A. B. GUTHRIE, JR. – These Thousand Hills. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1956. Pocket/Cardinal C-267, paperback, 1957. Bantam, paperback, 1976, 1982.
THESE THOUSAND HILLS. Fox, 1959. Don Murray, Lee Remick, Richard Egan, Patricia Owens, Stuart Whitman, Albert Dekker. Screenplay by Alfred Hayes, based on the book by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Directed by Richard Fleischer.
The novels of A. B. Guthrie are intimate epics, encompassing a broad sweep of history and geography over the course of years, yet never losing the personal focus of characters who grow (and sometimes diminish) into complex individuals, at once larger than life and all too human.
Perhaps that’s why they’ve never been successfully adapted to the screen — Oh, I’m not saying there haven’t been some good movies made from them, but none ever captured the sense of progress and loss so essential to Guthrie’s style, and These Thousand Hills shows why.
As the story opens, Albert “Lat†Evans is a farm boy with ambitions who joins a cattle drive to Montana and becomes a cowboy with ambitions. After the drive he convinces his wastrel friend Tom Ping to spend the winter hunting wolf hides (a harrowing profession as Guthrie describes, not to be confused with hunting wolves) which leads to their capture and eventual release by a tribe of nomadic semi-outlaw Indians –an episode that will come to define Lat’s future.
Guthrie does an intelligent and strikingly original job of detailing Lat’s rise to prosperity and fame, distinctive enough to be worth mentioning. Most stories about the rise of the rich become Faustian parables of compromise and corruption, but Lat simply realizes that if he wants to get anyplace, he’ll have to estrange himself from his loyal but disreputable companions. He’s honest, even generous with everyone he deals with, but as Hills draws to a close, and his old friends come to the bad end that was always waiting for them, he realizes that the people he owes the most to won’t even turn to him when they need his help.
It’s a delicate point to make dramatically, and Guthrie handles it splendidly, as Lat and his old buddy meet one final time in a saloon, both armed, and These Thousand Hills seems headed for Tragedy… but turns to Drama of a very high sort, and one I won’t forget.
In lesser parts, Richard Egan and Albert Dekker portray opposite sides of an unflinching moral code, and we even get some fine turns from Old Western stalwarts like Royal Dano, Fuzzy Knight and Douglas Fowley.
Director Richard Fleischer handles all this quite capably, and if he and writer Alfred Hayes fumble the whole point of the thing…. Well they made a decent movie out of it anyway, and one that’s worth your time. But take a look at the book if you can.
DOUG ALLYN “Animal Rites.” Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 1996. Reprinted in All Creatures Dark and Dangerous (Crippen & Landru, 1999).
It cannot be easy to write a full-fledged detective story in the confines of a short story or even a novelette, but this issue of EQMM has at least three that qualify, the best of them being this 26 page tale by Doug Allyn, who has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1985.
“Animal Rites” was the third appearance of Dr. David Westbrook in the magazine. Westbrook was an animal veterinarian whose office was located in the northern end of Michigan’s lower peninsula, not far (I can easily imagine) from the small town where I grew up. It is hard to say how many stories could be placed in such a protagonist in such a setting, but Allyn managed to write nine of them, seven of them included in the collection published by Crippen & Landru in 1999. (Two appeared after the book came out.)
In this particular tale, David is caught between two sides of a panel debate on live TV. The topic is the hunting of animals for sport, yes or no? Tempers are raised, a confrontation breaks out, and the next day one of the participants is dead. One of the others confesses, but based only on their instincts, neither David nor the local sheriff is convinced.
It takes a vivid dream to bring into his consciousness the clue David needs to solve the case, but the reader can easily pick up on it as well. The characters are interesting, the setting (to me) like home, and a reasonably fair mystery. All the right ingredients.
Another good detective story is this issue is “The Thief of Nothing,” by Jeffry Scott, in which Detective Inspector Scipton agrees to help an elderly lady who is convinced that someone is continually breaking into her home, but never taking anything. Scipton helps solve the case, but surprise of surprises, another one as well, plus (and a big plus) in the course of the events he meets a woman who may be the one he’s looking for. At least she thinks so.
I’m not sure how many stories the late and much missed Edward D. Hoch wrote about Nick Velvet, a thief noted for never stealing anything of value, a fact agreed upon even by the police. In “The Theft of the Bogus Bandit,” Nick is forced to keep that reputation as rock solid as ever when an imposter using his name begins a spree of holdups in which not only does he steal diamonds and the like, but while doing so also severely attacks the people he is stealing from. Nick, naturally, is outraged.
BASIL HEATTER – A Night Out. Popular Library #771, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1956. A shorter version appeared in Manhunt, September 1954, as “The Empty Fort.”
For an author with a double dozen books to his credit, over a period of over three decades, there is not much known about Basil Heatter (1918-2009), except for one fact that is invariably mentioned whenever his name comes up.
Here, for example, is the biographical blurb about him that’s on the first page of the book in hand:
“Born on Long Island in 1918, Basil Heatter attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when he was 16 for a two year travel stint in Europe.
“Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. During the war he served as skipper of a P.T. boat in the southwest Pacific.
“He is the son of Gabriel Heatter, the radio commentator, and at present he, Basil, is a news commentator for the Mutual Broadcasting System.”
That was in 1956. From CRIME FICTION IV: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1749-2000, by Allen J. Hubin (2015), we learn just a little more:
“Born on Long Island, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter; was advertising copywriter in 1970s living on a boat off Florida, and racing and chartering; died in Miami, FL.”
Heatter has thirteen books included in CFIV, one marginally, but at the moment A Night Out is not one of them, and it should be. The crime involved is not a major one, I grant you, not at the beginning, at least — that of smuggling some booze out of Cuba to shrimp boat skipper Johnny Flake’s home port of Key West — but small capers like this often run into trouble, matters escalate, and some people end up wounded or dead, and that’s exactly what happens here.
While this is criminous enough to suit most readers of this blog, I’d have to admit that most of the book consists of character studies of the players in it. All of them have a past, and events in the past have a way of making people who they are today. It takes awhile for their paths to converge, however, ending in a midnight shootout in an abandoned fort off the islands of Dry Torgugas, but the getting there is well worth it.
There are two women involved, Molly being the one that Flake let get away, and the other Jessica, is the promiscuous live-in lady friend of yachtsman Allan Chambers, who can’t live without her, but neither can he live with her. Another player is an old rummy named Cruze, who was at one time a terrific ship’s engineer, but it’s only because Flake needs someone in a hurry does he hire on the old man who’s now seriously afflicted with the shakes and an unquenchable thirst.
More than a crime novel, what this book is is pure noir. Most — not all — of the participants in the drama that takes place in this book are doomed, in one way or another. Most have no future, save what chance and pure luck give them. There’s little they can do to help themselves.
Although far from being in their league, Heatter channels F. Scott Fitzgerald and maybe Ernest Hemingway in this novel, more so than he does either of the two old standbys of Hammett and Chandler. While all but forgotten today, Heatter is more than adequate as a writer — he certainly knew his way around boats and the Gulf of Mexico — and he brings his characters enough to life that I know I’ll remember them all for a while to come.
John Payne could play Johnny, and Walter Brennan would be perfect as Cruze. Gail Russell could easily be Molly, but to tell you the truth, no matter what movie taking place in the 50s that I happen to be casting, there’d always be a part for Gail Russell.
SOUTH SEA WOMAN. Warner Brothers, 1953. Burt Lancaster, Virginia Mayo, Chuck Connors, Arthur Shields, Leon Askin, Veola Vonn, Bob Sweeney, Hayden Rorke, Paul Burke. Director: Arthur Lubin.
In a word, disappointing. It starts out badly and goes nowhere from there. With a title like South Sea Woman and with Burt Lancaster and Virginia Mayo in it, you’d expect a comedy romp taking place with the two of them alone together on a deserted South Pacific Island, say, with all kinds of winks and nods going on.
Not so. This one begins with Burt as a Marine sergeant being court martialed for some serious sounding offenses but refusing to speak up on his own behalf. As the testimony of others takes place, we go into flashback mode to what it was that happened.
Turns out that a fellow Marine (Chuck Connors), a private, offered to marry a stranded young entertainer (Virginia Mayo) as a means of getting her out of Shanghai just before Pearl Harbor. As it so happens the two Marines and the young lady end up comically stranded on a small boat in the Pacific, considered deserters and eventually washing up on the small island Namou, by then controlled by an agent of the Vichy French.
This is purported to be called Hi Jinx to the Max, but I demur. All Connors’ character wants to do is get hitched (can’t blame him for that) but Lancaster is gung ho to get back into action. Hence the constant conflict between the two characters, aggravated by the fact that Ginger Martin soon seems to have regrets about whom she chose to get her out of the jam she’s in.
The courtroom setting, which the movie reverts back to every so often, simply does not work. It’s a stupid charade and utter nonsense. Burt Lancaster is pure Burt, Virginia Mayo is cute as a button, and Chuck Connors, in his first starring role, shows that he never did have the charisma or onscreen presence of his rival for the hand of Miss Mayo in this film.
EDMOND HAMILTON “What’s It Like Out There?” Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1952. First anthologized in The Best from Startling Stories, edited by Samuel Mines (Henry Holt, hardcover, 1953). Reprinted elsewhere many times. The first Hamilton collection in which it appeared was What’s It Like Out There and Other Stories (Ace, paperback, 1974).
I’m working my way through the latter collection, if reading only the first story so far qualifies as “working my through” it. Although he had an extraordinarily long writing career, “What’s It Like Out There?” is probably Hamilton’s most well remembered story, and it came along toward the beginning of what I consider the last third of it.
In his early days — the 20s and 30s — Edmond Hamilton was an out and out “space opera” kind of guy, writing stories with titles such as Crashing Suns, The Star-Stealers and The Comet-Drivers, all appearing first in Weird Tales. In the 1940s his career took a nosedive (my opinion) when he spent most of writing time dreaming up new adventures for Captain Future, again for the pulp magazines.
Whether “What’s It Like Out There?” was his first story written for readers at an adult level, I’m not sure, but from what I’ve read, it turned heads around in SF fandom almost immediately. It’s the story of a survivor of the second expedition to Mars, who before making his way home in Ohio from the hospital where he spent a number of weeks recovering, has to stop along the way to visit the families and loved ones of his friends who didn’t make it.
He would like to tell them the truth — that their loved ones died in vain, perishing on a cruel and uncaring planet, with their only purpose for being there being the uranium people on Earth need to continue going about their merry and equally uncaring ways — but he finds that he can’t. People on Earth still need their heroes, he discovers, no matter how little they actually care, except when of course it’s personal, and even then, as he discovers, most are happier not knowing the truth.
There are lots of nuances in this story that the preceding paragraph does not begin to go into. Last night was the first time I’d read this story in years, and it surprised me as to how much I read into it this time that I suspect I didn’t before. More than I remembered, at any rate.
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Newell Dunlap & Bill Pronzini
JACK BOYLE – Boston Blackie. Gregg Press, hardcover, 1979. Reprint of the first edition published by H. K. Fly, hardcover, 1919.
This is an unusual book in that it consists of previously published short stories put together and revised slightly to resemble chapters in a novel. It is the only Boston Blackie “novel” or collection to be published.
The Boston Blackie stories began running in The American Magazine in 1914; later ones appeared in Red Book and Cosmopolitan. Although by today’s standards they contain overly dramatic language and sentimental plots, they still provide an entertaining insight into popular American fiction of the early 1900s.
Included in this reprint edition is a scholarly introduction by Edward D. Hoch, the original illustrations, and still photographs from some of the various Boston Blackie films.
For those unfamiliar with Boyle’s Boston Blackie, he was a criminal — primarily a safecracker — and was wanted by many police departments. But he was also a devoted husband, a “university graduate, a scholar, and gentleman.” The first half of his nickname derived from his Boston birthplace, the second half from his piercing black eyes.
As interesting as Blackie himself may be, his creator is even more so. Jack Boyle was a San Francisco newspaper editor who became addicted to opium in the legendary dens of Chinatown. This cost him his job, and, unable to get another, he turned to a fife of crime — an unsuccessful one, for he was twice arrested and sent to prison, once for forgery and the second time for armed robbery.
It was while he was in San Quentin on the robbery conviction that he wrote (and sold) his first Boston Blackie story to American, under the pseudonym “6606” — his prison number. Many of the subsequent Blackie stories were to employ drug and prison backgrounds. After his release, Boyle continued his writing career and helped adapt some of his stories for silent films.
Several Blackie silents were made in the 1920s; the first of these, for which Boyle wrote the screenplay, was The Face in the Fog (1922) and featured Lionel Barrymore as Blackie. The character underwent a considerable transformation in the series of B-talkies that began in 1941 and starred Chester Morris: He became a wise-talking reformed-crook-turned-sleuth with a penchant for dames, danger, and sudden death. The Hollywood incarnation also appeared on the radio and briefly on television in its early years.
BEN PASTOR – The Road to Ithaca. Martin Bora #5. Bitter Lemon Press; trade paperback, March 2017.
It is May 1941 as Wehrmacht Captain Martin Bora, age twenty-seven, of the Abwehr, German military intelligence, is sent to Crete to solve a murder that could embarrass the Reich and lead to a major diplomatic disaster. A representative of the Red Cross close to SS chief Heinrich Himmler has been killed during an inspection, and Bora is under intense pressure to solve the crime quickly, and to provide a scapegoat, a politically satisfactory one.
That is only the surface though. Far more dangerous undercurrents wait for him at every turn.
This is the fifth novel in the series by Ben Pastor, a woman incidentally, who immigrated from Italy and who became an American when she moved to Texas. She was a professor in Illinois, Ohio, and Vermont, and now spends half her time in her native Italy according to her bio.
The Bora novels are intensely researched and carefully plotted mysteries with a hero who carries a forbidden copy of James Joyce Ulysses in his pocket, and frequently is at odds with the wishes and orders of his superiors and his own prickly conscience.
In The Road to Ithacahe is sent to the mountains of Crete, where at first it looks as if the crime was friendly fire from a unit of trigger happy German paratroopers accused of a war crime, but as Bora looks deeper he is drawn into increasingly dangerous territory among local bandits and resistance fighters and his own morality in a world of double crosses, multiple identities, revenge, and double agents.
Pastor brings in big issues such as where does a man’s duty to his country and to himself take him, and how much moral ambiguity can a man allow before he himself is tainted? She writes vividly, mastering suspense while asking deeper questions, her characters drawn in subtle shades of gray for the most part, but with a pervasive sense of the evil at the core of the Nazi power structure, and how it corrupted even the best of men.
There are also well-drawn characters from history such as Himmler, and in this work Erskine Caldwell and his wife Margaret Bourke-White, correspondents in Moscow where Bora is with the German Embassy as the novel opens.
Like the private eye of mystery fiction Bora often finds himself a lone wary knight alone in a quest for relative truth, a Philip Marlowe with echoes of Maigret trying to maintain sanity in a world gone mad.
Here he is facing death in a Cretan brothel:
Dark, dark, smell, sounds. Suspended, instantaneous loneliness. The trappings and locus of his death manifested themselves to Bora, who’d imagined them very differently when he was talking to Kostaridis (the local Police chief), though he had said it didn’t matter where he’d die. This was where it would happen.
That’s just a small sample of how well written this book is. Pastor does indulge in a bit of foreshadowing, letting us know a tragic event looms in Bora’s future, that I could personally have done without, but it is a small caveat and not overdone or overly detrimental.
I’ll certainly be looking for the first four books in the series from an author who echoes writers like Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, Alan Furst, Hans Helmut Kirst, and Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels while creating a milieu and a hero both original and classic.
The Martin Bora series —
1. Lumen (1999)
2. Liar Moon (2001)
3. A Dark Song of Blood (2014)
This song is from their CD The Mountain, released in 1999. Joining in on this track are Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Marty Stuart and Cowboy Jack Clement, among others.
CHARLES N. HECKLEMAN – Return to Arapahoe. Fawcett Popular Library, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1980.
When Pace Barnes returns home from chasing Indians with the army, he finds his brother dead and their home in the hands of one Grady Chambers, a ruthless rancher responsible for a good deal of other trouble there in the foothills of the Rincons.
Heckelman’s prose is reminiscent of the type found in the type found in the adventures of the Hardy Boys, the 1930s version, to pick an example that comes most easily to mind, but overcoming all — or most — hurdles, it’s a kind of prose that nevertheless seems to suffice.
Here’s a tale that could easily be fashioned into an old-fashioned B-western movie, in other words, but (mercifully) without the usual comical sidekick.
— Reprinted from Nothing Accompliced #4, November 1993, slightly revised.
Bibliographic Notes: Charles N. Heckelman (1913-2005) is not a big name as far as well-known western writers are concerned. I found a total of nine western novels offered for sale under his name online, one (Lawless Range) published as early as 1946, and there may be others. This led me to check out whether he may have written for the pulp magazines, and yes, it turns out he did: over eighty stories in the Western Fiction index, ranging in years from 1937 to 1955.
