G. M. FORD – The Bum’s Rush. Leo Waterman #3. Walker, hardcover, 1997. Avon, paperback; 1st printing, March 1998.
Before I begin, yes, in case you were wondering, that is the author’s real name. I had some serious doubts myself, way back when I bought his first book — in hardcover, no less. But, in spite of my best intentions, after shelling out big money for the book, I never got around to reading it, and in fact, this is the first in the Leo Waterman series that I have read. There’s just not enough time in a day, or a month, or a year, or a decade. Two decades.
What’s strange, even after reading this one, I don’t have a clear picture of Leo Waterman in mind. His home town and primary stomping ground is Seattle, and in the beginning, he seemed to me to be a bit of a slacker, not taking his PI profession very seriously at all, punctuated by the fact that the gang he hangs out with are a bunch of — well, I’d call them homeless, but I don’t know that I can tell you where they do live. Mostly they hang out in a local bar and come to Waterman’s assistance every once in a while. While under the influence of varying amounts of intoxication, some more than others.
But as the case goes on — two of them, in fact — Waterman displays a lot more toughness, and a lot more brainpower than he seemed to let on in the beginning. (He tells the story himself.)
Case number one: a homeless woman whom Waterman and “the boys” rescue from an attack on the streets. She accidentally lets slip that she is the mother of a talented (and very wealthy) rock star who recently was found dead from an overdose of heroin, leaving an estate that’s worth upward of fifty million dollars. Against her wishes, Waterman decides to check out her claim.
He is also hired to find a lady librarian who has absconded with a much smaller amount of the library’s money, but to libraries, even a smaller amount is a lot.
The two cases do not ever really meet, only tangentially, but between them they keep Waterman busy. I should also mention that he’s a guy who’s quick with a quip, whenever needed, and of course he has a girl friend to spend a lot of time bantering back and forth with. Robert B. Parker has a lot to answer for, you may be thinking. Final verdict? While it’s far from being a classic, I had a good time with this one.
And it may even be memorable, in a fashion, in that DorothyL, the well-known online mystery group, becomes an integral part of Waterman’s investigation. (How else to track down a missing librarian who loves mysteries?)
The Leo Waterman series —
Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca? (1995)
Cast in Stone (1996)
The Bum’s Rush (1997)
Slow Burn (1998)
Last Ditch (1999)
The Deader the Better (2000)
Thicker Than Water (2012)
Chump Change (2014)
Salvation Lake (2016)
Family Values (2017)
The GARRETT P.I. Series by GLEN COOK
by Barry Gardner
Down these mean streets not only a man must go, but just about anything else you can think of. Garrett has a deceased representative of a race you never heard of who is slowly but inevitably decaying for a housemate, hires the occasional groll for strong-arm work, isn’t above banging a sexy copper-headed dwarf if the occasion arises, and has for a best friend a vicious half-breed vegetarian elf who makes Parker’s Hawk seem like a pussy.
His cases involve not only gangsters, but vampires, ghosts, and assorted other malevolencies. No, Dorothy, we’re not in Southern California any more, nor West Oz or North Narnia either.
Garrett is around 30, an ex-Marine and veteran of a decades-long war between the Karentine Empire (in whose capital, TunFaire, he lives) and the Venageti. He’s tough and flip, though his wisecracks haven’t the flair of the better of his “realistic” brothers. The retinue at his brownstone equivalent includes an aging servant with a bevy of marriageable but extremely ugly nieces; a large, colorful and profane bird known as the Goddam Parrot (a later addition); and the Dead Man, a yellow and much larger member of an enigmatic race who is quite dead but still kicking. In a manner of speaking.
In general I haven’t been enamored of attempts to meld crime and fantastic fiction. Though Lee Killough and Mike McQuay have both gained some attention in this area, neither have particularly impressed me, the latter in particular. The Garrett books, to be fair and accurate, are more fantasy/adventure than detective stories, though there are mysteries and there is detection.
Glen Cook is a prolific and in my opinion very, very good science-fantasy writer. He has authored a number of trilogies and series, among them the Black Company saga — one of my own all-time favorites — and a group known loosely as the Dread Empire series.
He is one of the most adept of current writers at constructing mythic landscapes, but at the same time retains a focus on the characters who inhabit them; to me, a formidable combination. It’s unlikely that there are many with a liking for science-fantasy who haven’t discovered him, but for those few I have no hesitation in recommending any of his single books and series.
There are seven books in this series to date, the last (and least) just having been released in February. All are paperback originals from Signet/ROC.
Sweet Silver Blues (1987). Garrett’s old war buddy, Denny, leaves his fortune to a lady whom his family doesn’t know, and they want Garrett to find her. Denny was a dwarf, by the way. Sister Rose, a dwarfish mixture of pulchritude and pure greed, would rather have the fortune than the heir. The trail leads to vampires, centaurs, and trouble.
Bitter Gold Hearts (1988). The son of a Stormwarden (a local variety of sorcerous very big shot) is kidnapped, and her deputy hires Garrett to help. The plot involves ogres and assassins, and if that wasn’t enough, the Stormwarden’s nubile daughter doesn’t seem to find Garrett unattractive.
Cold Copper Tears (1988). A woman from Garrett’s past and something almost as dangerous from the Dead Man’s make things interesting around TunFaire. Throw in a teenage girl’s street gang a few holy relics, a nihilistic cult, then stir twice and start counting the bodies.
Old Tin Sorrows (1989). Garrett owes a big favor to an old Sergeant who works for a retired General whom someone is trying to kill. Garrett takes up residence in the General’s mansion, which has a ghost who no one but Garrett can see. Then the dead come back to life, and more people die.
Dread Brass Shadows (1990). Garrett’s favorite redhead gets knifed for no reason, then two others show up who look a lot like her. An intra-species gang war starts among dwarves, and gangsters are after everybody. They all want the mysterious Book of Shadows, and Garrett hasn’t the foggiest.
Red Iron Nights (1991). A serial killer is gutting beautiful young women in TunFaire and removing their blood, raising spectres of cults and black magic. The City’s top cop wants Garrett’s help, and the lady gangster kingpin wants … something.
Deadly Quicksilver Lies (1994). While the Dead Man sleeps, Garrett is hired by a beautiful redhead, once mistress of a now-dead king to find her runaway daughter. Of course, it’s not that simple; it’s really about buried treasure and old debts, and everybody wants a piece of the action and of Garrett.
These aren’t bad books at all. Lightweight, certainly, but decently written, and they furnish a passable way for some of us with a taste for both fantasy and crime fiction to combine our pleasures.
— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #12, March 1994.
[UPDATE] The series has continued since Barry wrote this overview, to wit:
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Paramount-Artcraft Pictures, 1920. Silent film. John Barrymore, Brandon Hurst, Martha Mansfield, Charles Lane, Cecil Clovelly, Nita Naldi, J. Malcolm Dunn. Based on the novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Director: John S. Robertson.
Originally published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde introduced the reading public to two of the most well known characters in modern literary history: the conventional Victorian physician, Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego, the uninhibited and cruel Mr. Hyde. Stylized as a detective story, one in which the reader does not discover that Jekyll and Hyde are merely two parts of the same man until the story’s ending, Stevenson’s novella highlighted the duality of man: That lying underneath man’s civilized, urbane exterior is a bestial side, one that later critics identified as lurking not far beneath a highly repressed Victorian society.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, however, doesn’t read as if it was designed to impart any emphatic moral lesson. Instead, the work unfolds as a mystery tale and, to a lesser extent, an early work of the emerging genre of horror fiction. In that sense, it is as much of a thriller as the shudder pulp stories that it influenced decades later.
Indeed, Stevenson’s novella is written from the point of view of a society lawyer, Gabriel John Utterson who begins an amateur investigation into the strange happenings concerning his friend, Dr. Jekyll. By the end of the tale, Utterson has learned that Dr. Jekyll and his strange friend, Mr. Hyde, are one and the same person. Two divided halves of the same self. This was a concept that Stevenson, who is still best known for his adventure fiction, apparently wanted to incorporate into his writings. In that sense, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been not only a literary success, but also a personal triumph for Stevenson as Jekyll and Hyde are now among the best known fictional characters in Anglo-American literature.
Although it wasn’t the first effort to adapt Stevenson’s novella into a motion picture, Paramount/Artcraft’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) has ended up the default template for nearly all the subsequent movie versions. Arguably based more upon Thomas Russell Sullivan’s 1887 stage adaptation of Stevenson’s novella than the literary work itself, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stars John Barrymore in the dual title role, a performance that by all accounts solidified his Hollywood star power. Barrymore, who at the time was still best known as a stage actor, delivers an exceptional performance in his portrayal of two halves of the same individual man.
The Dr. Jekyll that the audience first encounters in the film as opposed to the novella is both a physician and a philanthropist, a Victorian man of science who devotes considerable amount of time to helping the poor. He is a rather stiff, that is to say not particularly relaxed individual, who seems to be more interested in expanding his knowledge than in the more mundane, let alone sensual, aspects of life.
Jekyll is, however, engaged to a charming lady named Millicent (Martha Mansfield). Millicent’s father, Sir George Carew (Brandon Hurst) in the presence of friends Edward Enfield (Cecil Clovelly), Dr. Lanyon (Charles Lane) and Utterson (J. Malcolm Dunn), tempts the ascetic physician with the possibility of exploring London’s less refined, if not downright seedy, locales. Observers have rightly noted that Carew’s temptation of Jekyll into the proverbial dark side seems to be based more on the character of Lord Henry in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) than on Stevenson’s work itself.
Furthermore, at least some of the silent film’s intertitles include text that are directly borrowed from, or inspired by, Wilde’s literary portrait, and philosophical study of libertinism. Indeed, Sir Carew’s admonition that “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it†comes directly from Wilde.
The turning point for Dr. Jekyll is when he meets Gina (Nita Naldi), a dance hall girl he encounters when Sir George Carew takes him to the seedier side of town. Jekyll is fascinated by her, but is actually somewhat embarrassed, if not repulsed, by the degree to which he finds himself attracted to her.
Before he absconds back into the London night, Jekyll engages in a short conversation with Gina during which she shows him a large ornamental ring that she wears on her finger. She tells him that the ring acts as a vessel and that it contains poison. When Jekyll ends his encounter with Gina, it seems as if her poison ring is all but forgotten. The audience, which is familiar with foreshadowing, knows that this ring will very likely end up playing a prominent role in what follows.
It is Jekyll’s encounter with Gina, a character that doesn’t appear in Stevenson’s novella, that sets him down a path from which he will never return, for it is his interaction with this dance hall girl that guides his decision to manufacture a chemical compound that will separate his good, philanthropic self from his baser, lecherous self – a part of him that he never acknowledged existed until he met her.
Barrymore’s transformation from Jekyll to Hyde is perhaps the highlight of the film, for it showcases both his raw theatrical talent, specifically his ability to convey meaning with his facial expressions.
The remainder of the film follows Dr. Jekyll and his diabolical alter ego, Mr. Hyde, as the latter embarks upon a path of death and destruction. Barrymore’s Hyde, dressed in a top hat and cape, lurks through London’s back alleys. Initially, Hyde seems to not only relish his inhibited self, but also appears to get away with his bad behavior.
Things change, however, when he first injures a child, then escalates to murder, beating a man to death with his cane. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is as much a tragedy, as it is a horror story. It’s the story of a man, who in his quest for scientific knowledge, ends up both becoming and subsumed by his repressed, animalistic self.
Mastered in high definition from archival 35mm elements, the Kino Lorber Blu-Ray release of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I recently had the opportunity to watch provides movie aficionados with an opportunity to watch a relatively clean, uncluttered version of this silent film, one that exists in the public domain.
Released in 2014, the Kino Classics version also features a serviceable, but by no means outstanding, score by Rodney Sauer, one that is performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. There are moments during the film when the music seems intrusive, as if it were disconnected from what was occurring on screen.
Still, for the most part, Kino’s Blu-Ray release is quite watchable, despite some elements that were clearly degraded in the course of time. There’s also the tinting factor. Although most of the film was photographed in standard black and white, there are several sequences that are now bathed in either a reddish or bluish hue. Given that the workmanlike photography by cinematographer Roy F. Overbaugh is not particularly artistic – certainly not on the level of his German Expressionist contemporaries – the tinting does little to either elevate or to decrease the overall rather flat, staid visuals.
Indeed, apart from the sequences featuring prosthetics in which Jekyll transforms into Hyde and the fever dream scene in which Jekyll is confronted by a giant crawling spider, there’s little in the way of outstanding visual effects in this film. In many ways, it’s Barrymore and Barrymore alone who carries the movie. At the end of the day, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is Barrymore’s vehicle, one to which both Fredric March and Spencer Tracy were truly indebted.
Without Barrymore’s uncanny transformation from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, it also remains uncertain whether the two characters in one would have lived in through not only March and Tracy, but also such disparate actors as Jack Palance, Kirk Douglas, and Michael Caine, all of whom took turns in portraying the quintessential man divided against himself.
When a biochemist who’s isolated himself in the Brazilian rain forest for several years finally finds a flower which promises to be a universal cure for cancer, he has to call on his supporting foundation for help. He can’t duplicate his results. They send a woman. She’s his superior. He’s cantankerous and crabby; she’s young and feisty. Sparks fly almost immediately.
Predictable, you say, and I wouldn’t disagree. But I’d watch Sean Connery in anything, including a ponytail, and that his character would fall for someone who can stand up to him like Sr. Crane from the Bronx, that certainly comes as no surprise at all. The scenery is what’s really magnificent, however, even on the TV screen, without Panavision.
PostScript: I seem to have missed he boat on this one. Both Maltin and Scheuer agree, for once, that as far as this movie concerned, Lorraine Bracco is an absolute disaster. Reluctantly, given only the presence of Sean Connery in the film, do they finally each give it two and a half stars.
Scheuer calls her “frenzied,” while Maltin settles for “abrasive.” I think that since (so far as I know) Katharine Hepburn never played a research scientist, Lorraine Bracco is as close as the movies have ever come to portraying an attractive woman with brains, that’s what I think.
— Reprinted from Nothing Accompliced #4, November 1993, very slightly revised.
GHOST TOWN. Empire Pictures, 1988. Franc Luz, Catherine Hickland, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Penelope Windust, Bruce Glover. Director: Richard McCarthy.
I’ve always been a fan of the Weird West, that sub-genre that blends elements of horror and the supernatural with Western themes. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to pull off a really cohesive mash-up of the horror and Western genres. There’s always something that just doesn’t quite gel the way it should.
Maybe it’s because the “rules†of the Western genre are so rooted in human nature and, for the lack of a better term, reality. Maybe it’s because we associate horror with nighttime, rather than with the blazing hot sun. No matter what, I often come away from my excursions into the Weird West with a sense of what might have been, how the proverbial visit might have gone better.
That’s basically how I felt after watching Ghost Town, a Charles Band production from 1988. Screened in very limited release, this horror Western is better than you might expect, but it’s hardly what you might categorize as a great Western.
Lead actor Franc Luz, while solid in the part, doesn’t ever seem totally comfortable in his role as Deputy Sheriff Langley, a lawman tasked with locating a missing woman. This quest – the hero’s quest – mysteriously takes him out of the present and into an Old West netherworld, somewhere between heaven and hell.
Apparently, an entire town is being held hostage from moving onto the afterlife by an undead outlaw named Devlin (the late Jimmie F. Skaggs in an standout role). Truth be told, there’s not a whole lot of logical coherence in the plot. This is unfortunate. It’s almost as if the filmmakers decided that because the supernatural was at work in the story, there need not be an internal logic that would explain how Devlin was able to stay alive past death and hold a whole town in a void.
Yet, despite my criticisms, I have to admit that I enjoyed watching Ghost Town. The cinematography is quite good. Better than in many horror movies from the 1980s in fact. Most significantly, it’s a fun movie. Not a good movie. But an enjoyable one.
MOLLY THYNNE – He Dies And Makes No Sign. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1933. Dean Street Press, UK, trade paperback, 2016.
In the third and apparently final case of Dr. Constantine, he is asked to take steps to end the engagement of the son of the Duchess of Steynes. According to the Duchess, the young man has become engaged to a most unsuitable young woman, one who is an actress of sorts. Constantine meets her, finds her enchanting, and is then involved in the disappearance of her grandfather, a violinist. Unfortunately, when the grandfather turns up, he is in the unlucky circumstance of being a corpse.
One can see why this was the last in the series. It is wretchedly dull, the villain is obvious, and none of the characters are the least bit interesting. What Constantine is a doctor of is left unmentioned in this novel. Perhaps Thynne thought readers of the third book would have read the first two, in which she may, though I doubt it, have provided more detail. All we learn here is that Constantine is not an M.D., that he has just returned from the Continent where he took part in a chess tournament, and that only a dedicated masochist would care to read about him and his investigations.
EDWARD D. HOCH – The Shattered Raven. Lancer 74-525, paperback original; 1st printing, 1969. Dale Books, paperback, 1978.
Edward D. Hoch is crime fiction’s premier short-story writer. (He is also that rara avis, a writer who makes his living entirely from short fiction.) He has published more than 600 stories since his first professional sale in 1955, and has appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for the past dozen years.
He also has to his credit well over anthology appearances, including a score of selections for the prestigious annuals Best Detective Stories of the Year and Year’s Best Mystery & Suspense Stories (which he now edits).
The Shattered Raven is Hoch’s first novel and one of only four published under his own name. It is also his only contemporary mystery — the other three books are detective stories with futuristic settings — and is something of a cult novel among aficionados, owing to the fact that it deals with murder most foul at the annual MWA Edgar Awards banquet in New York and makes use of several real writers in cameo roles.
When TV commentator Ross Craigthorn is murdered on the dais while accepting MWA’s Mystery Reader of the Year Award (no small honor, past recipients having included Eleanor Roosevelt and Joey Adams), it is a particularly ingenious and nasty crime: He was shot in the face by means of a slender tube attached to the microphone, “an electrified, radio-controlled zip gun.”
The task of s finding out who killed Craigthorn falls on the unwilling shoulders of MWA’s executive vice-president, Barney Hamet (no relation, of course, to the great Dashiell), and magazine writer Susan Veldt. Their search leads them to a dark secret in Craigthorn’s past, one that has its origins in the little town of June, Nebraska.
Unlike Barney and Susan, the reader knows the identity of the murderer from the outset — one Victor Jones. But what the reader doesn’t know is just who Victor Jones is, for he is no longer using that name. Which of the suspects is really the deadly Mr. Jones should come as no surprise to most detective-story veterans, but that won’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment of this solid, well-clued, “insider’s” mystery.
Hoch’s other three novels all feature the “Computer Cops,” a team of twenty-first century government investigators led by Carl Crader and Earl Jazine. The first, The Transvection Machine (1971), is probably the best — an expert blend of mystery, science fiction, and social commentary. The other two titles in the series are The Fellowship of the Hand (1973) and The Frankenstein Factory (1975).
[UPDATE] At the time of Edward Hoch’s death at the age of 77 in 2008, the total count of short stories he had written had increased to well over 900, and his string of over 34 years’ worth of consecutive appearances in EQMM continued for several months after his passing, both records that will never be surpassed.
THIS MAN IS NEWS. 1938. Barry Barnes, Valerie Hobson, Alistair Sim, John Warwick, Philip Leaven, Edward Loxy, Garry Marsh. Screenplay by Ranald MacDougal, Basil Deardon, and Allan MacKinnon. Directed by David MacDonald.
In the last few weeks I have found a good half dozen of a list of films I have been seeking since William Everson came out with The Detective in Film, lo those many years ago, and this one has long been near the top of my list, so don’t expect too much critical reserve. I was to happy to finally see it.
The film was a massive hit in England when it came out, a British Thin Man with Barry Barnes and Valerie Hobson their very own Nick and Nora, Simon and Pat Drake. In addition, it is a fast moving, smart mouthed, and well plotted mystery thriller filled with wise cracks and action, and more than ably abetted by the presence of Alistair Sim as Macgregor, a Scottish editor for a London paper, whose brogue is as thick as his temper is short and his skull bald.
Sim could steal any film, and comes close a few times here, but Barnes and Hobson really do shine as Simon and Pat.
When Simon skips his assignment to cover the release of Brown, an informer who is on the hit list for betraying his gang, Macgregor blows his lid and fires him (again, it’s a running gag). Returning home his wife Pat is a pal and takes it well, even to the point of breaking out the champagne and going on a toot.
They could give Nick and Nora, the Norths, and Duluths a race in that department.
In the course of the evening Simon has a bright idea and calls up Macgregor claiming he is outside of Brown’s hideout, which he followed him to the day before, where Brown has just been murdered, accompanied by Pat popping a champagne cork he explains as his having just been shot by the gang. He then hangs up, his revenge complete.
The hangover the next day is complete too when he sees the false headlines. He’s the hero of the day, for the moment, especially when, to his relief, it turns out Brown really was murdered by the gang. But the cloud proves to be minus any silver lining when Inspector Hollis and Sgt. Bright (Edward Loxy and Garry Marsh) show up to arrest him.
Seems he called in the murder ninety minutes before it happened.
And he’s fired again.
Until Brown’s relative is shot in Simon’s apartment just after Pat alibis him out of jail.
He’s free, but someone is trying to kill him. There is an informer at the paper keeping the mob tipped off to Simon’s movement, and Simon can’t recall what he might have seen that is worth killing him for. Worse he’s stuck with Hollis and the none too bright Bright.
Pat proves somewhat more active and capable than Nora Charles, and is nearly killed herself when she sets their apartment on fire to frighten off the two men waiting to kill Simon, and things get even more complex when it turns out the man Simon saw is the notorious ‘Harelip’ Murphy (Philip Leaven) who we have only seen from the nose down as the mastermind who enjoys white mice scampering from his pockets (someone read their Wilkie Collins, shades of Count Fosco).
The thrills and spills are reminiscent of a radio serial despite this being an original screenplay, and no, it can’t compare with MGM and William Powell and Myrna Loy, but it is fast, smart, furious, and witty in the proper proportions and comes to a bang-up finale in the newsroom when Simon finally gets the killers, his job back, and his by-line — This Man is News.
A sequel followed the next year, This Man in Paris. IMDb says it isn’t as good as the first, but I hope eventually to see for myself. Meanwhile This Man is News is available on YouTube in a decent print.
It’s a fast-paced fun outing less dated than most, thanks to a clever script and a sure hand by the director, the screwball comedy mystery British style.
Love it or hate it, you can’t say it ever drags.
