beaten badly, and ends up in the hospital (and out of most of the episode!). Director Teddy Sims apparently had only one camera and limited time. Characters were reacting to things the camera did not show, characters off camera had conversations with others on camera, and it had the worse chase scene ever filmed.

   A talented underrated actress, Beverly Garland was the best part of Decoy. Watching her share the screen with a guest cast that included such talent as Peter Falk, Martin Balsam, and Suzanne Pleshette remains the best reason to watch Decoy.

SOURCES: Internet Archives offers episodes to watch for free. Classic TV Archives has a good episode guide. And the series is available on DVD.

SEVEN THIEVES. 20th Century Fox, 1960. Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Alexander Scourby, Michael Dante, Berry Kroeger, Sebastian Cabot. Based on the novel by Max Catto. Director: Henry Hathaway.

   Context first. To Catch a Thief was filmed in 1955, while Ocean’s Eleven premiered in August 1960. Seven Thieves beat the latter to the gate by a few months, its first showing being in March that same year.

   Of course you can’t really consider To Catch a Thief as a caper film, not in the strictest sense of the word, I don’t think, and there were a number of others that were that came in between, but since both it and Seven Thieves take place in Monte Carlo with the Casino a major part of the plot, it was of course the film I first thought of when I began to watch the latter.

   Only problem is, Thief was filmed in beautiful Technicolor, and Thieves is in “glorious” black and white. As befitting a “noir” film, one supposes, but then why was it filmed in Cinemascope? The noir aspects are minor. Why not have followed Hitchcock’s example and gone with color as well? Monaco is such a beautiful place. It deserved it.

   Thieves is also not nearly as good, plotwise, as Thief, but it is better than Eleven (filmed in color) but whose fame depends on the actors playing in it than the rather disposable details of stealing all that money from the Las Vegas casinos, all to no avail.

   Something always has to go wrong in caper and/or heist films. We’ve said that before on this blog, and Thieves in the long run is no different. But for a suspense film, it runs a leisurely course from nearly beginning to end. Even the twists in the plot are leisurely.

   I will not be the first to have pointed this out, I am sure, but what plot behind the caper in Thieves reminded me of most was those that appeared every week on the Mission Impossible television show. Meticulous detail, timed to the second, but while nothing ever seems to go exactly to plan, and a lot of sweat appears on everyone’s brows, there is little to fear that anything goes seriously wrong.

   But of course it does, and I will refrain from telling you just when it does, assuming that you will one day wish to watch this picture. And yet the ending, while perhaps persuaded in the direction it takes by a board of censors, goes down smoothly enough – save the very last scene, where sheer luck seems to be involved more than bad happenstance, if there is a difference, and I believe there is.

   I don’t believe that Edward G. Robinson ever gave a bad performance, and he’s in fine form in this one as the disgraced elderly Professor who puts the details of the theft together, with Rod Steiger coming on board to keep the other players in line. Steiger himself seems a bit out of place among the other members of the gang, a miscellaneous group to say the least, but he’s quite effective, and (surprisingly) quietly so.

   Joan Collins was also in fine form, and here I’m speaking physically as well as performing her role well. She is a dancer in a jazz nightspot in Thieves, brunette, beautiful, slim, lissome and slender, with her two sensuous dance numbers well choreographed by Candy Barr, one of the most well-known true strippers of the day.

   There is some interplay between the members of the gang, some more committed than others, but mostly between Robinson and Steiger, whose character needs a lot of convincing to come in on the job, then later on an attraction between Steiger and Joan Collins begins to bloom.

   The heist itself? While complicated, rather ordinary, I’d have to admit. But being no particular fan of the Rat Pack myself, I’d recommend this one over its more direct contemporary, even though it’s not nearly as well known, even before the remake of Ocean’s crew at work came along and made the earlier version even more famous.

JAMES KENNAWAY – The Mind Benders. Atheneum, US, hardcover, 1963. Signet P2515, reprint paperback, September 1964. UK edition: Longmans, hardcover, 1963.

Film: THE MIND BENDERS. Anglo-Amalgamated Films (UK), American International Pictures (US), 1963. Dirk Bogarde, Mary Ure, Stanley Clements, Michael Bryant, Wendy Craig, Edward Fox. Screenplay: James Kennaway. Director by Basil Deardon.

   The actual experiments in sensory deprivation that took place at McGill University and the University of Indiana and later across the United States were originally designed to test how astronauts might fare after long periods alone in the isolation and zero gravity of outer space, but the sometimes bizarre behavior it induced in participants and the effect on their personalities soon inspired study to move into other areas of the human psyche.

   Much of sensory deprivation theory has been discarded as useless today since it varies so much between individuals and is subject to so many unpredictable variables, but when this novel was written it was still the cutting edge of psychological experiment.

   The TV series Twilight Zone did a memorable episode with Earl Holliman on the theme (though without the classic sensory deprivation tank), and of course Paddy Chayevsky later wrote the novel Altered States that became the over the top Ken Russell film with William Hurt and Blair Brown. It even featured in a memorable episode of Hawaii Five-O with Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett captured by Wo Fat (Kingh Deigh) and subjected to the treatment.

   But by far the best handling of the subject was James Kennaway’s 1963 novel and the Basil Deardon film that followed, The Mind Benders.

   Major “Ramrod” Hall is an old time counter-intelligence agent keeping an eye on Nobel laureate S.V. Sharpey, who maybe disseminating information to a foreign journalist about his work in sensory deprivation (“All men were traitors or patriots, as all eggs were good or bad.”) when Sharpey throws himself from a moving train and is killed.

   That leads to Longman, a scientist who worked with Sharpey in the United States on Reduction of Sensation therapy, and who has recently been absent from his teaching duties. Longman is something of an odd duck who tends to put himself into his experiments.

   As Hall watches a film of Sharpey’s experiments he hears Sharpey’s narration state:

   Which leads to questions: Did Sharpey die because of his studies; could the Reduction of Sensation be used in espionage?

   And has it been?

   Tate, one of Longman’s assistants brings him news of Sharpey’s death, which more than upsets Longman’s beautiful and loving wife Oongah (“… originally came from Orkney, or Shetland, or Finland, one of those places where the wind blows a girl until she has the look of a modern statue.”) and lives with Longman and their children in an eccentric but happy and rather sensual household.

   Soon that happy household is going to come under incredible tension.

   The Mind Benders is a slow almost deliberate novel — short — but building an accumulation of details as it builds up its tensions and the impending feeling of terror once Longman submits himself to the experiment that led to Sharpey’s death.

   A psychological novel in the purest sense, The Mind Benders slowly and quietly builds as the experiment begins to unravel Longman’s personality, turning his love for his wife to distaste, then hatred — but enough to lead to violence? Can a man be made to hate something he actually loves merely by suggestion induced under the extremes of sensory deprivation?

   How much responsibility for our own actions can we count on under such pressure?

   Just how far can the victim be manipulated? Longman seeks to find the answer, and more importantly can he fight back. At stake is more than the fate of nations or the solution to mysteries. At stake is Longman’s marriage and his love for his wife.

   There is little action in the book. It is mostly a case of suspense and drama. Talking heads if you will, but exceptionally intelligent and compelling talking heads.

   The Mind Benders is a one of a kind thriller made into a splendidly faithful and thoughtful film with Dirk Bogarde as Longman and Mary Ure as Oongah by Basil Deardon. It’s finally available in Region 1 DVD format and well worth catching, suspenseful, almost Gothic, and more unsettling than many a horror film filled with actual monsters other than those from our unconscious mind.

   A splendid cautionary tale that has the feel of the best science fiction and horror, but is rooted firmly in actual experiment and human behavior, it is one of the most disturbing books and films you will ever read, but ultimately also one of the most reassuring.

MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Kiss Her Goodbye. Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, May 2011.

   I read the first six Mike Hammer books back when Mickey Spillane first wrote them – well maybe a little later — but I haven’t read them since, nor I have read anything else he wrote, except a short story, novelette or two. I am submitting this as a preface to the rest of the review just to let you know where things stand.

   The first six were gangbusters, though, and there are parts of them that once read are simply not forgotten. I don’t suppose that I’m the only one who’s always been disappointed by that ten-year gap between Number Six (Kiss Me Deadly, 1952) and Number Seven (The Girl Hunters, 1962), but for whatever reason, it’s there and what’s done can’t be undone.

   Um. Let’s reverse that to say that what was undone can’t be done. Or perhaps it will someday? So far none of them have taken place during the 1952-1962 hiatus, but this is the third collaboration of Max Allan Collins with Mr. Spillane with some scraps of stories the latter had started but never finished.

   The first of these was The Goliath Bone (2008), in which Mike Hammer was updated to a post-9/11 21st century Manhattan, followed by The Big Bang (2010), which took place in the 1960s.

   Jumping forward in time again, the setting of Kiss Her Goodbye is now the 1970s disco era, when cocaine was a recreational drug and the police largely looked away when celebrities gathered to party.

   This would have been when Mike Hammer had a few more years of PI work under his belt and even — could it be? — mellowed out some. He is in fact, when the book begins, recuperating from the injuries he incurred on a previous case, idling away his time in the Florida keys, when news of the death of his good friend Bill Doolan reaches him.

   Could the old ex-cop have committed suicide? Captain Pat Chambers of New York City Homicide thinks so. Doolan was 85 and had terminal cancer. Mike’s not so sure. He’s also not sure he’s ready to return to New York. He has the city out of his system, he says, no nostalgia, no regrets.

   But the case for suicide is not as solid as Chambers has told him, and both that and the knifing of a young girl at the hands of a probably mugger right after the funeral keeps him in town longer than he’d planned on.

   There is also a sexy (and ambitious) female assistant district attorney who catches his eye, and the attraction definitely seems to be mutual. There’s also a gorgeous Brazilian singer in the trendiest night club in town – no Mike Hammer novels is ever without dames, even though by the 1970s they were no longer called dames.

   There is even some solid detective work, private eye style, that takes place in Kiss Her Goodbye, though maybe there was in those 1950s novels, and I was reading them for other things at the time. But if you were to think that Mike Hammer would have mellowed out at this stage of his career, as a semi-suggested above, you would be badly badly mistaken.

   There is enough violence in this book to make any Mike Hammer fan stand up and cheer, and loudly – with one long shootout in particular not likely to be forgotten by anyone who reads it anytime soon.

   Or in other works, if you are a Mike Hammer fan, you will absolutely love this book. It has the rhythms of New York City down pat – the dark streets, the sex, the fascination with guns and killing – and in every pore and fiber of its being.

   In Kiss Her Goodbye it’s a retro feeling, though, feeding perhaps (if I dare say it) too much on the past. If you aren’t already a Mike Hammer fan from before, for whatever reason — and those of you who aren’t know exactly who you are — this is not a book that will convert you, and it would make no sense for me to try.

Note:   Corrections of a factual nature have been made to this review based on information provided by Max Allan Collins, co-author of Kiss Her Goodbye. See also Comment #3.

[UPDATE] 04-09-11. More from Max:

   There’s been a lot of confusion about these posthumous works, and I keep trying to clarify, but it’s just convoluted and confusing enough to make that hard.

   Goliath Bone was the book Mickey was working on at the time of his death. He was sick and rushing to get it done, so his draft wasn’t polished and ran short, and the last couple chapters weren’t finished. He had done a partial last chapter. That book is probably 60% Mickey, with me polishing and expanding his work.

   The others all start from manuscripts of at least 100 pages, sometimes with plot notes and character stuff, but not always. Each is a different situation. For instance, Kiss Her Goodbye had two false starts from Mick.

   They were the same preliminary set-up but went in two directions — the major one dealt with the late inspector investigating mob/drugs stuff and crooked politics, the other dealt with the Nazi jewels. I wove them together. A major liberty I took was that Mickey was heading for an outdoor heavy metal festival, and I substituted the Club 52-type disco, partly to make the book more overtly ’70s, and also because his notes for the Chrome character indicated more of a disco queen than a rock act.

   These manuscripts are all over the place time-wise. Goliath Bone is chronologically last. The Big Bang is set around 1964. Kiss Her is about ten years later. The remaining three range from extremely early — would you believe 1948! — to the 90s, with one more mid-’60s manuscript in between. I’ll be doing these as well.

   There are another half dozen shorter manuscripts — more like the scraps you describe, opening chapters mostly — that I may develop if there’s a demand. I turned a one-page novel outline into the radio-style audio book, The New Adventures of Mike Hammer Vol. 3: Encore for Murder (with Stacy Keach). I’ve done a few short stories, too, developing the shorter scraps (again, that’s accurate in these instances) into one-off stories.

   Anyway, that’s probably more than you care to know…but once again, thanks very much.

                   Max

It’s been seven days now– I went to the ER a week ago today — and I’m getting around the house, but only with the aid of a walker. I couldn’t do without it, and I still can’t get upstairs to my own computer.

After a burst of optimism at the beginning, I’ve had to realize that the healing process isn’t going to be as smooth and easy as I’d hoped. As many of you warned me earlier, it’s going to slow, uneven and far from easy. They gave me enough pain pills for three weeks. I guess they knew what they were doing.

I’ll be back to regular blogging as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’m doing some reading that I’ve haven’t taken the time to do in a while, but so far, other than watching UConn basketball games, both men and women, not too much TV.

And as a PS to David Vineyard, that was good advice you gave me. I’m trying not to sneeze.