The lead singer for this California-based blues rock group was Lynn Carey, daughter of actor Macdonald Carey. Preserve Wildlife was released in 1972:

FRANCES NOYES HART – Hide in the Dark. Doubleday Doran & Co., hardcover, 1929.

   Somewhere in Maryland is Lady Court, an old manor house long uninhabited except for the possible ghost of a murderer. On All-Hallows Eve, 1928, the March Hares — four people born in March and claiming to be mad, in s good sense — hold a gathering of spouses and friends to become acquainted and be reacquainted. There are thirteen altogether, a fitting number, if you don’t count the ghost and the memory of another March Hare who had committed suicide on the grounds ten years earlier.

   Lots of undertones and overtones here as early-day jet-setters — I guess they are ocean-liner-setters — mingle with the not so successful, the jealous, the emotionally deprived. And then, after the apple bobbing, comes the game called “Hide in the Dark” and murder. All the people in the house had access to the means, most had the opportunity, and many had a motive.

   While I didn’t particularly appreciate most of the involved chitchat at the beginning — the list of characters that was provided came in handy here — when the murder occurs, the novel became quite gripping. Forgive the slow beginning; it’s worth struggling through it for the rest of the book.

HOWARD RIGSBY – The Lone Gun. Gold Medal #542, paperback original; 1st printing, December 1955. Reprinted several times, including Gold Medal T2641, no date stated (1972).

   I believe but I am not sure that Howard Rigsby wrote more mysteries and crime fiction than he did westerns, but many of each category were done for Gold Medal, including a number published as by Vechel Howard. This one’s a western, but with a slight change of authorial intent, it could be a detective novel as well. It’s certainly a work of crime fiction.

   Murdered by an unknown hand is Mr. Dave Tilton, wealthy but aging cattle rancher just returned from taking a herd to market. Since it’s Sunday when they get back, he refuses to pay off the cowboys working for him until the next day. During the night, however, he is shot and killed, and his money belt is gone.

   Blamed by a crooked sheriff is Brooks Cameron, the son of a man who fought for the Confederacy, a fact which still has enough stigma to make him a very convenient scapegoat. The only way to clear his name — and to win the hand of Mary Silk, the preacher’s daughter — is to escape from jail, go on the run, and find the real killer.

   Rigsby knew the West well, and he describes it in very fine fashion. But too much of the book consists of nothing more than Brooks riding through the hills alone (note the book’s title) dodging first a determined posse and then an even more determined bounty hunter. This is enjoyable for a while, but unfortunately, one begins to wish for something to happen.

   When it does, the conclusion is both (1) not surprising and (2) far too late.

For Sale was this Houston-based psychedelic rock band’s fourth album, released in 1970:

JEWEL ROBBERY. Warner Brothers, 1932. William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinson, Hardie Albright, Alan Mowbray, Andre Luguet, Henry Kolker. Director: William Dieterle. Shown at Cinefest #14, Syracuse NY, March 1994.

   The two leading stars of Jewel Robbery, aided a more than capable supporting cast, exhibited the qualities of charm, wit and style in the story of a bored society wife (Francis) who is attracted to a polished crook (Powell). He pulls off an elaborately staged robbery in which he completely clears out the stock of an elegant jewelry store.

   The fast-moving 70 minutes of high-toned fluff climax with an exciting rooftop escape by Powell, leaving Francis tied-up in an apartment to throw off the police. Someone said to me that the actors must have relished working with such a polished script and this had some of the flair of a vintage Lubitsch comedy-drama. In the final shot Francis, in a tight closeup, looks at the audience, smiles and puts a finger to her lips, inviting us to join her as accomplices in her complicity with Powell.

   Dieterle was fond enough of this device to use it again, as I was reminded the other day when while channel hopping. I happened upon the final scene of the Dieterle-directed All That Money Can Buy (also known as The Devil and Daniel Webster). Here Walter Huston (as Old Scratch), rubbing his chin thoughtfully, looks from one side of the frame to the other, then in an expected move, smiling diabolically and looking directly at the camera, points at the viewer.

MORRIS HERSHMAN “Pressure.” First published in Manhunt, February 1958, as by Arnold English. Reprinted under his own name in Tales for a Rainy Night, edited by David Alexander (Holt Rinehart & Winston, hardcover; 1961; Crest d557, paperback, 1962).

   Sometimes all that a compelling crime story requires is a scenario, a mere vignette in which two characters face off in primarily one location. This works best in “short and taut” stories, those that focus on a single character’s dilemma and are of a length of no more than 2,000 words or so.

   Such is the case in Morris Hershman’s “Pressure,” a tense, albeit not overly memorable, tale about a gangster’s final confrontation with the police. Hershman conjures up the character of Dapper Phil Rand, an aging gangster from the Prohibition Era who has managed to survive well into the late 1950s. Rand’s gone to jail before and isn’t particularly afraid of going back. The one thing he simply won’t do is rat on the Syndicate.

   Enter “Coffee,” a cop who is willing to offer Rand a deal of a lifetime: protection and relocation to South America if he’s willing to name names. But Rand’s not willing to do that, so Coffee decides he is going to have to play hardball and apply some pressure, albeit not the physical kind. Rather, he tells the press that Rand’s singing like a canary, that Rand is spilling the beans on the Syndicate. Then he lets Rand out of the police station.

   What happens next tells us a lot about Dapper Phil Rand. Will he return to Coffee and catch a plane to South America or will he find a way to convince the Syndicate that it was all a ploy? What happens next is a portrait of a greying gangster under pressure.

GUILTY AS HELL. Paramount, 1932. Edmond Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Richard Arlen, Adrienne Ames, Henry Stephenson, Ralph Ince. Written by Arthuir Kober and Frank Partos. Directed by Erle C. Kenton.

           â€œHIDDEN HANDS ENDED HER LIFE! WHOSE WERE THEY?”

   Well they were the hands of Henry Stephenson, playing a doctor who murders his wife in the opening minutes of the film and frames her lover (Richard Arlen) for the crime. We know that right at the start, so why they made a big deal of it in the ads is anybody’s guess — whoever heard of a movie ad being misleading?

   Anyway, Guilty As Hell finds Lowe and McLaglen once again reprising their “friendly enemies” act from What Price Glory, this time with McLaglen as a tough police detective out to nail Richard Arlen, and Lowe as a wise-cracking reporter (are there any other kid in these movies?) smitten with Arlen’s sister and determined to clear her brother — and score some points.

   And so it goes. The repartee isn’t terribly sharp, and the plot hinges on a couple of rather obvious fulcrums, but Lowe and McLagen seem to have fun batting their lines back and forth, and Ms. Ames is delightful to look at. What makes Guilty memorable, however, is the visual stylings of director Kenton and cameraman Karl Struss.

   Kenton and Struss worked together to memorable effect on Island of Lost Souls, and here they seem to realize they need to give the viewer something to focus on besides the plot. Hence the movie is filled with eye-catching moments that never seem contrived but always effective: startling zoom-ins on the characters’ faces, a death-row scene done in silhouette, a swift, startling shoot-out, and even a murder reflected in a pair of glasses, more than twenty years before Strangers on a Train.

   Guilty As Hell will never make any list of great movies — in fact I may forget all about it before 2017 is over; but I’m glad I started the year with something so fast and fun.

MARY McMULLEN – A Country Kind of Death. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1975. Jove, paperback reprint, April 1988.

   I have a small prejudice against small children appearing in mystery novels. They’re either pests or small nuisances, or they’re victims. While children as victims is something we should read about — ignoring the .problem doesn’t make it go away — it’s not something I want to read about, if you see what I mean. Children (ideally) should be innocent and charming, and innocent and charming is not exactly what detective fiction is about.

   For a while, I thought we might have an exception to this loose and sloppy rule. Kit is seven, her father writes mysteries for a living, and on page 3, Kit is described as having “read Philip’s most recent book, in manuscript, and had guessed by page 60 who the murderer was, which at the time had nettled her father considerably.”

   But as good as that line is, the rest of Mary McMullen’s book shows that there is as much malice alive and well in the sweet-smelling country lanes as there is in the stench of any city’s streets. One could coin the phrase “Malice Domestic,” to describe this book, and it would fit perfectly.

   Most of the life in the Keane household is a normal, everyday muddle, but when Kit’s mother Mag leaves for a short vacation, bringing her sister, Aunt Therese, in to keep things running while she’s gone, the muddle becomes nasty.

   Don’t misunderstand. Therese is an innocent bystander. And it’s the neighbor lady, Mrs. Mint, who dies, drowned in the fishpond, and either Kit knows too much, or (could it be?) she’s the one who nudged her in.

   This is not a detective story. Not really. There is a crime, a serious one, or maybe there isn’t one at all. She could have just fallen, you see. But don’t take the kindly prose of Mary McMullen too lightly. There’s viciousness hiding in the organdy, the wild geraniums, and the crisp-smelling sheets, and her characters are not always very nice…

MAX BRAND – Dogs of the Captain. Five Star, hardcover, March 2006. Leisure, paperback, 2007. First appeared as a six-part serial in Western Story Magazine, January 2 through February 6, 1932.

   There are moments in this book, especially in the first half, when you may have the feeling that Max Brand was writing the great American novel, Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn style. The portrayal of a small 12-year-old boy in a small town finding his way among his peers by breaking into the universally feared Captain Slocum’s property to steal a watermelon, then on a later night, climbing the side of the house to the uppermost tower to investigate the general belief that a ghost is in permanent residence there — why that is the stuff that dreams are made of.

   What Don Grier, shaking in his — not boots, as he is barefoot — does not reckon on is that when he is caught, the captain will take a liking to him, and will eventually ask Don’s Aunt Lizzie if he may adopt him. All would be well, except that Aunt Lizzie, before letting go, lets slip that Don’s father was hanged — and for the offense of killing his brother.

   Don’s uncle, it seems, was shot to death several years before in a mining camp called Chalmer’s Creek, somewhere out in the untamed West. Don will hear of nothing but leaving at once to salvage the name of his father, and the captain agrees.

   Obviously this is a rite-of-passage story, and what Max Brand does is take the basic material and does his best to shape into a small epic of legendary proportions. While the resulting novel is not an easy one to put down, he doesn’t quite succeed. Characters and characterization seem to slip away from him more often than once, and when much is made of a surprising reappearance of Aunt Lizzie into the story, she just as quickly disappears, never to be heard of again.

WILLIAM DIEHL – Primal Fear. Martin Vail #1. Villard, hardcover, 1993. Ballantine, paperback, 1994. Film: Paramount, 1996 (with Richard Gere as Martin Vail).

   Diehl has written a number of successful novels, the best known of which are probably Sharkey’s Machine and Thai Horse. This is the first in what will be a series of at least two about superstar Chicago defense attorney Marty Vail. I think we’ve got a winner here, folks.

   The book opens with the bloody and brutal murder of Chicago’s most prominent Catholic clergyman, and then shifts to Vail winning a multi-million dollar settlement from the City and County on a police brutality suit by a gangster. They are not pleased. To show their displeasure, the power structure insures that Vail is handed the pro bono defense of the youth charged with the clergyman’s murder. As the police believe they have a cod-lock cinch case, it is almost certain that Vail’s reputation will suffer; which, of course, is the point of it all.

   Diehl is a polished writer and a consummate storyteller. There’s a many a twist and turn in the plot, which has a lot to offer fans of both psychiatry and courtroom drama, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself. The story is told from shifting viewpoints to good advantage, and suspense is maintained to the end; if you see it all coming you’re a good deal more perceptive than I am.

   Vail is an intriguing if not wholly admirable character, and his supporting cast hardly less so — intriguing, that is. I think there is room for both him and his henchmen-and-women to grow, and I look forward to reading more about them.

   I didn’t come away from Primal Fear with any gripes at all, and that happens damned seldom. This is a good story with interesting characters, excellently told, and I highly recommend it.

      The Martin Vail series —

1. Primal Fear (1992)
2. Show Of Evil (1995)
3. Reign in Hell (1997)