LOVE CAN BE MURDER. Made-for-TV. NBC, 14 December 1992. Jaclyn Smith, Corbin Bernsen, Cliff De Young, Tom Bower, Anne Francis. Director: Jack Bender.

   Some viewers may rate this as the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy, but I enjoyed it, and I make no apologies about it! That it has to do with Los Angeles and private eyes may have something to do it, with a wink and a nod to the late 1940s when PI’s had to wear fedoras and be swift with the wisecracking repartee. In fact, I’m sure it does.

   In this film Jacklyn Smith, always to my mind the most beautiful member of Charlie’s Angels, plays Elizabeth Bentley, a lady lawyer who has a problem. She’s bored with both her job and her earnest but very dull fiancé. What does she do? She quits her job and decides to become a private investigator.

   Her first case? The ghost of the PI (Corbin Bernsen) who haunts her new office. It seems that he was killed in a phony automobile accident back in 1948 when he was on a case, one that was never solved. By some sort of rule or regulation that governs such matters in the hereafter, he cannot move on until the case is solved. And all of sudden Ms Bentley has a new partner, one that only she can see.

   I have to admit that the case is not all that interesting, though there is at least one decent twist to it before it is solved, and maybe two. No — and of course we are moving into present day Hallmark territory here — the fun of this film is watching a romance grow, complete with lots of humor, witty patter and a huge wardrobe for Ms Smith. A romance, mind you, that unless there is some fine print at the bottom of the page of rules and regulations that govern such matters, does not have much of a future to it.

   The TV reviewer for the Los Angeles Times liked it, saying that “The production is loaded with charming nostalgic touches…” with a “kind of Nick-and-Nora flavor,” but an anonymous reviewer for People magazine gave it a D plus. I lean far more toward the former than the latter.

M. J. TROW РThe Island. Grand & Batchelor #4. Cr̬me de la Crimem hardcover, January 2018. First published in the UK, 2017. Setting: Maine, 1873.

First Sentence:   The quarter-moon did little to light Summer Street that night in Boston.

   Investigators Matthew Grand and James Batchelor have travelled from England to Grand’s extensive family home on the coast of Maine for the wedding of Grand’s sister, Martha. Friends and family gather, including the surprise appearance of a cousin who hasn’t been seen for fourteen years. A greater surprise is the dead body found in an upstairs bedroom which leads to the question of what the tie is to the family.

   An interesting beginning informs one as to where the story is going; or does it? What is does, however, is provide introductions to the protagonists and their profession. One thing which is a bit rare, but is refreshing, is to show the vulnerable side of one of the men. The transition from Batchelor and Grand to their housekeeper, Mrs. Rackstraw, is also nicely done. She is such a delightful character.

   Trow’s style is subtle and often humorous. He slides in information, from location descriptions— “The docks at Southampton had not been conducive to chatting and Batchelor didn’t get a change to share something the Grand until they were in their laughingly called stateroom, in which a cat would be totally safe from being swung.” —to family structures— “My mother comes from a family of eight girls, thought I doubt they’ll all come to the wedding. Four of them are dead anyway, and one is in Wisconsin, so as good as. Auntie Mimi is as mad as a rattler and doesn’t travel.” The inclusion of Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) as a character is a wonderful touch.

   It’s also a nice touch that, despite having been introduced to a myriad of characters, the murder victim is unexpected. Which also means the motive is as much a mystery as is the killer

   The truest sign of an author with an exceptional voice is that one has a desire to quote nearly every page. Trow is one of the few authors who can write parallel conversations—conversation held by two sets of characters at the same time in different places, without any confusion as to the speakers — and get away with it.

   He has a wonderful way of evoking the senses— “He had never known it before, not in London, but it really was possible, he realized to smell the spring. There was a green smell in the air, the smell of sap on the rise, alongside the sound of buds creaking with the effort of bursting. He felt he could almost smell the warmth of the sun …”

The Island is filled with humor, and excellent characters, plus there are murders; violent ones. It is a rare instance when one can call a mystery a delightful read.

       The Grand & Batchelor series —

1. The Blue and the Grey (2014)

2. The Circle (2016)
3. The Angel (2016)
4. The Island (2017)

RICHARD S. PRATHER – Kill Me Tomorrow. Shell Scott #34. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1969; 2nd printing, 1972.

   Richard Prather and his once extremely well-known PI creation Shell Scott changed publishers in the middle of 1964, but I was off to grad school at the time, and I barely noticed. Back when Gold Medal was responsible for putting them out, I gobbled them down as soon as they reached the spinner rack at the supermarket where I stopped every day on my way home from school.

   I don’t know for sure, but this may be the first of the Pocket editions I ever picked up to actually read. I don’t know whether it was me, or the book itself, but I was sadly disappointed. I tried and I tried but I could not finish it.

   And even I though I didn’t, I’ll tell you about it anyway, and maybe you can tell me what you think. Part of the problem may be that Scott is a long way from his usual Hollywood stomping grounds. He’s off on vacation in Arizona in this one, helping the senior citizens in a retirement community fend off a horde of gangsters who have infiltrated their midst, some of them as geriatric as they are. Strike one?

   With a word count of well over 200 pages of small print, Prather is awfully lead-footed and wordy in this one. Padded, I’d say. Strike two. The only time the prose perks up is when Scott is describing the bountiful charms of one of the female characters, at which point he goes positively lyrical. Problem is, there are only two such characters, the first being a luscious movie star whose father is a member of said retirement community, and for far too many pages, all they do is shake hands. Strike three.

   Nothing else was remotely interesting. Dull as dishwater. Nothing like those light-hearted if not out-and-out wacky old Gold Medal adventures I grew up with. Or perhaps, is it me? Should I not go back and read one of those either?

ED McBAIN – There Was a Little Girl. Matthew Hope #11. Warner, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995.

   I thought the last Matthew Hope book — Mary, Mary — was poor in just about every respect. I’d enjoyed the series in the past, though, and thought I’d try another. Anybody’s entitled to an off day.

   As the book opens, Matthew Hope is shot twice by an unknown assailant as he emerges from a bar in the Newtown section of Calusa, Florida. He’s rushed to the hospital in critical condition and is stabilized, but in a semi-comatose condition.

   The police and his friends and associates begin to try to backtrack him to find what could have led to the shooting, and find only a real estate deal. Hope was acting as agent for a circus owner to try to buy some privately owned fairgrounds as a permanent home for the circus. Can this seemingly innocuous transaction be the rationale for an attempted murder? Yep. Sure can.

   This is an interesting departure from the norm in terms of structure. The story is told by a combination of flashbacks via the semi-comatose Hope and the actions of his friends and associates as they investigate his shooting.

   The narration segues from one into the other and back, and it works well. McBain does his usual competent job of writing smooth, readable prose, and a good degree of tension is maintained both as to Hope’s condition and finding the killer.

   The circus background was interesting, too. Little Girl goes a long way toward recapturing the form McBain showed in the early Hope stories.

JAMES E. MARTIN – The Flip Side of Life. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1990. Avon, paperback, 1991.

   Cleveland-based PI Gil Disbro’s second case involves a missing college professor and his son, who may be the victim of grandparental kidnapping. There are also three murders before the book is finished, so all in all, in spite of the price tag [$21.95], you do get your money’s worth.

   Martin writes with nice clean prose, nothing too elegant, but he keeps the story moving. Some introspective passages, mostly with his live-in lady, add a bit to his character. It’s pretty good as a detective story too, even without a big surprise at the end.

      The Gil Disbro series —

The Mercy Trap (1989)
The Flip Side of Life (1990)
And Then You Die (1992)
A Fine and Private Place (1994)

DECOY. Monogram, 1946. (Miss) Jean Gillie, Edward Norris, Robert Armstrong, Herbert Rudley, Sheldon Leonard, Marjorie Woodworth, William Self. Screenplay by Ned Young, based on a story by Stanley Rubin, adapted from a radio play broadcast as an episode of The Whistler. Director: Jack Bernhard.

   This rather bizarre excursion into sci-fi noir is, according to some critics, the best movie that Monogram ever made. I wouldn’t go that far, but it has its moments. Based on an actual fact, though, stretched to its limit and quite a way beyond, it has to do with reviving a hardened criminal after being successfully put to death in the state of California’s notorious gas chamber. (There is a drug that is an antidote to cyanide poisoning, but no, it doesn’t work once the victim is already dead.)

   That’s the extent of the sci-fi content, and again no, that’s not why this movie has become to many a cult classic. Unavailable for many years, except as a scattering of film conventions, the real reason this movie has so many fans is its starring lady, British-born Jean Gillie, whose American debut this was. As far as femme fatales in noir film go, she is the fatalest. There is $400,000 of stolen money at stake, and she is absolutely determined to get her hands on it, no matter how many men she has to seduce and betray along the way.

   For a film made in 1946, there is a lot of violence in this film, but thinking back, most of it is not shown on camera. You may think so as you’re watching, but not so. Even so, when Monogram released the movie to TV, one scene of Margot Shelby (Gillie’s character) backing up and driving over her erstwhile boyfriend two or three times was cut so that it happens only once. Or so I’m told. This latter version is the one, alas, that’s now available on DVD, perhaps the only one in existence.

   The acting is mostly fine, the sets are solid and often extremely effective (such as the opening scene as the doctor who had previously succumbed to Gillie’s character’s charms looks in a mirror at his battered and disheveled self in a ratty gas station restroom). And the final scene, one in which Margot stays true to herself to the end, is one you will long remember.

   Trouble is, Margot is such a one-dimensional character you have to do a science-fictional “suspension of disbelief” to swallow the fact that such an amoral person could exist. Given that, as well as the cornerstone sfnal concept at the core of the film, and I think you’ll enjoy this movie as much as I did.