DOWN THREE DARK STREETS. United Artists, 1954. Broderick Crawford, Ruth Roman, Martha Hyer, Marisa Pavan, Max Showalter, Casey Adams, Kenneth Tobey, Jay Adler, Claude Akins. Screenplay by Gordon Gordon & Mildred Gordon (as The Gordons) and Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on the novel Case File: FBI by The Gordons. Director: Arnold Laven.
Told in semi-documentary fashion, Down Three Dark Streets tells the story of how FBI Agent John ‘Rip’ Ripley (Broderick Crawford) finishes up the three cases that fellow agent Zach Stewart (Kenneth Tobey) was working on when he was gunned down and killed. He assumes that the killer was involved in one of the three cases, but which one and who.
The cases: (1) A killer on the loose. A possible contact: his girl friend (Martha Hyer). (2) A car theft gang. Possible contact: the blind wife of one of the members (Marisa Pavan). (3) An extortion threat to a recent widow (Ruth Roman) involving her young child.
The kidnapping threat is the major one, the one Ripley spends most of his time on. There are several suspects, but if you don’t mind my saying so, while you could easily pick any one of them, the obvious one is the one. Of special note is that the semi-suspenseful finale takes place at the base of the Hollywood sign high up in the LA hills.
Broderick Crawford is his usual gruff down-to-business self. Ruth Roman was always a fine actress, as she is in this above average crime thriller, but her career never developed as much in my mind as it should have. On the other hand, Martha Hyer’s career went into high gear soon after this, in which she quite effectively plays the gunman’s moll, outwardly tough and brassy, but ultimately fragile and insecure on the inside.
ROBERT SILVERMAN – The Cumberland Decision. Manor, paperback original, 1977.
You may have noticed that from time to time I take up valuable space by delving into the publishing phenomenon in the field of mysteries that produced the flood of paperback originals from Gold Medal/Fawcett Publications all during the 1950s. I’m firmly convinced that these novels, all easy to find for the most part, and mostly in the hard-boiled genre as linear descendants o the pulp magazines, are unjustly neglected.
You may tire of me telling you so, but for characters involved in down-to-earth situations and for sheer story-telling ability, the authors in the Gold Medal group are not easily surpassed. (Outstripped?)
Even in their heyday, however, these novels were all too easily panned by snobbish reviewers, if not totally ignored. There were the indiscriminate pitchforks dispensed by the anonymous reviewer for The Saint Magazine, for example, but there also was Anthony Boucher, in the New York Times, as one reviewer who did not automatically subscribe to the “paperback equals junk†theory.
It occurs to me that 20 years from now, retrospective reviewers may find that today’s Manor paperbacks are also exceptional examples of neglected writing, and in reality saying a great deal about American society and culture of [the 1970s].
It’s possible, but I found ex-cop-turned-mystery-writer Johnny Otto crude and semi-literate, a macho chauvinist who seems utterly incapable of writing a coherent sentence, let along a best-selling novel, or having an intelligent lady friend as a girl friend. His method of ending an argument is slipping his hand inside her blouse and leading her to bad. “Yeah, baby.â€
As I say, it’s possible that Johnny Otto describes a definitive figure in American life, but he is most definitely a flop as a detective. The true villain behind the death of his former partner on the police force and the huge shipment of heroin about to be smuggled into San Francisco is obvious at first meeting, and I think I found comical overtones in the climactic rescue and capture that were not wholly intended.
Redeeming social value? Ask me in 20 years.
Rating: D
–Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1978.
Note: Robert M. Silverman has one other entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, that being The Colombian Connection, also a paperback original from Manor, also in 1977.
EDWARD D. HOCH “The Theft of the Double Elephant.†Nick Velvet. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Not yet collected.
The particular task that Nick Velvet agrees to take on in this tale is the robbery he knows his friendly adversary Sandra Paris has committed, but what he does not know is how she managed to steal the ordinary Audubon print he is hired to retrieve. It was taken from an apartment on the top of a five story brownstone in New York City. Three different keys are needed to enter the apartment, and at night alarms are always set at the doors and windows.
Unlike the Porges story (recently reviewed here) in the same issue of EQMM, Hoch takes his time (fourteen pages rather than only four), to describe the layout fully as well as the personal interest Velvet takes in his duel task: I think he took greater pleasure in outwitting Ms. Paris than he did in actually returning the print to its owner.
As it so happens, this is the Nick Velvet story I asked Mr Hoch about when I interviewed him for the print version of Mystery*File back in August of 2004. You can find it online here. It is not, however, included in the recently published Locked Room Murders Supplementby Brian Skupin. I hope it’s not because there is no murder in it. It’s well constructed and well worthy of inclusion, and I hope to see it in Supplement Two.
THE WIDOW “Mr. Tequila.†Amazon Prime Video. 01 March 2019 (Season 1, Episode 1). Kate Beckinsale and a large ensemble cast. Created and written by Harry Williams & Jack Williams. Director: Samuel Donovan.
As the pilot of this one season, eight-episode series, it does its job in one solid way: it sets the course for the season with a strikingly visual presentation consisting of at least three different story lines. What it does not do, and by no means is this a problem, it only tangentially brings any of them together, nor obviously are any of them concluded. This is the only episode I’ve seen.
Kate Beckinsale plays the title character, a widow who lost her husband, a medical aid worker in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who he died when his plane went down in wide swatch of jungle while on his way home. Watching a televison news report of civil unrest in that country three years later, she’s sure she sees her husband, either fighting or taking cover from the action.
She immediately hops a plane to the Congo to investigate, where she’s met by one of two men with whom she bonded as a small survivors’ group in the airport after the crash. There appears there is more to be known about the third, known locally as “Mr. Tequila,†which is about as far as this story line goes.
I plan to keep watching. I always enjoy watching Kate Beckinsale in action, and this is obviously a star vehicle built especially for her. She always lights up the screen whenever she appears. I don’t know exactly how she does, but she does.
RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Lady in the Lake. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1943. Pocket #389, paperback; 1st printing, September 1946. Film: MGM, 1946, as Lady in the Lake (with Robert Montgomery as Philip Marlowe).
Even though The Lady in the Lake is not Chandler’s best novel. it is this reviewer’s favorite. It too was “cannibalized” from three pulp novelettes: “Bay City Blues·” (Dime Detective, November 1937), “The Lady in the Lake” (Dime Detective, January 1939), “No Crime in the Mountains” (Detective Story, September 1941), but it is not as seamless as The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, nor as wholly credible. Nevertheless. there is an intangible quality about it, a kind of terrible and perfect inevitability that combines with such tangibles as Chandler’s usual fascinating assortment of characters and some unforgettable moments to make it extra satisfying.
The novel opens with Marlowe hired by Derace Kjngsley, a foppish perfume company executive, to find his missing wife. Crystal (who he admits he hates and who may or may not have run off with one of his “friends,” Chris Lavery). Marlowe follows a tortuous and deadly trail that leads him from L.A. to the beach community of Bay City, to Little Fawn Lake high in the San Bernardino Mountains, to the towns of Puma Point and San Bernardino, and back to to L.A. and Bay City. And it involves him with a doctor named Almore, a tough cop named Degarmo, a half-crippled mountain caretaker, Bill Chess, whose wife is also missing, Kingsley’s secretary, Miss Adrienne Fromsett and the lady in the lake, among other victims.
As the dust jacket or the original edition puts it, it is “a most extraordinary case, because … Marlowe understands that what is important is not a clue – not the neatly stacked dishes, not the strange telegram … but rather the character of [Crystal Kingsley]. When he began to find out what she was like, he took his initial steps into a world of evil, and only then did the idea of what she might have done and what might have been done to her take shape. So it was that not one crime but several were revealed, and a whole series of doors that hid cruel things were suddenly opened.
“Again Chandler proves that he is one of the most brilliant craftsmen in the field, and that his Marlowe is one of the great detectives in fiction.”
Amen.
The Lady in the Lake was filmed in 1946. with Robert Montgomery (who also directed) as Marlowe. For its time, it was a radical experiment in film-making, in that it is entirely photographed as if through the eyes of Marlowe — a sort of cinematic version of the first-person narrator, with Montgomery himself never seen except in an occasional mirror reflection. The technique doesn’t quite work – it, not the story, becomes the focus of attention – but the film is an oddity worth seeing.
ANOTHER MAN’S POISON. Eros Films, UK, 1951. United Artists, US, 1952. Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Emlyn Williams, Anthony, Barbara Murray. Screenplay by Val Guest, based on the play “Deadlock” by Leslie Sands. Director: Irving Rapper.
There is a funny story I’d like to tell you about regarding this movie. Well, it’s funny to me, not laugh-out-loud funny, but just a little bizarre kind of funny. The first time I tried to watch this movie, it was on a videotape I’d made fro TCM, and about ten minutes from the end, either the movie had run long, or the tape had run short. What can be worse than missing the last ten minutes of a rattling good murder mystery movie?
Then a couple of nights ago, I spotted the movie again on Amazon Prime Video, a freebie, no less. Finally, I thought, here’s my chance to see the ending. And of course I decided to watch it all the way through from the beginning. It had been too long. I’d forgotten most of the story line.
So I settled in for the evening. Ha! You guessed it. Ten minutes before the ending, the picture froze. I had to shut everything down and work my way back to where I’d left off. Took me fifteen minutes. Twice now.
Three times is the charm.
I might not have done this for just any old movie, but to my mind, this one’s a good one, and well worth the trouble. Bette Davis can do little wrong, as far as I’m concerned, and she’s at her bitchy best in this one. .(There’s no other word I can use.)
I don’t recall if the story begins on a dark rainy night or not – but for sure that comes later. She’s a mystery writer who lives almost alone in an well-isolated manor house with a deep dark tarn in the back and facing an empty stretch of moor on the other. She has two visitors. The first is her estranged husband, then after she disposes of him, another man shows up – her husband’s partner in a bank robbery, looking for shelter.
When I said disposed of, I meant it. The man is dead. Poisoned. Her second arrival grabs the chance when he can get it. He dumps the body in the tarn, and forces the newly minted widow to let him pose as her husband.
I apologize for running on like this, but this is just the setup. You’ll have to use your imagination for what goes on in the remaining hour or so, but with a setup like this, the possibilities are many, and it all comes off like clockwork. Well worth the long intermission(s) for me.
CHARLES FINCH – The Last Passenger. Charles Lenox #13 (prequel #3). Minotaur Books, hardcover, February 2020. Setting: England, 1855.
First Sentence: On or about the first day of October 1855, the City of London, England decided it was time once and for all that Charles Lenox be married.
In this third, and final, prequel Charles Lenox is still working to establish himself as an enquiry agent. Asked to visit the scene of a gruesome murder, he finds someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to remove anything which might lead to the victim being identified. Although Inspector Dunn blames the murder on gangs, Lenox convinces Sir Richard Mayne, now Commissioner of the Police, to let him assist with the investigation. On a personal front, Charles is having to fend off his female relatives and friends who are determined to find him a suitable wife.
It’s lovely to have an opening which makes one smile, as this one does. It’s also nice that, even for those of us who follow the series, Finch provides an introduction of Lenox, his situation, appearance, and ambition, as well as other major characters, including Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Deere. Neither does Fitch overlook the secondary characters. The way in which Finch introduces them, including the members of Lenox’s household, is seamless. No long explanations, yet we have a sense of each character’s personality. In fact, some of them are among the most interesting, particularly freed slave Josiah Hollis from Atlanta, and a young newsboy.
One appreciates Finch’s voice and that it has something of the formality of the period in which the book is set– “Hemstock strolled in without a care in the world. You had to hand him that much: He had insouciance.”
The plot is nicely divided between the investigation and Lenox’s personal life. The repartee between him and his older brother Edmund is delightful. His courtship of Miss Catherine Ashbrook provides a delightful excuse for quoting Pride and Prejudice and a lesson in the history of the idiom “mind your p’s and q’s.”
Finch perfects the balance of providing information on the slave trade, including discussion of the treatment of slaves, but keeping it a part of the plot, rather than the focus of it. It is interesting to see our history through British eyes. Yet an encounter which makes one cringe is Lenox taking Hollis to a doctor who proclaimed– “He was not expert in their kind.”
This is the transitional book for Lenox showing his passing into maturity both in his life and his business. A conversation between Lenox and Hollis is thoughtful, enlightening, and causes one to reflect. Another conversation with Jane illuminates the reason why marriage for love often wasn’t the priority for women of the period. Both are examples of excellent writing.
The Last Passenger is a wonderful book. There are well-timed, well-done plot twists. The logic behind Lenox’s deductions is clever, yet not overly contrived. Rather than being focused on suspense, although that is there, it is a book that speaks to injustice, maturing, and friendship; true friendship. The end, particularly, stays with one long after closing the book.
Rating: Excellent.
The Charles Lenox series —
1. A Beautiful Blue Death (2007)
2. The September Society (2008)
3. The Fleet Street Murders (2009)
4. A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
4.5. An East End Murder (2011)
5. A Burial at Sea (2011)
6. A Death in the Small Hours (2012)
7. An Old Betrayal (2013)
8. The Laws of Murder (2014)
9. Home by Nightfall (2015)
10. The Inheritance (2016)
10.5. Gone Before Christmas (2017)
11. The Woman in the Water (2018)
12. The Vanishing Man (2019)
13. The Last Passenger (2020)
ARTHUR PORGES “Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot.†Stately Homes #5. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Collected in The Adventures of Stately Homes and Sherman Horn: Being the Compleat Sherlockian Writings of Arthur Porges (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, trade papeback, 2008).
Based on this story as my only sample to date, Stately Homes must have been Schlock Homes’ indolent brother. All he seems to do for a full quarter of this four page story is stay in his flat he shares with his assistant Sun Wat (from India) and play his violin, all the while depending on the members of the Baker Street Irregulars to do the leg work for him.
Dead is a man found shot and killed while sitting at his office desk with his back to the window, which was open ten inches from the bottom. The door to the fourth floor room was under close observation at the time. Obviously the shot came through the open window, but the only angle possible does not match the point of entry of the bullet.
It sounds good, but the story fails as a story, unless you consider “humorous,†which I allow was the likely attempt, to include stories as poorly thought out as this one. One essential clue to the solution is withheld from the reader until very nearly the end, and that is that the killer was an expert at billiards. Match this up with the fact that the walls of the room were covered with rare coins and medallions. You can take it from there.
The Stately Homes series –
Her Last Bow (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1957
Another Adventure of Stately Homes (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov 1961
Stately Homes and the Invisible Slasher (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2001
Stately Homes and the Invisible Giant (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2003
Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2004
THE TIGER WOMAN. Republic Pictures. 1945. Adele Mara, Kane Richmond, Cy Kendall, Richard Fraser, Peggy Stewart, Gregory Gaye (billed here as Gay). Screenplay by George Carlton Brown., based on a play by John Dunkel. Directed by Philip Ford.
Here is a surprisingly solid B movie from Republic that more than makes up for any flaws with attractive leads in a minor noirish if not quite true noir mode (it’s less noir than damn good hard-boiled pulp) about a tough smart private detective, a beautiful femme fatale of the most fatal kind, and two murders going on three she almost gets away with (not counting framing an innocent for her crimes).
The private detective in the case is Jerry Devery (Kane Richmond) who only wants to leave on his annual fishing trip but who has an appointment with Sharon Winslow (Adele Mara) chanteuse at the Tiger Club, owned by her husband. Seems her husband borrowed some money from gambler/gangster Joe Sapphire (Gregory Gaye in a nice turn as a suave charming but reluctantly lethal crook) and Joe is threatening to get a little rough.
Devery gets a friendly greeting from Joe though. He’s done Joe a few favors, mostly legal or at least only skirting the law, and Joe is a convivial type willing to help an old friend. In any case laying off Winslow is no trick because Joe assures Devery Winslow paid up only that morning.
But when Winslow turns up dead, Devery’s little talk with Joe suddenly puts Joe in the hot seat, something Joe isn’t happy about,. And who is the mysterious young woman hanging about the Tiger Club who was seen arguing with Winslow and what does she know?
Devery’s friend Inspector Henry Leggett (Cy Kendall) knows Devery will eventually find out who-dunnit, if he survives Joe Sapphire, the mysterious young woman who is fast becoming a suspect (Peggy Stewart), and of course the lady of the title the very lethal Adele Mara.
To be honest, there is no need for Spoilers here because there is no real mystery. We know Mara killed her husband and is having an affair with his partner Steven Mason (Richard Fraser). The only question is will Devery put it together in time, because when Sapphire is cleared after taking Devery and the mystery girl (who turns out of be Winslow’s daughter by an earlier marriage) on a ride the chief suspects are Mason and the girl.
Then when Mara conveniently pushes Mason from an upper office window as he starts to get cold feet about framing the girl,the evidence all seems to point to Phyllis Carrington (Stewart) and the police have no choice but to arrest her.
Leaving Devery only one chance, to seduce Mara into taking a trip with him, ostensibly his delayed fishing trip, get her on a train, lower her guard, and get her to confess to the two murders when she tries to kill him.
Yup, it even has murder, attempted anyway, on a train.
And I appreciated Devery isn’t attracted to or interested in Stewart’s younger woman. He knows she is innocent and intends to protect her, but Mara is much more his type and he knows it. It’s a nice touch since it would have been so easy to have him fall for Stewart and be a bit more sympathetic, but instead he stays in character.
Granted that isn’t the most original plot ever, or even the smartest one, but I judge a movie by its ability to pull off that sort of thing so that you don’t think about it during the film and let it ruin things, and on that level the movie succeeds. You want to see what happens on the train between Richmond and Mara, and it may shock you that it is worth watching however contrived.
It even makes sense, because clever and lethal as Mara’s character is, she is also impulsive, driven by her passion, and like every great femme fatale overly confident of her ability to get what she wants with her body and brains from anything in pants. She is a Tiger Woman, with the strengths that suggests, but also the weaknesses.
Okay, it’s minor Sam Spade and Bridget or Philip Marlowe and Velma, but for a moderate budget Republic mystery it actually works very well. Among its virtues are that it is shot well, using shadows and darkness well to add mood. It is fairly sharply written, with Richmond’s cynical private eye entirely believable {Richmond is still Richmond, at best an attractive leading man if a bit cardboard, but at least here the cardboard is a bit better made than usual), his relationship with Kendall’s cop played for laughs but never as a dumb cop joke, and everyone’s motives are explained and make sense. At least the kind of sense that real life sometimes makes only the people aren’t half so attractive and the dialogue half as good.
Of course what really makes this film work is the performance at its center by Adele Mara. Her Sharon Winslow is very much a prowling tiger killing whenever it feels threatened, ruthless, heartless, and at the same time beautiful and desirable. Mara’s Sharon Winslow may not stand up with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Claire Trevor’s Velma in Murder My Sweet, or Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, but they would certainly recognize her as a member in good standing of the club. Her bite is far worse than her lethal purr, her claws fatal to any man who falls under them.
It is Mara, and surprisingly Richmond, who mostly lift this above itself. Certainly her more than him, but if he didn’t handle his own well as a smart tough slightly mercenary private eye more in the Spade or Michael Shayne mode than Philip Marlowe Mara would have no one to play off of. His slight cardboard quality lets her shine but is still attractive enough that you aren’t surprised she is attracted to him. He manages to convey toughness with his brains and not his brawn or his gun.
You believe he could outwit her, only just, but still outwit her.
This is much better than most private eye fare from this period and from a relatively low budget (slightly better than a B, but not quite an A). A good cast, a terrific central role by Mara, and good work all around by cast and crew make it worth catching.
Just watch out, because Adele Mara’s Sharon Winslow has claws.
It’s taken a while to figure out the new WordPress editor, but with a couple of workarounds to compensate for their mostly expletive deleted system, I’m now able to add both images and videos to the posts on this blog again. In fact, please go back and revisit all of the posts following the short hiatus of a week or so back. You’ll see them all in a brand new light.
Another problem solved but not yet implemented is the matter of images missing from pre-transition posts. Some people see them. Others don’t. They are still there, but in some haphazard Internet manner, your browser may not recognize them. The solution is easy but time-consuming. I have to go into HTML mode for the posts with problems, and add a jpg extension to the code for the image. Easy, as I say, but not the most fun in the world.
