POLICE STATION. Syndicated. Official Films / Paramount-Sunset Television Productions, 1959-? Untitled episode (Season 1, #8?). Baynes Barron, Larry Kerr, Henry Beckman, Roy Wright. Guest Cast: Ron Masak, Michael Vandever. Produced, written & directed by Sandy Howard.

   A Dragnet wanna-be that lasted one season of 39 syndicated episodes, of which only one, perhaps two, have managed to survive. It’s not very good, and I’m covering it here only because.

   There are two cases the cops are working on throughout this episode. The first is that of two 16-years-olds who have been killed in a gang war, city not specified. The second, not nearly as serious, is that of a aged female con artist who gratefully promises to quit the racket. Does she? Wait for the ending to see.

   As for the gang war deaths, the cops have two possible suspects, and they play them off each other until they can be sure which one is the one who pulled the trigger. It’s competently done, but not by late 1950s standards, done in by the cheap sets (furnished from a local second-hand furniture store), uninspired camera work, and the mediocre acting by one of the participants.

   I’ve asked Dick Etulain, the author of the following book to tell us more about it. He’s most graciously agreed:

RICHARD W. ETULAIN – Ernest Haycox and the Western. University of Oklahoma Press, hardcover, illustrated, 2017.

   This book attempts to resurrect writer Ernest Haycox as a major figure in the development of the fictional Western. It is not a biography; Haycox’s son, Ernest Haycox, Jr., does that in his smoothly written book On a Silver Desert: The Life of Ernest Haycox (2003). Nor is it primarily a work of literary criticism. That book is available in Stephen L. Tanner, Ernest Haycox (1996).

   Rather, my book is a work of literary history, tracing Haycox’s literary career from its origins in the early 1920s to his death in 1950.

   Born in 1899 and reared in Oregon, Haycox contributed to high school publications and then to college outlets at Reed College (1919-20) and the University of Oregon (1920-23). By graduation, Haycox had published several stories in pulp magazines. Hoping to establish strong links to fictional outlets in the East, Haycox traveled to New York City, where he met editors important to his career in the 1920s. Meeting Jill Marie Chord (also from Oregon) on the train east, they married in New York City but soon returned west to Portland, which would be the Haycox home for the remainder of his life.

   By the end of the 1920s, Haycox was a steady contributor to many pulp magazines, including such stalwarts as Adventure, Short Stories, and Western Story Magazine. In 1928, he published his first full-length serial, which appeared the next year as Free Grass, his first novel. In the opening 1930s, Haycox made his first appearance in Collier’s and remained a steady contributor for almost twenty years.

   Hoping to move to the top of writers of Westerns, Haycox experimented with several new wrinkles to chosen genre. He created reflective protagonists (“Hamlet heroes”) and dark and light heroines (passionate and reserved women).

   Even more important, he began to turn out historical Westerns, infusing his lively fiction with historical backgrounds such as building the transcontinental railroad, fighting Indians in the Southwest, and settling Oregon. His most notable historical Western was Bugles in the Afternoon (1944), a fictional recreation of Gen. George Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

   Immensely successful, Haycox was nonetheless dissatisfied with the restrictions of the Western and entered a period of revolt in the last half-dozen years (1944-50) of his career. Abandoning lucrative serial markets, he set out to write first-rate historical fiction. His best historical novel, The Earthbreakers (1952), appeared two years after his death.

   Talented, ambitious, and driven, Ernest Haycox became a major figure in popular fiction written about the American West. Haycox’s continuing growth, gradual but steady, amply demonstrates an author determined enough to defy popular demands and honest enough to write novels consistent with his changing literary beliefs.

OSMINGTON MILLS – No Match For the Law. Chief Inspector William Baker #3. Geoffrey Bles, UK, hardcover, 1957. No US edition.

   Mr Justice Craven is rather an amusing personality — that is if you don’t have to appear before him as barrister or defendant or plaintiff. In that event, his biting wit might not appeal. And it’s not always comfortable being a member of his family.

   During a cricket match to celebrate St. Geoffrey’s Day. a match that takes place between the ‘law’ — members of the bar — and ‘order’ — local civil officials — Judge Craven, in his 70s and having scored 42, takes a break and drinks a beverage he made himself from a recipe he found in an old book. Three hours later he dies from oxalic poisoning. a rather unpleasant way to go.

   Since there were people about who had no liking for the judge. the police do have some suspects. though because of the circumstances it’s a small list. Later, more information is developed that broadens the field.

   Both the police and the suspects are interesting people. Mills handles characterization well. If there’s a complaint, it is that there are so many characters who are possible suspects that he can’t really do justice to all of them. Chief Inspector Baker of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch is at the cricket match when the judge is poisoned and handles the investigation well, but how was he to know about the joker in the woodpile?

   Purists may cavil and claim that this is not a fair-play novel. Perhaps it isn’t. It is certainly an excellent whodunit.

Bibliographic Notes:   Osmington Mills was the pseudonym of Vivian Collin Brooks, (1922-2002). Besides five other detective novels, he was the author of ten cases for Inspector Baker between 1955 and 1966. Only five of the fifteen have been reprinted in the US.

[UPDATE.]   If you read the comments, you will find that it has been suggested — and confirmed — that Osmington Mills was female, and that all references to her as “he” should be changed to “she.”

MARK PHILLIPS – The Impossibles. Kenneth J. Malone / Psi-Power #2. Pyramid F-875, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1963. Previously serialized in Astounding SF in three parts as “Out Like a Light,” April-June 1960. Reprinted under this title but as by Laurence Janifer & Randall Garrett by Resurrected Press, trade paperback, 2011.

   The first in this series, concocted in high comic fashion by SF writers Laurence Janifer and Randall Garrett, was Braintwister (Pyramid, 1962), in which intrepid FBI agent Ken Malone meets up with a telepathic old lady who thinks she is Queen Elizabeth. The third and last was Supermind (Pyramid, 1963), in which he tangles with … well, you’ll have to tell me, as I haven’t read it yet.

   In this one, though, he meets up with a gang of kids in New York City who … well, I can’t tell you that, since that’s the mystery that Malone is called on to solve. Let me say that it begins with Malone lying flat on his back on a Greenwich Village sidewalk, having been sent to the big city to investigate a series of strange incidents involving red Cadillacs — only Cadillacs, and only red — that are being stolen and taken for joy rides all over the metropolitan area, but with no one being able to see who’s taking them or or even who’s behind the wheel.

   Truth be told, as a novel, The Impossibles is a minor affair, but the pleasure comes from watching Malone tackle the unknown in a wink and a nod sort of way, and then as he tries to explain to others what he comes across. That and passages such as this one, chosen from very early on in the book:

   All in all, a series that’s a lot of fun to read, but there’s no way I could call it essential.

VICTIM. Allied Film Makers, UK, 1961. Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Peter McEnery, Derren Nesbitt, John Barrie, Hilton Edwards, Margaret Diamond. Written by Janet Green and John McCormick. Directed by Basil Dearden.

   This is gripping and unusual: A film with a Cause that doesn’t pound a drum or beat its chest, content to make its case with a taut, involving, thriller-style story.

   Peter McEnery opens the film as a young man on the run from the law, desperately seeking help from a rather odd circle of acquaintances who either can’t do much or reject him outright, including Dirk Bogarde as a rising and happily married barrister, who threatens to call the Police if McEnery bothers him again.

   This sets the tone for a noirish chase film, sustained even after McEnery gets busted and kills himself in Jail, which is when Dirk learns McEnery was being blackmailed for illegal homosexual activit — and died trying to protect him. Filled with grief and anger, he resolves to go after the blackmailers responsible for the death of a man whose only crime was loving him.

   Of course it’s not all that simple, not for a married man, and to their credit the makers of this film give due regard to the emotional conflicts of his wife (Sylvia Sims) without slowing the pace a bit. In fact, we very quickly get the idea that Dirk is up against something big and very nasty. There’s a sinister blind man who overhears the gossip at a crypto-gay bar and plots to make “collections;” a well-dressed habitué who seems to keep a sharp eye on everyone there, and a beefy young man on a motorcycle who just enjoys breaking things.

   Faced with massive odds, Bogarde pushes through the seamy underworld with only his wits and his own resolve for support, and in a nice bit of understated irony finds himself shunned by the people he’s trying to help—just as he dismissed McEnery early on.

   Along the way we get a bit of social commentary from sympathetic players who deplore the laws against homosexual conduct (this is 1961 remember), but they don’t stop the action to make speeches about it, and toward the end, writers Green & McCormick (a married couple with some fine films to their credit) indulge in a delightful bit of misdirection before confronting Bogarde and the viewer with the evil genius behind the blackmail racket.

   And it’s here where Victim really excels. I won’t reveal the surprise, but the identities and motives of the “Gang” but they really ring true, adding a frisson of personal insight to a film that was already a dandy noir thriller. Catch this one.

THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. Warner Brothers, 1953. Errol Flynn, Roger Livesey, Anthony Steel, Beatrice Campbell, Yvonne Furneaux, Felix Aylmer, Mervyn Johns. Screenplay: Herb Meadow, based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Director: William Keighley.

   I didn’t go into this one with the highest of expectations. After all, the Errol Flynn of the 1950s was a far cry from his earlier more exuberant self. Similarly, while I can appreciate costumers for what they primarily are – escapist entertainment – I can’t say that I find many of them to be among my favorite movies. Still, with a script loosely adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name, there were reasons to be hopeful that this feature would surpass some of Flynn’s other movies from the same era.

   So consider me pleasantly surprised. For The Master of Ballantrae happens to be an entertaining, fun, and thrilling adventure film that has something to offer everyone apart from the most jaded cynic. Flynn, despite being significantly older and heavier than he was when he portrayed Robin Hood, is in top form. He’s charming, daring, and yes, has a thing for a lady. Or ladies.

   Flynn portrays Jamie Durie, the titular Master of Ballantrae. He’s a Scottish nobleman who decides to fight for the Scottish side in the Jacobite rebellion. It’s also the losing side.

   Forced into exile in the West Indies along with his right-hand man, Irishman Colonel Francis Burke (Roger Livesey), Jamie plans his return to Scotland wherein he will seek revenge for his brother Henry’s (Anthony Steel) alleged betrayal. He also has his mind set on reuniting with his fiancée, Lady Allison.

   Although the plot is rather formulaic and predictable, it nevertheless moves forward at a steady pace. Flynn’s character is a totally likable rogue, one the audience will be rooting for throughout his many escapades. As I said, it’s a fun escapist adventure that benefits greatly from its own location photography, especially in the Scottish Highlands.

BRAM STOKER & VLADIMAR ASMUNDSON – Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula. The Overlook Press, hardcover, February 2017. Translated by Hans Corneel de Roos.

   It was 1901 when Icelandic writer Vladimar Asmundsson, collaborating with his friend Bram Stoker, began his translation of the Irishman’s novel Dracula for serialization as Makt Myrkranna for the newspaper Fjakkkonan (Lady of the Mountains). It wasn’t until 2014 that Stoker scholar Hans Corneel de Roos recognized something was up, for Powers of Darkness is not only a translation of the Stoker novel, it is a completely different book.

   In Makt Myrkranna, Thomas Harker, a young solicitor travels to Transylvania in the Carpathian Mountains to close a real estate deal for Count Dracula — which is about the last moment the Icelandic translation of the novel looks or reads anything like the original.

   Harker’s adventure at castle Dracula is considerably different from the original Stoker versions, yet there is evidence Stoker himself approved of the book’s approach.

   Dracula here is a far different character than the little seen repugnant presence of the original novel. In the Icelandic translation he is a dirty old man much closer to a James Bond villain, replete with an international organization up to economic skullduggery. In the second half of the book, it draws the attention of Barrington of the Yard and the Secret Service.

   Most startling to the reader is the open sexuality and eroticism of this version. Where Dracula as we know it has a heavily suggested eroticism, claustrophobic and brought to the surface by only a handful of moments. Powers of Darkness has seductive young women, bared bosoms, naked bodies, orgiastic human sacrifices, half human beast-men, and a femme fatale that overcomes young Harker’s Victorian prudery quite easily.

   Gone is all the artifice used by Stoker to lend his fantastic tale its own reality. There are no typewriters, Dictaphones, or other modern methods of storytelling and the epistolary nature of the original is replaced by a flat God-like narrator. Even the race across Europe by train to destroy Dracula in the shadow of his castle is gone, replaced by a too short scene reminiscent of the play and the 1931 Tod Browning film.

   Many characters are changed: Dracula’s brides are replaced by a single bride, the Countess; Mina becomes Wilma and never falls to Dracula’s powers; Lucy’s death is dealt with perfunctorily and without the atmospheric scenes of the “Boo’fer Lady”; Dr. Seward goes mad and dies off page, his madhouse burns, but there is no Renfield, and we are assured Van Helsing is the nom de guerre for a famous doctor.

   We are given glimpses of an elite of decadent European aristocrats drawn to London as if in the forefront of an invasion, and Dracula is portrayed as a lewd old man obsessed with women as sexual conquests, using Social Darwinism to explain the theories he plans to put into place as he conquers English society and England as a new Napoleon. At times, he seems more Carl Peterson than Dracula (shades of some of Hammer’s later Lee and Cushing films or Dennis Wheatley).

   Some of that is suggested by Stoker in the original, but never as blatantly as it is presented here, where Dracula is more the head of a vast criminal conspiracy than lord of the underworld or prince of Satan.

   Vampirism fits into the novel, but little supernatural is shown, and the famous scene of Dracula defying gravity scaling the walls of his castle is explained away with hidden hand and footholds. The entire sub-strata of vampirism as a metaphor for venereal disease is hidden and even the fetid breath and redolent smell of the vampire goes unmarked.

   The first half of the novel, Harker’s journal, is the best part, a more contemporary voice than the original, at times reading like it was taken from the weird menace or spicy pulps of the thirties and early forties. The second half feels tossed off, as if the writer lost interest and hurried to the conclusion, though the changes to the novel may make it better suited to this blog than the original.

   It is an interesting read, for lovers and haters of the famous novel. I can’t say it is any kind of classic on its own, it is not, but as is pointed out by translator de Roos, you do have to wonder how different other translations of the novel are, and where they take the Count and his adventures.

LESLIE T. WHITE “Tough Guy.” Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September-October 2017. This issue’s Mystery Classic, selected and introduced by Jim Doherty. First published in Liberty, 21 June 1941. Reprinted in Liberty Quarterly: 19 Tales of Intrigue, Mystery & Adventure (Vol. 1, No. 1, ca. 1950).

    In his introduction to this story, Jim Doherty makes a solid case for Leslie White as one of the very first practitioners of the police procedural novel. Up for discussion in particular are Me, Detective (1936), a biographical account of White’s own career, Harness Bull (1937), and Homicide (1937).

    Most of White’s work was done for the pulp magazines, producing as he did well over 100 short stories for that market, beginning with “Phoney Evidence” in The Dragnet Magazine, January 1930. To substantiate his case, Doherty describes some of White’s career in police work, and how he used it to give all of his crime fiction a solid, believable setting.

    “Tough Guy” was written toward the end of his pulp fiction days, and that’s even a stretch, as Liberty magazine was not really a pulp. It’s the story of a tough cop named Gahagan who lives for nothing other than his job, a primary part of which is nailing a notorious killer and crime boss by the name of Danny Trumbull.

    Things go awry in his life when the trail leads him to Trumbull’s eight-year-old daughter Penny, who lives alone with her father but who has no idea how totally bad he is. This one starts out in full tilt pulp mode, but by the end, it’s become, as you might have expected, a long way from being a hard-boiled tale of a tough guy cop. Quite the opposite.

    Which does not make it a bad story, by any means. In fact, I enjoyed this one more than any of the other twelve stories in this latest issue of AHMM, many of them (to my mind) rather weak efforts and/or not interesting to me. It’s starting to get difficult to justify spending $7.99 an issue for a magazine that I can’t get excited about any more.

A. A. MILNE – The Red House Mystery. Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1922. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1922. Reprinted many times, including: Pocket #81, US, 1940; Dell, US, paperback, Murder Ink #7, 1980; Dover, US, trade paperback, 2000.

   Winnie the Pooh.

   There. Got that out of the way!

   This was A. A. Milne’s only detective novel, and it’s a good one. I don’t know how rich and famous he might have become as a mystery writer if he’d decided to continue on in that fashion, but at the end of this one, the detective of record, a fellow by the name of Antony Gillingham, sure sounds ready to tackle another one. Alas, he seems to have never gotten the chance.

   From the title, you might guess that The Red House Mystery is one of those oh so many country manor murder mysteries that took place in England between the wars. And you’d be correct, kind of. All of the guests, who were out golfing at the time of the murder, are hustled out of the house and back to London as soon as they get back.

   All but one, that is, a chap named Bill Beverley, the friend that Antony is stopping by to see and who is needed to testify at the inquest. And at a more propitious time Antony could not have chosen, right as Matthew Cayley, the live-in cousin of Mark Abbett, owner of the manor, is pounding at the door of the room where the latter has just received his scoundrel brother Robert from Australia.

   Together, after running around the house and coming in through a window, they find Robert dead, and Mark nowhere to be found. Having pleasantly already worked his way through several occupations, but now at loose ends, Antony decides to add amateur detective to his overflowing resume. Luckily he has a very willing Watson at hand, in the person of Bill, who thinks solving the mystery will be great fun, as indeed it is.

   The reference to the tales of Sherlock Holmes is a recurring one. Along the way they also come across lots of keys, locked cupboards and of all things, a secret passage, watch the police drag a pond, then spy on Cayley as he drops something into it that same night, something the two of them must later retrieve without being seen doing so, and more.

   What’s interesting is that until the very end, Antony is very willing to share his thoughts on the mystery with Bill as they are working on it, rather than being inscrutable and mysterious about it, as so many other fictional detectives do. Until, that is, just before the end. As the author, you can’t let the reader in on everything all too soon — can you? — nor Bill, either, for that matter.

   He’s a good sport about it, though, and so was I.

   Milne’s witty and essentially informal writing style helps this one go down awfully easily. The scheme behind the murder plot is a complicated one, but Gillingham makes good sense of it all in the end, and his explanation of how he worked the solution out holds all the water it needs to, which is always the icing on the cake for me.

   Which makes is all the more sad to read, when he says in the very last line, about the chances of doing it again, “I’m just getting the swing of it,” and know that there will never be another.

MAURICIO de GIOVANNI – By My Hand. Commisarrio Ricciadi #5. Europa Editions, World Noir series, softcover, August 2014. First published as Per mano mia. Il Natale del commissario Ricciardi, 2011.

First Sentence:   The murderous hands work unhurriedly in the dim light.

   Christmas is coming to Naples, a city in 1931 under a fascist regime and where people live in tremendous poverty in contrast to the luxurious apartment in which the bodies of a militia officer and his wife have been found. While searching out the killer, or killers, Commisaario Ricciardi is concerned for his elderly former nurse and torn between two women, while Brigadier Maione is dealing with a crisis of his own.

   One does not enter gently into this story. Instead, one is nearly overwhelmed by the visual and narrative contrasts that attract and repel us. However, the one thing one does not do is stop reading.

   The two principal characters of Ricciardi and Maione are such wonderful contrasts to one another, yet they balance each other perfectly. Maione provides a bit of light, whereas Ricciardi believes himself to be the dark due to his ability? curse? gift? of the Deed, which causes him to see the final seconds of those who’ve died by violence. What’s nice is that these final seconds don’t help Ricciardi solve the crimes, as the words only make sense in the end.

   Supporting them is the always delightful Dr. Moto and his newly adopted dog; Bambinelle, Maione’s informant; Rosa, who has been with Ricciardi since his childhood; and Erica, the object of unrequited (so far) love on both parts. It is the balance between being a police procedural, and being a book about people and their relationships, that help make this book so compelling.

   The thoughts of the killer are chilling. While this is a device that can be intrusive, it works here and provides a frightening look at the dichotomy of the killer’s mind. In complete contrast Livia, the wealthy widow in love with Ricciardi, provides us a sense of place and a view of the people of Naples, “Waking up to the calls of the strolling vendors, the noise rising from the streets, the songs. And the smells, the thousands of pots bubbling busily away, the thousands of frying pans sizzling, the pastry shops competing to present their masterpieces. Everyone had dreamed up a calling, a profession; every one of them was trying to eke out a living.”

   There are two principal grounding elements to the story; the crashing of the waves representing conflict, and Christmas with all the emotions surrounding it, which provides wonderful segues to increasingly more serious aspects of the story— “Christmas is an emotion. It’s a strong as a pounding heart, as light as a fluttering eyelash. But it can be swept away by a gust of wind and never come at all.”

   de Giovanni does a wonderful job of linking traditions of the present to those of the distant past, and of teaching us that about which we may not have known, such as the symbolism of, and meaning behind each figural element of the nativity.

   And, of course, being set in Italy, there is food— “boiling posts of the maccaronari, or macaroni vendors, and the posts of oil for the fried-pizza man, who also fried piping-hot panzarotti turnovers and potato croquettes…” Yet, there is also a wonderful definition of faith— “Our faith wasn’t made to erect barriers, walls, or iron bars between us and love; it was made to increase the presence of love in our lives, so that we can give of ourselves and live in a state of communion…”

   By My Hand is a more serious book than its predecessors as it relates to the politics of the time: one senses the changes and coming threat with each book. It is also a very good murder mystery/police procedural. However, at its heart it is a book about people and relationships, and motives. The motive here is a sad one, yet the resolutions of the conflicts related to the principal characters will warm your heart, and make you anxious to read the next book.

   It is Christmas, after all.

Rating:   Very Good Plus.