RAYMOND J. HEALY & J. FRANCIS McCOMAS, Editors – Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time And Space. The Modern Library G-31; hardcover, 1957, xvi + 997 pages. First published as Adventures in Time in Space, Random House, hardcover, 1946. Bantam F3102, paperback, 1966, as Adventures in Time and Space (contains only 8 stories). Ballantine, paperback, 1975, also as Adventures in Time and Space.
ERIC FRANK RUSSELL “Symbiotica.†Novella. Jay Score #3. The title gives the clue to the relationship between the natives and the vegetation of a newly-discovered planet; the idiots sent on the expedition could never grasp anything so obvious. (0)
Update: First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1943. First reprinted in this anthology. First collected in Men, Martians and Machines (Berkley G-148, paperback, 1958). Also reprinted in The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 5, 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (Daw, paperback, 1981). This story seems has a greater reputation among others than my opinion of it. Russell himself was a very prolific SF writer. This early work doesn’t represent the bulk of his work.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN “Seeds of the Dusk.†Novelette. When Earth Is Old series #1. Luckily, very little dialogue disturbs this story of Mars’ final conquest of Earth far in the future, letting the description of the plant’s growth from spore to world-wide domination comprise the major part of the story. (4)
Update: First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1938. First reprinted in this anthology. Also reprinted in Tomorrow’s Worlds, edited by Robert Silverberg (Meredith Press, hardcover, 1969), among others. Collected in The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun (Del Rey, paperback, 1978). Gallun certainly qualifies as a “forgotten†writer today, perhaps because he wrote relatively few novels as opposed to several dozen novelettes and short stories.
LEE GREGOR “Heavy Planet.†An inhabitant of a planet with a gravity a hundred times greater than Earth’s discovers a disabled alien spaceship which will solve the problem of space travel. (3)
Update: Lee Gregor was a pen name of Milton A. Rothman. “Heavy Planet†was first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939. First reprinted in this anthology. Also reprinted in The Expert Dreamers, edited by Frederik Pohl (Doubleday, hardcover, 1962). Collected in Heavy Planet and Other Science Fiction Stories (Wildside Press, softcover, 2004). For some reason I remember more of this story than some of the others in this anthology that I’ve reported on so far.
WILL THOMAS – Lethal Pursuit. Cyrus Baker & Thomas Llewellyn #11. Minotaur Books, hardcover, November 2019; trade paperback, December 2020. Setting: England, 1892.
First Sentence: The express from Dover was still coming to a stop when Hillary Drummond leapt onto the platform.
A man is found murdered on a train newly arrived at Charing Cross Station. In his shoe is the key to a railway locker containing a satchel. It is 1892; the threat of war is in the air. Enquiry agents Barker and Llewelyn are tasked by the Prime Minister to deliver the satchel to Calais as it contains a document, an unnamed first century gospel. With the satchel sought by secret societies, political groups, and the German government, Llewelyn is perplexed by Barker’s delay in fulfilling their assignment considering it places them under repeated attack.
Rarely are prologues necessary. However, Thomas’ prologue captures and captivates one immediately with suspense, danger, intrigue, and yes, death. With the receipt of an old brass key, stamped with the letter “Q,” the characters go— “Down the rabbit hole.” One cannot help but smile at their destination, and Llewellyn’s admiration of what he sees there is understandable.
Thomas’ voice is enviable. Even during a serious scene, he makes one smile with the simplest line even when in a serious situation. It is only a part of what makes reading him such a pleasure. His dialogue is a pleasure to read— “The things you know, Thomas!” “Yes, well, the more I know, the more I know how little I know.”
Characters are Thomas’ strength. It is nice to have a series with characters who have developed over time. Still, for those who have not read the previous books, one won’t feel lost as Thomas provides well-presented introductions to the characters. Llewelyn’s wife, Rebecca, deals with the conflict of being shunned by her family for being married to a gentile. Their marriage and commitment adds a nice touch and humanness to the story— “There was still something strange about being separated from Rebecca for more than a few hours. It was like slow asphyxiation.” A scene between Llewelyn and his father-in-law is particularly well done.
Thomas conveys mood well, in this case, it is that of a man adrift. A significant change is made in the roles and responsibilities of Barker, Llewelyn, and others ensure a shift in future books.
The backdrop of Victorian England makes the plot particularly effective. The drums of war are beating in the distance, the underlying anti-Semitism, and the inclusion of an Evangelical preacher from the United States advocating eugenics. There is action and suspense, but also serious subjects which require consideration.
Lethal Pursuit maintains one’s interest from the beginning to an ending that is clever in so many ways, including the ultimate question— “Why do evil men prosper?” This is more than an average historical mystery. Thomas is an author to add to one’s list.
Rating: Very Good.
The Barker & Llewelyn series —
1. Some Danger Involved (2004)
2. To Kingdom Come (2005)
3. The Limehouse Text (2006)
4. The Hellfire Conspiracy (2007)
5. The Black Hand (2008)
6. Fatal Enquiry (2014)
7. Anatomy of Evil (2015)
8. Hell Bay (2016)
9. Old Scores (2017)
10. Blood Is Blood (2018)
11. Lethal Pursuit (2019)
12. Dance with Death (2021)
Even though I’ve been a devout Bob Dylan fan ever since I bought his first album way back in 1963, I think this version of “Highway 61 Revisited” may be even better than Dylan’s own, first released on his 1965 LP of the same title:
And in case you’d like to compare:
Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God said, “No” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’, you better run”
Well, Abe said, “Where d’you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61”
Well, Georgia Sam, he had a bloody nose
Welfare department, they wouldn’t give him no clothes
He asked poor Howard, “Where can I go?”
Howard said, “There’s only one place I know”
Sam said, “Tell me quick, man, I got to run”
Oh, Howard just pointed with his gun
And said, “That way, down Highway 61”
Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
“I got forty red-white-and-blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things?”
And Louie the King said, “Let me think for a minute, son”
Then he said, “Yes, I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61”
Now, the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right
“My complexion, ” she says, “is much too white”
He said, “Come here and step into the light”
He said, “Hmm, you’re right, let me tell the second mother this has been done”
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61
Now, the roving gambler he was very bored
Trying to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said, “I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes, I think it can be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61”
JAMES A. LAWSON “Hard Guy.†Short story. “Hard Guy†Dallas Duane #1. First published in Spicy Western Stories, March 1937. Collected in Dying Comes Hard (Black Dog Books, softcover, 2015) under the author’s real name, James P. Olsen. Introduction by James Reasoner.
“Hard Guy†Dallas Duane was an oil range troubleshooter in the 1930s, a fact that fully qualifies him as a PI. His adventures took him all over Oklahoma and Texas, often working undercover. And under the covers, too, which you will have already recognized for yourself if you saw that this first one was published in Spicy Western, a pulp magazine which took its title very very seriously.
This first of 20 adventures has Hard Guy tracking down the killer of the local county attorney, all the while beating himself up for being tricked into being in the arms of very friendly saloon singer by the name of Nancy. Then follows ten pages of non-stop action, punctuated by the stops to wonder over the pulchritudinous delights of both Nancy and another girl named Kate, both of whom look very good, even with their clothes off, and even while less frequently with them on.
Great literature this is not, as a wise man once told me, but if that wise man never read this story, I’m one up on him. I just did! And note this: the Black Dog collection collects all twenty of Hard Guy’s recorded adventures.
ANNE MORICE – Scared to Death. Tessa Chrichton #11. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1977. St. Martin’s, US, 1978. Detective Book Club 3-in-1 edition, hardcover. Bantam, US, paperback, 1986.
All but two of Anne Morice’s 25 mystery novels featured actress-amateur sleuth Tessa Chrichton and were strictly in the Golden Age of Detection traditions, albeit in solid contemporary (1970s-80s) surroundings. (You can find out a lot more about her on Curtis Evans’ blog here. He has been writing about her quite extensively lately.)
Spurred by his reviews of her books, Scared to Death was the easiest for me to find. It was one of the three books in the Detective Book Club edition on the top of the bookshelf next to me as I type this. (You cannot make up coincidences such as this.) Unfortunately, let me put it this way, maybe I should have started with another one.
This one begins as a elderly, eccentric, rich and quite controlling acquaintance of Tessa becomes strangely haunted by a doppelgänger of herself wherever she goes, and each time she sees her, her health takes another turn for the worst. No one else manages to see this double, so it is passed off as a curious fantasy on her part. Until, that is, she is completely bedridden and dies.
No one thinks more of it but Tessa, whose inquisitive nature wants to know more. The police do not take part in any of her secret undercover investigation, which involves a boatload of relatives and close friends, a will that there may or may be the current one, and a fictionalized diary the dead woman was in the process of writing.
There are a number of witty lines in the telling, but there aren’t enough of them to make up for the fact that the tale just isn’t all that interesting, nor are any of the possible suspects. The story goes from slow to slower and then even slower.
Morice’s way of hiding clues is to hide them in a disorienting mix of clouds and confusion, which is not Agatha Christie’s usual method of operation: which is to leave right out in the open and dare you to spot them, which I almost never have. Even a table that matched up names in the diary with their real-life counterparts did nothing to brighten up Tessa’s explanation of how she solved the case.
The end may prove worthy of the journey, but overall quite the disappointment, then. Your opinion may vary.
GOODBYE PARADISE. Australia, 1982. Ray Barrett, Robyn Nevin, Guy Doleman, Lex Marinos, Paul Chubb, Janet Scrivener, and Carole Skinner. Written by Bob Ellis and Denny Lawrence. Directed by Carl Schultz. Released on DVD in Australia (Region 0.)
Okay, drop what you’re doing, put down your book, stop watching whatever’s on TV and go out and find this. Watch it. Then watch it again. It’s that good.
What follows is a gaudy Technicolor echo of THE BIG SLEEP, THE GLASS KEY, FAREWELL MY LOVELY and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, with touches of BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN tossed in. And it works. Beautifully. Schultz’s graceful camera work is backed up by Ellis’ and Lawrence’s Chandleresque voice-over narration, read by Barrett with a wry shrug in his voice:
Even better is the sense of feeling Schultz and his actors evoke. When Barrett meets up with an old friend or an ex-lover (as he does about every ten minutes) one gets the impression that they really care for each other, and the effect is to draw us even closer to the character and his goofball style.
Schultz & co even extend this to the bad guys. Barrett finds an old buddy getting rich as a Hefner-style guru, bullshitting teenagers for a living, and the look he gives his old friend speaks a mega-series. Third-billed Guy Doleman turns up about two-thirds of the way through as a punctilious military type, and when his ramrod spine bends for a moment in reminiscence, the character achieves dimensions that make his later misdeeds somehow even more depraved.
Throw in an icy doctor-for-hire, a few greedy politicians and brutal cops, some young space-cadets and a tour-guide pornographer and you have a cast as diverse and exotic as a Russian novel.
And let me spoil one big surprise here. No, I’m not going to throw in a (SPOILER ALERT!) because this is too good not to share. There’s a moment here where a helpful suspect tells Barrett to come back tomorrow for a vital piece of evidence. And when Barrett does come back tomorrow, the helpful suspect is STILL ALIVE!
TUCKER COE – Don’t Lie to Me. Mitch Tobin #5. Random House, hardcover, 1972. Charter, paperback, [date?]. Five Star, hardcover, 2001.
“Tucker Coe” is one of several pseudonyms used by Donald E. Westlake. And Mitchell Tobin, the narrator of Don’t Lie to Me and of four other novels published under the Coe name, is in many ways Westlake’s most fascinating creation.
Tobin is an ex-New York City cop who was thrown off the force in disgrace when his partner was shot down while covering for him: Tobin at the time was in bed with a woman named Linda Campbell, another man’s wife. Unable to reconcile his guilt, Tobin has withdrawn to the point where little matters in his life except the high wall he is building in the back yard of his Queens home – a continuing project that symbolizes his self-imposed prison and isolation. His forgiving wife Kate and his teen-age son are unable to penetrate those internal walls: no one can, it seems.
Occasionally, however, someone from his past or his present manages to persuade him to do this or that “simple” job, thus creating circumstances which force Tobin to utilize his detective’s training. The combined result of these cases, as critic Francis M. Nevins has noted, is that Tobin “builds up a store of therapeutic experiences from which he slowly comes to realize that he is not unique in his isolation and guilt, and slowly begins to accept himself and return to the real world.”
Don’t Lie to Meis the last of the five Tobin novels, the final stage of his mental rehabilitation. He has been given a private investigator’s license and is working as a night watchman in Manhattan’s Museum of American Graphic Art, and before long Linda Campbell, his former lover, about whom he has ambivalent feelings, reappears in his life. Tobin then discovers the naked body of an unidentified murder victim in one of the museum rooms. Further complications include pressure from hostile cops and from a group of small-time hoodlums with a grudge against Tobin.
Against his will, he is forced to pursue his own investigation into the murder and eventually to reconcile his feeling, toward Linda Campbell – and toward himself. The ending is violent, powerful, ironic, and appropriate.
The other four Tobin novels are Kinds of Love. Kinds of Death (1966), Murder Among Children (1968), Wax Apple (1970), and A Jade in Aries (1971). It is tempting to say that more Tobin novels would have been welcome, but this is not really the case. Westlake said everything there is to say about Mitch Tobin in these live books, what amounts to a perfect quintology; any additional novels would have seem contrived to capitalize on an established series character.
(1) MACK REYNOLDS – The Rival Rigelians. #3 in his “United Planets” series. Paperback original, 1967. A shorter novella version entitled “Adaptation†appeared in Analog SF, August 1960. Published separately by Wildside Press, trade paperback, July 2020.
A political lecture in fictionalized form. A team of eighteen is sent to Rigel’s two planets having been given fifty years to bring the abandoned colonies here back to civilization and eventual union with the Galactic Commonwealth. They split into two forces to settle their argument over the optimal plan of action, capitalism or communism.
This might be a valid premise for a story, except (page 25) Earth has had world government for some time, implying that some political wisdom must have been gained since the present time. The local leaders even realize this and unite to force their unwanted visitors to depart in favor of proper ambassadors.
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,†and Reynolds pulls every trick in the book to make this obvious. He needn’t have tried so hard. The faults of current political systems are obvious enough, without the lecture.
Rating: 2½ stars
Comment: From the online Science Fiction Encyclopedia: “The United Planets Organization [worked] in the cause of socioeconomic progress in the often-eccentric Ultima Thule colony worlds of a Galactic Empire.”
Ex-empress Irene and the crew of her ship Wanderer enter the Alternate Universe of the Rim Confederacy after being pursued through the Horsehead Nebula. Their cargo consists of two dozen (somehow later twenty-six) Iralian embassy personnel. But the Iralians are capable of transmitting knowledge by heredity and hence are extremely desirable as slaves.
Thus begins a tale of chase and fast action, but the plot becomes more and more tangled up in itself and fails to be resolved by an ending which comes from nowhere. Possibly OK if read as an adventure story only, but what a waste of undeveloped ideas!
Rating: 2 stars
Comment: Once Irene and her crew pass through the Horsehead Nebula they meet Chandler’s major series character, John Grimes. This is the last Irene story. It was preceded by Empress of Outer Space (1965) and Space Mercenaries (1965).
PANIC IN THE CITY. Feature Film Corp. of America, 1968. Howard Duff, Linda Cristal, Stephen McNally, Nehemiah Persoff, Anne Jeffreys, Dennis Hopper. Director: Eddie Davis.
Just because a movie isn’t good, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be interesting. Case in point: Panic in the City, a late 1960s Cold War thriller that you’ve probably never heard of, let alone seen. By all normal standards, it’s not a particularly well-crafted film. The plot, in which a federal agent tracks down a rogue Eastern Bloc agent aiming to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles, is essentially something that could just have been done better in an episode of Mission: Impossible. As for the cinematic quality of the film, it is practically non-existent. Indeed, the movie really feels more like a made-for-TV pilot episode of a mid-tier detective show than something one would pay to see in a theater.
What makes the movie worth a look, however, are a couple things. First, there are two performances in the film that stand out. Although he is only in the movie for less than thirty minutes, Dennis Hopper has a memorable turn as Goff, a thug for hire. He’s signed up to work for rogue communist agent August Best (Nehemiah Persoff) and engages in murder for hire job before the tables are turned and he is himself murdered. The late 1960s, of course, would be a turning point in Hopper’s career. For much of the 1950s and early 1960s, Hopper was primarily a guest star or supporting actor in television shows. All that would change in 1969 – one year after Panic in the City – with the release of Easy Rider (1969).
As for the aforementioned Persoff, his role in this film is, like nearly all of his performances, acutely memorable. A student of Elia Kazan, discussed here, Persoff never achieved the fame of many of his contemporaries and never really became a leading man. Nevertheless, he had many roles in both television and film. For those interested, you can view part of his performance as a mob boss in an episode of Hawaii Five-O, one that also features John Ritter, here.
Another aspect of Panic in the City that makes it a bit more interesting than would be expected is that (SPOILER ALERT!!) the lead character, federal agent Dave Pomeroy (Howard Duff) dies at the end. In a nuclear blast no less. There is no optimistic Hollywood ending here. Just a death in a mushroom cloud and a lonely woman walking the streets alone. You can watch the entire film here, with ads unfortunately.
HUGH PENTECOST – Death After Breakfast. Pierre Chambrun #13. Dell / Scene of the Crime #6, paperback, 1980. Previously published in hardcover by Dodd Mead, 1978.
I’m sure that everyone with an interest in paperbacks at all has seen this new series of Murder Ink/Scene of the Crime mysteries from Dell. Chosen by the respective proprietresses of two of the country’s first specialized mystery bookshops, so far the series has emphasized detective novels of a recent vintage over Golden Age reprints. Even so, there have been a few of the latter included among the ones I have received so far, notably Anthony Berkeley’s The Poisoned Chocolates Case and A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery.
Of the others I’m familiar with, those which are reprints of recent hardcover mysteries, there seems to have been a noticeable attempt on the part of their authors to add a sizeable amount of characterization to their work – and in some cases, like The Brandenburg Hotel, by Pauline Glen Winslow, and McGarr and the Sienese Conspiracy, by Bartholomew Gill, this seems to have been done at the expense of the plot, unfortunately.
This one is a Scene of the Crime selection, and I missed it when it came out in hardcover. What else can I say? Everyone should read a Pierre Chambrun novel sometime, but other than that there seems to be no reason at all why anyone would want to read more than one.
Even when he turns up missing, as he does in the first half of this one, the Hotel Beaumont (of which he is the manager) might go on running as smoothly as ever for a while, but that’s only another measure of how completely his personality dominates the scene.
In his absence, the nymphomaniac chairwoman of the Cancer Fund Ball is found brutally murdered in her room, and a bomb threat is taken very seriously.
Pentecost is, if nothing else, always smooth and easy to read. The greatest handicap he faces in continuing the Chambrun series, of which there are a great number already, is the enormous effort and amount of maneuvering required to get all the principals in his coolly-calculated melodramas together under one roof, even one as large as the Beaumont’s.
Rating: C
–Very slightly revised from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 1981.
UPDATE: There were in all 22 in the Chambrun series, the last being Murder Goes Round and Round (1988).
