From Ernestine Anderson’s CD Nightlife, recorded live between 2008 and 2010 at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in NYC, featuring Houston Person on the tenor saxophone.

REGINALD BRETNOR – A Killing in Swords. Pocket, paperback original, 1978.

   As far as I know, this book was never on sale in the Hartford area. I had to go all the way to Massachusetts for a copy, but even though Bretnor is pretty well-known to long-time readers of science fiction (follow the link), I’m awfully glad that that’s not the only reason I drove so far on such a hot day.

   I read a lot of mysteries, as you may have noticed, but there aren’t many that are actually hard work to read. This one was, and it’s hard even to find anything good to say about it.

   Doing the detective work is a San Francisco antique weapons dealer named Alastair Alexandrovitch Timuroff, which right away explains his overpowering Continental accent that only someone with a name like Zsa Zsa can get away with, and wouldn’t you know it, every last one of the suspects and all of the other main characters collect either swords, knives, guns or some other sort of lethal object.

   Dead is the city’s mayor, with his pants down, evidently while he was trying to mount one of the ultra-realistic mechanical women populating the home of eccentric genius inventor Dr. Grimwood.

   I’m serious. And I think Brettnor was, too. There is a question of locked doors, but maybe not, since that part of the case was never followed up. With all the secret doors and passageways infiltrating the place, it probably doesn’t really matter.

   What Bretnor seems to have been aiming for is the vintage flavor of 1930s Ellery Queen or Philo Vance, but perhaps writing a mystery story is harder than people think. Bizarre events and weird characters are not what I want in a detective story. I want people who can think logically instead of careening around in idle chit-chat. I want an investigation carried on by first-hand observation and personal interrogation and not indirectly through rumors and suppositions and half-baked accusations.

   I don’t want pages and pages on pseudo-Indian religions. Dirty limericks, well, OK, maybe.

   Enough. What else can I say? This is a book that misfires enough to be bad without yet being bad enough for it to be read and enjoyed for its own sake. I’d suggest skipping this one.

Bibliographic Note:   This was the author’s only mystery novel.

THE DEVIL’S MEN. Crown International, 1977. Released in English worldwide as Land of the Minotaur. Donald Pleasence, Peter Cushing, Luan Peters, Costa Skouras, Fernando Bislani, Anna Mantzourani. Director: Kostas Karagiannis.

   Say what you will about the meandering plot and the sloppy editing, this one’s got atmosphere — creepy, breathtaking atmosphere. Filmed on location amongst ancient Greek ruins, The Devil’s Men aka Land of the Minotaur features Peter Cushing as Baron Corofax, a red robed Carpathian villain working on behalf of an ancient demonic force working through a fire breathing stone minotaur. Also on hand is Donald Pleasence as Father Roche, an Irish priest committed to fighting Satan.

   Now if that’s not your idea of a ridiculously subpar, but nevertheless eminently enjoyable, 1970s exploitation thriller, I don’t know what to tell you. The dialogue, I admit, is laughable, and the plot unfolds haphazardly, with little rhyme or reason, often leaving the viewer in the dark as to whether what’s transpiring on screen is happening at all or just a reflection of the characters’ innermost fears.

   And yet, I wanted to continue watching until the very end. Part of it, I admit, has to do with my sheer pleasure at seeing Cushing and Pleasence, two gentlemanly actors who gave horror films a sense of class that is sadly lacking in many films today. It’s also that the film, as I mentioned earlier, has so much atmosphere that it would have been a shame not to marvel at the ancient Greek ruins and to immerse myself visually in the dusty ruins of a long forgotten civilization.

THE KILLER IS LOOSE. United Artists, 1956. Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Alan Hale Jr., Michael Pate, John Larch, Dee J. Thompson. Based on a novelette by John & Ward Hawkins (The Saturday Evening Post, 13 June 1953). Director: Budd Boetticher.

   A more or less straight forward crime suspense thriller, with a remarkable performance by Wendell Corey as an escpaed convict obsessed with killing the wife (Rhonda Fleming) of the cop (Joseph Cotten) who mistakenly killed his wife while tracking him (Corey) down as part of a robbery, an inside job, at the bank where he previously was only a mild-mannered teller.

   I wasn’t sure that I could do it, but it looks as though I managed to get almost the entire plot summarized in one paragraph. One thing I decided not to squeeze in, though, was the fact that Cotten’s wife is after him to quit the police department and get a job a lot less dangerous. The irony, of course, is that she’s the target, and Cotten does his darnedest to protect her, while at the same time keeping her from finding out.

   There are a few awkward — no, make that contrived — moments that weaken the story, such as having the wives of the two policemen who nabbed Corey there in the courtroom when he’s found guilty, and having him confront the two couples afterward. Just a little shortcut in storytelling, that’s all, but for a moment, it was jarring.

   The final scene is almost predictable from the moment you see Corey make his escape. But what makes it suspenseful anyway is that Corey, almost blind without his thick glasses, kills three people, some in shocking fashion. You’re sure everything will work out right in the end, but in hands of someone like director Budd Boetticher, you’re just never really sure.

L. T. MEADE & ROBERT EUSTACE – The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings. Ward Lock & Co., UK, hardcover, 1899. Dodo Press, UK, softcover, 2009.

   Before the Yellow Peril that reached its apex with Sax Rohmer’s diabolical genius Dr. Fu Manchu, there was the Italian Peril which had among its finer moments, Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola, and this novel by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace.

   Shades of cammora, omerta, and the Black Hand, the Brotherhood of the Seven Kings as presented here rivals not only the Mafia and Union Corse, but the Si Fan and Spectre, and its leader is both fascinating, beautiful, and evil.

   So speaks our narrator, Norman Head, who met the dazzling Katherine in Italy and was enlisted in the Brotherhood only to discover the darkness at its and her core. Now it is 1894, and he has fled to London, where a consultation with Mrs. Kenyon, a friend, over her son, Cecil, the young Lord Kairn, introduces him to the mysterious Dr. Fieta, and to the stately and seductive Madame Koluchy — none other than his own Katherine: “That is the great Mme. Koluchy, the rage of the season, the great specialist, the great consultant. London is mad about her.”

   The poor boy, Cecil, is already in the hands of Mme. Koluchy and the Brotherhood who have evil plans to get the boy out of the way so one Hugh Doncaster can lay claim to money and title. Our hero, without so much as a thought, decides to follow them to Cairo where Dr. Fieta has suggested the climate will benefit Cecil, but from whence he will never return. Norman is made of sterner stuff and will not allow the child to be sacrificed to the sinister Katherine.

   In Malta, Dr. Fieta slips away from him with the boy and heads for Naples, where Norman first knew Katherine, and dreads to go, but will follow if he must.

   We are still only in chapter one, mind you.

   Norman reveals himself as a member of the Brotherhood to Dr. Fieta, discovering the evil doctor has injected the boy with Mediterranean Fever to make the lad appear sick, but the latter will not be moved from his deadly assignment and in a race to save the boy Norman finally corners him as he is about to throw the boy into the sulfurous caldera of Mt. Vesuvius, and it is Dr. Fieta that dies there instead.

   Vesuvius was a favorite scene for melodrama in British fiction in the 19th century, with many a villain or tragic lover meeting their fate there. Varney the Vampire ends his reign of terror in its fires as well. More recently Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child had their hero, FBI agent Aloysious Pendergast, confront his evil brother Diogenes among the sulfurous fumes of the great volcano (Book of the Dead).

   The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings appeared as a serial in The Strand, and much like the early Fu Manchu novels each chapter is a complete short story around the central theme of Norman outwitting and foiling the evil machinations of the Brotherhood against targets in England. Like Conan Doyle and even Bram Stoker, it attempts to take advantage of the then still new ease of travel and communications by employing such modern inventions as steam yachts, railroads, telegrams, and science in general in much the same way writers today like Clive Cussler, Steve Berry, and James Rollins use technology.

   For all the dated nature of books like this, they are the direct ancestor of the books at the top of today’s bestseller lists full of mysterious conspiracies and the like. Today the villains are Islamic extremists and evil corporate interests or shadow governments rather than Italian or Chinese secret societies, but the basics are the same; movement, mystery, incredible odds against one or a handful of protagonists, and general bad guy 101 activity. Here the conspiracies are personal as are the crimes, but they are only one remove from Carl Peterson or Ernst Stavro Blofield threatening England or the World.

   L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace were popular writers in the Strand, who wrote numerous books like this. Both almost always wrote with someone else, him, perhaps most famously Eustace with Dorothy L. Sayers, his being a physician and much desired as a collaborator for the medical expertise he brought with him.

   Miss Meade, Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith, an Irish woman from County Cork, seems to have been the storyteller of the two, penning over 300 books, eleven appearing posthumously. Her books ran the gamut from stories for young girls to sensational fiction, religious, historical, and adventure novels. One of her better known mystery collaborations with Eustace, with whom she penned eleven books, is The Sorceress of the Strand, which features Madame Sara, another villainess. She also collaborated with Dr. Clifford Hallifax (Memoirs of a Physician) and Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas (Under the Dragon Throne).

   As he battles Mme. Koluchy, Norman acquires a friend and ally, Dufrayer, and the pair fight the female mastermind to a stand still, until like Moriarity with Holmes, her full attention seems focused on ridding herself of them. It’s always one of the puzzles of this kind of book that between adventures everything seems forgiven and everyone goes back to normal until the next adventure, until near the end when it is convenient for the writer, the villain finally has enough.

   With Scotland Yard finally onto Mme. Koluchy, she is cornered, and more dangerous than ever. Having killed Dufrayer, she is pursued to her lair by Norman, where she disarms him by means of an electromagnet, and defies him:

   And, true to her word, she springs her last deadly device in the furnace of her hellish laboratory that burns at a hellish 2400 degrees Centigrade taking a brave detective with her.

   The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings is entertaining melodrama from another age, well enough written, modern for its period, and minus many of the excesses of the time period. Mme. Koluchy proves a fascinating mix of femme fatale and fiend, and our stalwart heroes at least aren’t as lunkheaded as Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the Fu Manchu saga. All in all it is great fun from the late Victorian period and more than worth finding (simple enough in ebook form).

   You can hear in this simple tale of adventure and intrigue some of the same concerns abroad today, the same xenophobia and the same need to reassure the reader good old fashioned Anglo Saxon values will win out in the end. Like many of today’s thrillers, and those from other eras, it reflects both real and imagined fears of foreign influence, unspeakable conspiracies, and the darkness just beyond the light that haunt middle class imagination across the years. As the mystery novel has always been primarily about the restoration of order from the demons within us the thriller has always been about the thin line between us and the demons just outside our door, forces we have no control over.

   If nothing else, it is a reminder the more things change in popular fiction, the more they stay the same.

One of the songs on Connecticut-born jazz singer Dana Lauren’s first album, It’s You Or No One, from 2010:

SKYSCRAPER SOULS. MGM, 1932. Warren William, Maureen O’Sullivan, Gregory Ratoff, Anita Page, Verree Teasdale, Norman Foster, George Barbier, Jean Hersholt, Wallace Ford, Hedda Hopper. Based on a novel by Faith Baldwin. Director: Edgar Selwyn.

   Although it doesn’t do a particularly good job at introducing its myriad array of characters at the very beginning, Skyscraper Souls ends up being a devilishly enjoyable romantic comedy/drama. What sets this film apart is that nearly the entire story takes place within the confines of a supersized midtown Manhattan Art Deco skyscraper, one that symbolizes its owner’s oversized ego.

   Based on Faith Baldwin’s novel Skyscraper (1931), this pre-code movie features Warren William in a starring role. He portrays Dave Dwight, a selfish and lecherous owner of the aforementioned skyscraper, one that towers over the Empire State Building. Motivated primarily by greed and lust, Dwight has engaged in a long-term extramarital affair with his secretary, Sarah Dennis (Verree Teasdale). Soon enough, however, he has his eye on Sarah’s new and younger assistant, the exceedingly innocent Lynn Harding (a beautiful Maureen O’Sullivan). But Lynn has a suitor of her own, a bumbling, if not handsomely charming bank teller named Tom Shepherd (Norman Foster).

   Not surprisingly, given that the movie was adapted for the big screen from a novel, there’s also a couple of further subplots involving a stock market scam, a lonely jewelry store proprietor who has fallen in love with a girl who seems to bed every man except him, and a down-on-their-luck couple willing to steal in order to get back up on their feet. Plus, there’s a gun, a murder by mistake, and a suicide.

   A combination of romantic comedy, sleaze, and sentimentalism, Skyscraper Souls can feel sluggish at times, which necessitates a degree of patience from the viewer. But it ends up being a rather insightful look into the romantic and working lives of both sexes in the early 1930s and a subtle, but hardly over the top, indictment of hyper-capitalism. All told, it’s not what I would consider a great film, but it’s certainly worth a look.

CYRIL HARE – The Wind Blows Death. Perennial Library, paperback, 1982. Originally published as When the Wind Blows, Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1949. First published in the US under the paperback title by Little, Brown, hardcover, 1950. Published in the US under the British title by Garland, hardcover, 1976.

   In A Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor hail this as a masterpiece, certainly the best of Hare’s mystery novels. Realizing that their basis for judgment is, was, and always will be how a book measures up as a detective story, it’s easy to see how they came to such a conclusion.

   It’s a good book, no doubt about it, but I have some small cavils to make about it. Most of them may be completely personal, but then again, what do you think?

   For the moment, though, let’s start this review over, from the beginning. According to what I deduce from page 84 [and now confirmed], this is the third case of murder that amateur detective Francis Pettigrew found himself involved in. In this book his primary role is as the honorary treasurer to the Markshire Orchestral Society. Murdered is the featured soloist for one of their performances.

   A good many curious circumstances surround the murder, many of them having a good deal to do with alibis, hampered by an abundance of semi-secret sexual dalliances of varying degrees of ardor. Helping Pettigrew sort it all through (although nominally it is the other way around) are an aggressive new inspector named Trimble and his rather more laid-back superior, Chief Constable MacWilliam.

   The characterizations are fine — although in essence perhaps more reflective of stereotypes than actual personages — and the plotting is ingenious. As I stated above, I’d like to raise a few objections, but if you haven’t read the book, please use your own judgment before plowing onward:

   Other than that, I liked the book fine.

Rating:   B minus.

Morrissey was the lead vocalist for The Smiths, an English rock band formed in 1982. “The Queen Is Dead” was the title track of their third CD, released in 1986. Morrissey’s appearance at the Hollywood Bowl was in June 2007.