MARGARET DOODY – Aristotle Detective. Bodley Head, UK, hardcover, 1978. Harper, US, hardcover, 1980. Penguin, paperback, 1981.

   Stephanos, a young Athenian and ex-pupil .of Aristotle, is taking a morning walk when he hears cries coming from the house of a wealthy neighbor named Boutades, who is shortly thereafter discovered with an arrow in his throat. A few days later, Stephanos’ cousin Philemon, who is in exile for having killed a man in a tavern brawl, is accused of the murder.

   As Philemon’s nearest relative, Stephanos must defend him in the ancient Greek equivalent of a trial. Naturally, considering the title of the book, he goess to his old mentor for help in clearing his cousin’s name.

   An interesting and entertaining excursion into ancient Greek culture, with an intriguing mystery and a lot of information about the Athenian legal system passed painlessly and pleasantly along to the reader.

   
      The Aristotle and Stephanos series —

1. Aristotle Detective (1978)
2. Aristotle and Poetic Justice (2002)
3. Aristotle and the Secrets of Life (2003)
   aka Aristotle and the Mystery of Life
4. Poison in Athens (2004)
5. Mysteries in Eleusis (2005)
6. Aristotle and the Egyptian Murders (2010)
7. A Cloudy day in Babylon (2013)

   Short Story:

Aristotle and the Fatal Javelin (1980)

From Wikipedia: “Margaret Anne Doody (born September 21, 1939) is a Canadian author of historical detective fiction and feminist literary critic. She is professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, and helped found the PhD in Literature Program at Notre Dame, and served as its director from 2001-2007.”

THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST. Republic Pictures, 1945. John Abbott, Charles Gordon, Peggy Stewart, Grant Withers, Emmett Vogan, Adele Mara, Roy Barcroft. Loosely based on the 1819 short story “The Vampyre” by John Polidori. Director: Lesley Selander.

   Make no mistake about it. This one is a cheapie. From the very first scene, you can see that it’s filmed primarily on a sound stage. And the running time – a total of 59 minutes – also solidifies the fact that this one was a quickie. Get it made, get it released, make some money, move on to the next film.

   Despite its low-budget origins, The Vampire’s Ghost remains a rather fun little horror film. A large part of that has to do with the somewhat unusual script. Not unusual in terms of its structure – this one fits well within the confines of the traditional Hollywood screenwriting formula – but because of myriad aspects, both big and small, that make this somewhat obscure vampire film more memorable than it could have been.

   Look no further than the original story writer and co-screenwriter. It’s none other than science fiction pulp writer Leigh Brackett. Her first credited work in cinema, The Vampire’s Ghost is hardly The Big Sleep (1946), let alone Rio Bravo (1959). But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

   Here, the vampire in question isn’t an Eastern European nobleman ensconced in his castle. No. Instead, he’s an urbane expatriate Englishman living somewhere in southern Africa. What’s his profession, you ask? He runs a bar/nightclub/gambling place where sailors come to drink and try their luck at the card table. Already unusual, right? There’s definitely a noir aspect to this vampire film, as well as a western one. Who would think that what motivated a vampire to murder would be his finding out that he was cheated at cards by both a sailor and a saloon waitress?

   Unfortunately, despite the better than average plot details, The Vampire’s Ghost remains an overall talky affair with a lot of mediocre acting. There’s just not that much action, let alone special effects. But the atmospheric moments are good – if stagey – and the final sequence is definitely memorable. In a fun way. There isn’t all that much to analyze in the film. It is what it is. If you like tropical settings and have the ability to immerse yourself in a fantastic world of vampires and voodoo drums pulsing through the steamy jungle night, then you might enjoy this one. There are far worse ways of spending an hour.

DEATH IN PARADISE “Arriving in Paradise.” BBC One. 25 October 2011 (Season 1, Episode 1). Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole), Sara Martins, Danny John-Jules, Gary Carr, Lenora Crichlow, Don Warrington (Police Commissioner). Created & written by Robert Thorogood. Director: Charles Palmer.

   Switching from watching all of season eight and going back to season one required a lot of adjustment from me. The only member of the cast that is common to both is Don Warrington, the commissioner who is in charge of the police force the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. Everyone else was someone new who had to be introduced to me as the story went on.

   Not only that, but the active members of the force themselves are forced (…) to deal with the murder of their former boss, DI Charlie Hulme, who has been found dead in the locked panic room of a resident English aristocrat’s home while a party was going on. Sent from England to investigate is an uptight detective, DI Richard Poole, who is a fish out of water if there ever was one.

   He doesn’t like the heat, nor his accommodations, nor the small creatures he is forced to share them with, and he especially doesn’t like the heat. Why, then, does he travel around on the case wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie? Probably because he doesn’t intend to stay on the island any longer than he has to. Which means that he has to solve the case as soon as possible and get on a jet plane back home.

   A panic room is, according to Wikipedia, “a fortified room that is installed in a private residence or business to provide a safe shelter, or hiding place, for the inhabitants in the event of a break in, home invasion, tornado, terror attack, or other threat,” and a dead body found in one, locked from the inside, makes for quite a puzzle, and this is a good one.

   Without trying to give away too much [WARNING] this is a prime example of a tale told in which nothing is what it seems to be [END OF WARNING]. As such, even though DI Richard Poole is going to have some getting used to — and yes, no surprise, he’s going to stick around — this is an impressive beginning episode for this long running series.

W. J. BURLEY – Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery. Wycliffe #19, St Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. Published first in the UK: Gollancz, hardcover, 1993.

   This has been an “old reliable” series for me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that it’s reached #19.

   Fifteen years ago, the troubled and troublesome son of a prominent Member of Parliament went missing while on a walking holiday in Cornwall. Now a dog scratching in a dune has uncovered his body, and he proves just as troublesome dead as alive – for six local people (three mixed pairs) who spent a wild weekend 15 years ago, then for Wycliffe (who gets bashed in the head), and finally for a nosy landlord who is forcibly assisted from this vale of tears. The still-influential father of the dead youth provides Wycliffe with a matching pain in the other end of his anatomy.

   If you know Burley and Wycliffe, you know what to expect. If you don’t, you’ll find a solidly constructed plot, good Cornish background, interesting characters, and a well-told story. All these are present here, but for some reason I didn’t find the whole to be anything exceptional. I don’t think Burley can write a book I won’t enjoy – at least he hasn’t yet – but this isn’t his best.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC UPDATE: Burley was to write but one more in the series, that being Wycliffe and the House of Fear (Gollancz, 1995). There was a British TV series based in part on the books entitled Wycliffe (1993-1998) as the cover image above would indicate, but none of the episodes seem to be based on this book.

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. Hammer Films, UK, 1963. Universal International, US, 1963. Clifford Evans, Edward de Souza, Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Barry Warren. Writer: Anthony Hinds (as John Elder). Director: Don Sharp.

   Neither a Dracula film nor part of the Karnstein Trilogy (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil), The Kiss of the Vampire is a lesser- known, but thoroughly enjoyable, stand-alone vampire movie from Hammer Films. Combining the standard tropes of vampire films with atmospheric dread, the movie neither aims for cheap thrills, nor does it condescend to its audience. Much of the on-screen horror in the film is psychological rather than physical. The battles fought here are as much internal as they are external.

   The plot follows Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne Harcourt (Jennifer Daniel), a newly married couple traveling on their honeymoon. When their car breaks down somewhere in Bavaria, they are forced to stay at a local inn run by an elderly, seemingly childless couple. Within hours, they receive an invitation for dinner from one of the village’s most prominent citizens, one Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman).

   Ravna, along with his two adult children, seem to take a strong liking to the Harcourts and invite them back for a masked ball. But little does this mild-mannered English couple know that Ravna is a vampire and the leader of a demonic cult. Once Marianne gets swept up into their satanic grasp, it’s up to Gerald and the alcohol-ravaged Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans) to harness supernatural forces to (literally) beat the devil.

   While the film doesn’t tread too far off the beaten path in terms of storytelling, what it does, it does well. Indeed, it’s a film that I’ve already watched more than once, and I confess I enjoyed it even more the second time around. The masquerade sequence is exceptional. One wonders how much Roman Polanski was influenced by it, given how a masked ball plays a similarly important role in the third act of his The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Final thought: the final frame is hauntingly memorable and involves a swarm of vampire bats. Chillingly effective stuff.

NGAIO MARSH – Photo Finish. Roderick Alleyn #31. Little Brown, hardcover, 1980. Jove, paperback, 1981. Reprinted several more times.

   [Speaking of old pros still at work, as I was in my review of a recent book by Richard Lockridge], the second half of that description goes double for Ngaio Marsh’s latest work. Once again on hand to solve the mystery is her long-time leading character, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard.

   Alleyn’s first appearance, then as a Detective Inspector, was – would you believe? – in 1934. This is his and Dame Ngaio’s thirty-first collaboration together.

   And, coincidentally, the theatre has played a large part in many of their cases as well. The connection this time is not as strong as it is in the Lockridge book, but there is one here as well. The scene is a remote hideaway in New Zealand, where a famous opera singer nicknamed La Sommita has commissioned an embarrassingly bad opera to be performed, and naturally with herself in the leading role.

   Also involved is a photographer specializing. in taking extremely candid shots for the more sensationalistic newspapers. There is a bare hint of illicit drug-dealing. What the detective work depends most greatly upon, however, is the mystery that surrounds the keys to La Sommita’ s locked bedroom after she is murdered.

   Alleyn has no Watson along to bounce his theories off this time – his wife Troy having evidently long ago refused to go along with the idea – and so some of his deductions are rather abruptly announced, on what occasionally seems to be mighty little evidence.

   Marsh’s writing style lacks some of the sprightly sparkle to be found in Lockridge’s work, but the surprise she gives us at the end is greater. This is only the latest in a long series of plots designed over the yearns by the reigning Queen of Mystery to catch the unwary reader. She succeeds again.

[UPDATE.] There were to be only two more cases for Roderick Alleyn to solve, and one may or may not count:

32. Light Thickens (1982)
33. Money in the Morgue (2018) (with Stella Duffy)

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

DEAD END. Goldwyn/UA, 1937. Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrae, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor, Alan Jenkins, Marjorie Main, and the Dead End Kids. Screenplay by Lillian Hellman, from the play by Sidney Kingsley. Directed by William Wyler.

   A year after The Petrified Forest (recently reviewed here), Bogie found himself again playing a gangster on the run in a film based on a popular (and somewhat self-important) play. But in that year, he had learned how to act for the screen, and the difference is agreeable.

   Let’s dispense with the bad news first: Dead End is as pretentious and mannered as The Petrified Forest was, and even more didactic. Sylvia Sidney’s noble working woman; the insulated, uncaring rich people; the feral youths; and especially Joel McCrae as the voice of Progress… they’re all types first and characters as an afterthought. The film only flickers to anything like real life when it leaves them to check in on “Baby Face” Martin’s tragic homecoming.

   That’s Bogart, ably abetted by Alan Jenkins as his dubious stooge, and if you can wade (or fast-forward) through the other stuff, the payoff is rewarding indeed.

   First there’s Marjorie Main as Martin’s weary-unto-death mother, carrying the infamy of her notorious son like a dead baby in her womb. When they meet, we see the first chink in Martin’s tough-guy façade, and Bogie plays it splendidly, like a fighter trying not to show how bad he’s been hurt, taking his punishment and hoping to make the next round.

   When that round comes though, it’s only for Martin to find out his old girlfriend is now a hooker, and not a very classy one at that. As played by Claire Trevor in a moving cameo, her face is a mask of tragedy cast in brass. And Bogart’s face as he realizes the truth is a study in disillusion: disappointment giving way to disgust and disintegration.

   Kingsley writes a small but telling moment into this scene. Anxious to be rid of her, Bogart shoves a wad of money at Trevor, who stashes it away without counting, then asks Martin if he can spare another Twenty! The mix of need and greed in her voice evokes the character as few could, and when she caps it off by asking for one last kiss, for old time’s sake the effect is incredible.

   Director Wyler and the players do what they can with the rest, but it’s all as artificial as the massive and deliberately stagey set built for the film when Producer Sam Goldwyn refused to shoot on location. That said, it’s still worth seeing for Bogie’s bits.

   And yes, the juvenile delinquents in Dead End became stock players at Warner’s as The Dead End Kids, then elsewhere as the East Side Kids and the Little Tough Guys, before settling down at Monogram as The Bowery Boys. Which makes me wonder if Sidney Kingsley ever got any royalties for Bowery Buckaroos.

   I read Frank Herbert’s original novel when it was serialized in Analog SF, thought it was OK, but I never read any of the sequels — and who knew there were going to be so many of them? I also passed on both David Lynch’s movie adaptation(1984) and the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel mini-series.

   Those of you who may be bigger fans of the book than I am, what do think of the new movie coming out in December, based on the trailer below?

   Coming soon to Netflix, a movie remake for movie fans who don’t watch black and white movies. Beware: I think this trailer tells the whole story in only two and a half minutes:

VEXED “Episode One.” BBC Two, 60m, 15 August 2010, Toby Stephens as D.I. Jack Armstrong, Lucy Punch as D.I. Kate Bishop, Roger Griffiths. Created and written by Howard Overman, Director: Matt Lipsey.  Streaming on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Acorn TV.

   It is difficult to tell what the creators of this series had in mind that would make it stand out amidst all of the other male-female cop series that have been on the air over the past few years. Perhaps it is its light-hearted approach to crime-solving, such as stepping over the latest murder victim back and forth several times as this episode begins in order to evaluate her apartment as a possible rental.

   He (DI Jack Armstrong and the senior partner) is lazy, unorganized but is in his own inimitable way, charming. She (DI Kate Bishop) is neat, efficient and therefore totally exasperated with her new partner on the force. So of course they mix it up together like cats and dogs. Another aspect of Bishop’s role in the series is that she is worried that her husband is straying from their marriage, while Armstrong shows that he is not quite the ladies’ man he would like to pretend he is.

   This all ties in with what they discover as they tackle their current case. The three women all had loyalty cards with the same store, and someone with access to the accumulated data on their customers could find lonely women to be easily preyed upon. This also gives Armstrong the means to meet by “chance” a woman he saw in a supermarket, while Bishop uses it to spy on her husband.

   In spite of all these threads running concurrently, they don’t really mesh all that well. Both the story and the characters involved are easy enough on the eyes, however, without straining too many brain cells, and the show managed to stay on the air for two seasons, albeit with a a two year separation between them.

   Perhaps, if I give them the opportunity, the characters will grow on me as well.