ALAN DEAN FOSTER – The End of the Matter. Pip & Flinx #4.Del Ray, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1977. Cover art by Darrell Sweet. Multiple later printings.

   In this, the fourth adventure in a long-running series (18 novels and a handful of short stories), the orphaned young man nicknamed Flinx continues his search for his parents – or, well, just his father now; although she is now dead, he has learned who his mother was in the book immediately preceding this one. Pip, by the way, is a minidrag (flying snake) who accompanies him, wrapped around his neck, wherever he goes.

   And since Flinx has his own spaceship (!), he can go wherever a casual hint suggests he go, even with members of a cult of black-clad assassins hard on his trail. Along the way he picks up other companions, some of whom do not survive. One that does is a blue four-eyed, four-armed, four-legged alien who speaks only gibberish in verse.

   There is more at stake than finding Flinx’s father, though. A whole section of the known universe is at risk of being swallowed up by a rogue collapsar, unless Flinx and his friends can avoid his enemies long enough to find the ancient weapon, now lost, that can stop it.

   I don’t think I will spoil anything by telling you that that is exactly what they do, with enough knowledge of theoretical astrophysics on their side, The fun is getting there, in good old-fashioned Edgar Rice Burroughs style, mixed with more than a dash of Edmond Hamilton, in his early “world wrecker” days.

   This is pure out-and-out space opera, in other words, but written in a wholly literate fashion by an author who knows what adventure is all about, when you have the whole universe at your disposal to set your stories in.

   As usual, the three novellas in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe collection Triple Jeopardy (1952) had all first appeared in The American Magazine: “Home to Roost” (as “Nero Wolfe and the Communist Killer,” January 1952), “The Cop-Killer” (as “The Cop Killer,” February 1951), and “The Squirt and the Monkey” (as “See No Evil,” August 1951).

   In “Home to Roost,” Wolfe investigates the murder of Arthur Rackell, whose aunt, Pauline, states that he “was acting for the FBI when he joined the Communist party,” which Archie’s former G2 colleague Agent Wengert neither confirms nor denies. He immediately alerts Cramer, and Purley tells Archie, “this one has got stingers. Lay off”…so Wolfe takes on the case.

   Pauline is revealed as a secret Communist herself, who believed Arthur’s lie — intended to satisfy her façade of criticism for his leftist behavior — and killed him as an imminent threat. Wolfe calls Communists “enemies of this country,” yet adds here, “I deplore the current tendency to accuse people of pro-communism irresponsibly and unjustly…”

   As Stout’s biographer, John J. McAleer, noted, “By this time McCarthyism had brewed such tensions that even [critic and editor] Anthony Boucher said aloud he wished Wolfe would find another adversary. Boucher’s protest confirmed Rex’s belief that McCarthy helped Communism by making anti-Communism seem reactionary” (as quoted on Wikipedia).

   â€œThe Squirt and the Monkey” is set in the comic-strip milieu with the syndicated Dazzle Dan, created by Harry Koven and drawn by Pete Jordan and Byram Hildebrand. All are suspects — along with Harry’s wife, Marcelle, and agent/manager, Patricia Lowell — when his friend Adrian Getz (aka the Squirt) is killed; the only witness is Adrian’s pet monkey, Rookaloo, found in his cage clutching the murder weapon… Archie’s stolen pistol! Stout, with characteristic insouciance, conflates the names of Henry H. Barber and his successor as Wolfe’s lawyer, Nathaniel Parker, into Henry George Parker, who is asked to bring an action against Koven for $1 million after his lies lead Cramer to suspend Wolfe’s license.

   Carl and Tina Vardas, from Joel Fickler’s Goldenrod Barber Shop, entered this country illegally after escaping a Russian concentration camp, and have since feared detection; it seems to be at hand as plainclothes Det. Jacob Wallen questions the staff about the night before.

   They make a beeline for advice from favored customer Archie (who says he was born in Chillicothe, Ohio), but when he makes a recon, Purley Stebbins tells him Wallen was stabbed there with scissors, so one of them is “The Cop-Killer.” What led him to the shop from a stolen car that killed two women in a hit and run is not known, and all he had with him was that day’s early News, while the fugitives swear they never learned to drive.

   Suspects include barbers Ed Graboff (Archie’s), Jimmie Kirk (Wolfe’s), Philip Toracco, and Tom Yerkes, manicurist Janet Stahl, and Fickler; Archie and Wolfe tell, respectively, Purley and — when his curiosity compels him to stop by — Cramer that the Vardases are in their front room, knowing the truth will be dismissed as a joke.

   After learning that Janet has been hurt, Archie is summoned back, locking them in for their own safety, in spite of Carl’s impulsive attack in an effort to escape. Knocked out under the noses of the police, Janet will talk only to Archie, claiming improbably that Purley struck her, but he thinks she knows something, if unaware of its significance, and the killer sought to silence her.

   Wolfe arrives, ostensibly for a haircut, proposing to Cramer that “we see if we can settle this business” as he sits in the chair with the suspects assembled; he posits that whatever Wallen found in the car was folded in the paper, and is still there somewhere. As it turns out, Wolfe will need a new barber because the incriminating object, a two-week-old Time magazine hidden in plain sight after the murder, bears the shop’s subscription address. In Jimmie’s pocket when the chronic car-thief committed his crime while drunk, it was left behind unnoticed, which sent Waller to the shop, and with the Vardases cleared, Archie suggests calling in a favor from General Carpenter to work out their immigration status.

   A second-season episode of A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery, “Cop Killer” (8/11/02) was the first of two directed by John R. Pepper, and the only entry adapted by Jennifer Salt. The daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt, an Oscar-winner for Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978), she had been an actress in the former and in Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972), and as Eunice Tate on Soap. After an opening montage of frantic activity at the shop, cleverly scored with the overture to Gioachino Rossini’s opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816), we see Wallen (Doug Lennox) arrive, then segue to Tina (Nicky Guadagni) and Carl (Hrant Alianak) petitioning Archie (Timothy Hutton).

   With Fritz (Colin Fox) away from the house, Archie instructs Tina to bring beer — but not open it — if Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) should buzz while he is at the shop, assuring Purley (R.D. Reid) that he is only there for a shave. John Berrie (who succeeded Derek Rogers as cinematographer that season) often tilts his camera off-kilter, which along with quick cuts and high-angle shots produces a vertiginous effect, while the flashbacks are stylized with desaturated colors. In the chair, Archie reflects on Philip (Robbie Rox), who’d lost two sons in the war; Fickler (Ken Kramer), once attacked by his ex-wife; Jimmie (Boyd Banks), whom he accuses of stealing supplies; and race-track debtor Ed (James Tolkan).

   The over-dramatic Janet (Kari Matchett) seeks a show-business career, and Archie wisely writes off her initial story of stabbing Wallen after an attempted rape as, well, flummery. He returns as the Vardases dine with Wolfe, who “must have felt the distant rumblings of human sympathy” due to crimes by “Stalin’s puppets in Yugoslavia,” interpolated by Salt from The Black Mountain (1954). Bill Smitrovich beautifully plays Cramer’s indecision as he is challenged by Wolfe to look in the kitchen, used “to keep the murderers in,” but decides not to risk looking silly; Hitler and Stalin “told barefaced lies to have it taken for the truth, and we tell barefaced truth to have them take it for a lie,” Archie assures them.

   Janet, we learn in the climax, had seen Jimmie with a hot towel and the magazine, which she joked that he had been steaming when he tossed it on the table, prompting his earlier assault on her and a frantic dive in the novella that is foiled by Cramer, Purley, et alia. In the episode, Wolfe orders Jimmie to stop cutting his hair and give him a shave, seemingly playing cat and mouse and goading Jimmie into an abortive attempt to cut his throat. Salt has Archie make his suggestion not privately but at a dinner with the overjoyed Vardases, where we hear Wolfe’s side of the conversation as he commends “two exemplary people, who would make very significant additions to the citizenry of this country” to Carpenter.

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: Prisoner’s Base

Edition cited: Triple Jeopardy: Bantam (1957)

Online source:

THE DARK CORNER. 20th Century Fox, 1946. Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, Clifton Webb, William Bendix, Kurt Kreuger, Cathy Downs, Reed Hadley, Constance Collier, Eddie Heywood. Directed by Henry Hathaway. Currently available on YouTube. (See below.)

   PI Brad Galt has a problem. Ge has a past that includes a stretch in a California prison for manslaughter – a crime he was framed for by a former partner, a romeo who specializes in blackmail om th side. They’re both in New York now, the fur about to fly.

   Galt also has a good-looking secretary who believes in him, but who intends to wait for a wedding ring before fooling around. Stevens looks too soft to be believable to be a tough private eye, but Lucille Ball is delectable. She could work in my office any time.

WALT & LEIGH RICHMOND – The Lost Millennium. Ace Double H-19, paperback original; 1st printing, 1967. Published back-to-back with The Road to the Rim, by A. Bertram Chandler (reviewed here). Reprinted as Siva! (Ace, paperback, May 1969.

   Shades of Velikovsky! (And to be sure, there he is, on page 18.) An archaeologist tells an engineer, about to complete construction of a solar tap, the story of how a previous civilization had developed the same technology and destroyed the Earth, or Atalama, of that time. Explained in the course of the story are most of the bases of Judaism, Hinduism, and mythologies from around the world, complete with present-day flying saucers.

   The scientific background would satisfy Analog‘s standards, but its heresy would prohibit its publication even there. There is no story; only a means for presenting a theory. In this form, however, it only makes it harder for serious work to be proposed, if any. A garbled mess. And what are the transposers, first introduced on page 93? Who are the mysterious people returning to Earth? What is going on?

Rating:  *

HENRY KANE “The Case of the Murdered Madame.” PI Peter Chambers, Lead story in the collection of the same name: Avon #646, paperback original, 1955. Reprint edition: Signet D2646, paperback, May 1965.

   Both Henry Kane, the author, and Peter Chambers, his most well-known private eye detective character, came onto the scene at the same time, in 1947, first with a handful of stories for Esquire magazine, then a hardcover novel, A Halo for Nobody, from Simon & Schuster. I haven’t followed Kane’s career well enough to state this as more than a working hypothesis, but based only on the scanty evidence I have so far, Peter Chambers’ early adventures seem to combine as well as anyone hard-boiled PI mystery fiction with the older-fashioned traditional detective novel, complete with clues, alibis, and the like.

   Take “The Case of the Murdered Madame,” for example. While not a locked room mystery or an impossible crime in any sense, it is a case in which a murder takes place in a house where there are only a limited number of suspects, each with a common motive – that is to say, the theft of $100,000 in cash the dead woman has made abundantly known to the other tenants of the rooming house catering to theatrical folk living there.

   Peter Chambers’ job: find out who did it.

   The fact that it was a dark rainy night comes into play in twofold fashion, first in terms of limiting the number of suspects, then secondly in providing Chambers with the clue he needs to name the killer.

   The story is too short to provide much in the way of characterization, but the sheer rhythm of Kane’s prose, almost unique in the annals of detective fiction, is a pure plus that adds considerably to the enjoyment of this short but snappy tale.

PostScript: The Avon paperback of the same title appears to have been the first appearance of this story. What caught me by surprise in reading the Signet reprint was that there is no contents page, and therefore no suggestion ahead of time that the book is a collection of three stories, the other two, also cases cracked by Peter Chambers, those two both first appearing in the pages of Manhunt magazine.

   In any case, though, while reading the story, I was thinking it was a novel, and here Peter Chambers was, summing the case up against the killer, and I’m only a third of he way into the book. What’s going on, I thought. What kind of twist is this?

THOMAS B. DEWEY – Only on Tuesdays. Pete Schofield #8. Dell 6680, paperback original, 1964.

   In addition to the “Mac” series, Dewey also created another private eye, Los Angeles-based Pete Schofield, for a series of paperback originals in the Fifties and early Sixties. The Schofield novels are much lighter in tone, much sexier (as sexy as paperback mysteries could get in that era, anyhow), and lacking the depth and quality of the Mac novels.

   Schofield, who is married to a sultry lady named Jeannie (married private eyes never seem to work out well in fiction), is something of a bumbler and spends as much time trying to crawl into the sack with Jeannie as he does solving crimes. But things keep happening to prevent his connubial bliss — telephone calls, people showing up at highly inopportune moments, squabbles, battle wounds, and various other interventions.

   Dewey’s technical skill and sense of humor make this sort of thing work: The Schofield books are exactly what they were intended to be-pleasant light reading — and no more.

   Only on Tuesdays, perhaps the best of the series, begins when Pete comes home after a hard day and finds an unemployed actor holding a gun on Jeannie; he also finds. not irrelevantly, a new addition to the family (a dachshund, Hildy) hidden away in the bedroom closet.

   It ends with a frantic sailboat race to Catalina Island and another confrontation in the Schofield domicile, this time with a murderer. In between he encounters a missing wife, a wealthy yachtsman named Conway, some highly compromising photographs, and of course plenty of murder and mayhem. The sailing scenes are genuinely exciting and suspenseful, and the byplay between Pete and Jeannie, which in some of the other books becomes a bit tedious, is restrained and amusing.

   All the Schoficlds are worth reading; along with Only on Tuesdays, the best of them are Go to Sleep, Jeannie (1959), Too Hot for Hawaii (1960), and The Girl with the Sweet Plump Knees (1963).

         ———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

      The Pete Schofield series —

1. And Where She Stops (1957)
2. Go to Sleep, Jeanie (1959)
3. Too Hot for Hawaii (1960)
4. The Golden Hooligan (1961)
5. Go, Honey Lou (1962)
6. The Girl with the Sweet Plump Knees (1963)
7. The Girl in the Punchbowl (1964)
8. Only On Tuesdays (1964)
9. Nude in Nevada (1965)

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN. Universal Pictures, 1940. Virginia Bruce,John Barrymore, John Howard, Charlie Ruggles, Oscar Homolka. Directed by A. Edward Sutherland.

   More a low-key screwball comedy than a horror feature, The Invisible Woman is a genial, albeit rather forgettable affair. Released in 1940, seven years after James Whale’s The Invisible Man, the film has a light tone that makes it breezy fun, but not much more than that. Based on a story co-written by Kurt Siodmak (The Wolf Man) and directed by A. Edward Sutherland, the movie does what it is supposed to; namely, provide an hour plus of escapist entertainment.

   When oddball Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) puts an advertisement in the paper for someone wanting to become invisible, he gets more than he bargained for when working girl Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce) shows up. Sassy and strong-willed, she’s determined to use her newfound ability to torment her sexist and demanding boss. While the invisible Carroll gets caught up in a love-hate relationship with playboy millionaire Richard Russell (John Howard), the zany professor is targeted by a gangster (Oscar Homolka) who wants the invisibility machine so he can safely return from his Mexican exile and visit the home country.

   The special effects, by today’s standards, are really nothing special. Truth be told, even for a 1940 feature, there’s nothing particularly impressive doing on in this realm. Director James Whale certainly did it all better years before in the original entry into the Invisible Man series.

   Still, there are some laughs to be had in this comedy. Did I mention Charles Ruggles plays a bumbling butler, devoted – at least financially – to Russell? I guess I would see this one again with a crowd, should the opportunity arise. But to watch it again on VHS? Probably not.

PHILIP CARLTON WILLIAMS – Mission Bay Murder. Michael Thompson #1. PaperJacks, Canada, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1988.

   A lawyer for a California defense attorney intercepts a confidential memo that makes him suspicions. He takes it to a lady PI he finds in the phone book. She investigates.When her car is run off a bridge, somehow the police seem to suspect him of her murder.

   This may be the worst mystery I have ever read. It is either written for dull teenagers or for illiterates who have never read a mystery before. The hero is supposed to be a lawyer, but I think he has to have someone help him on with his shoes every morning.

      The Michael Thompson series —

Mission Bay Murder (PaperJacks, 1988)
The Tartan Murders (PaperJacks, 1989)

Note: The two books were reprinted later on in a combined 2-for-1 edition (1990). See image above.

   This trailer for Critters (1986) doesn’t do the film justice. It’s a lot funnier, livelier, and creative than what you see in this video clip. Rather than just a straightforward sci-fi/horror film, Critters is a cult favorite.

   And understandably so. You’ve got some great characters, a good rural Kansas setting, and a sense of humor and fun that ramps up the laughter. I recently had a chance to see a sold-out screening at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema and the crowd loved it. I did too.

SHORT CUT TO HELL. Paramount Pictures, 1957. Robert Ivers, Georgann Johnson (debut of both), William Bishop, Jacques Aubuchon, Murvyn Vye. Screenplay by Ted Berkman and Rafael Blau, based on the screenplay by W. R. Burnett for This Gun For Hire (1942) and the novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene. Directed by James Cagney.

   With apologies to film critic Bosley Crowther, Short Cut to Hell certainly is.

   James Cagney’s debut as a director, and his only film as one, is a mess by any measure, not the least the absolute failure of this two stars making their less than stellar debut in two of the least charismatic screen performances imaginable.

   Watching this it is hard to believe the legendary Cagney who worked with some of the finest directors in Hollywood like Wellman, Walsh, and Curtiz, could have picked up so little or produced so pedestrian a film, pedestrian being a compliment because this often looks like a bad half hour episodic television cop show of the era.

   Whatever Graham Greene thought of the original 1942 version of his novel A Gun for Sale, filmed under its American title This Gun For Hire, there was no denying the extraordinary appeal of its cast: Alan Ladd as the emotionally and physically scarred gun man Raven, Veronica Lake as Ellen, a sexy smart young singer/magician caught up in Raven’s mission, Laird Cregar as the effete double crossing club owner who hires Raven and then betrays him, and Robert Preston as Ellen’s policeman boy friend.

   In that version, the plot moved from London to LA, and Raven changed from a man scarred by a cleft lip to one with a twisted wrist, Raven kills to cover up a crime for Cregar’s character who then betrays him to the police. Raven escapes swearing revenge on Cregar and whoever employs him, runs into nightclub performer Ellen on the way to LA for a job and ends up taking her hostage as she awakens his long buried humanity and sense of decency. Meanwhile Ellen’s boyfriend Robert Preston is the policeman hunting Raven, especially once he discovers Ellen is his hostage.

   That film made iconic stars of Ladd and Lake, who went on to be teamed in multiple films and was a major success for the studio.

   Not so much Short Cut to Hell.

   Here we meet Kyle (Robert Iver, changed from Raven and chosen because Chad seemed too tough sounding, I assume) who lives in a rundown hotel with his cat who he obsesses over while violently spurning the advances of the daughter of the manager (Yvette Vickers) who is attracted to and repelled by the slender slight killer.

   Kyle cold bloodedly assassinates a young engineer and his secretary who threaten to reveal a crime by his employers and meets effete Jacques Aubuchon at a small restaurant to be paid, not knowing Aubuchon plans to claim the sequential bills he has paid Kyle were stolen from him, and knowing Kyle let him shoot it out with the cops and die.

   Enter policeman William Bishop assigned to the case, whose performer girlfriend Glory (Georgann Johnson) is leaving for LA to work in a club rather than marry him.

   Kyle escapes and Kyle, Aubuchon, and Glory all end up on the train to LA where Kyle takes Glory hostage.

   From there the film pretty much follows the Greene novel and the 1942 film in terms of plot, but only in terms of plot.

   Otherwise it bears the same relationship to the classic film that Abbot and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bears to the Oscar winning Frederic March version directed by Rudolph Mate.

   Let’s start with Ivers, a wanna be James Dean type with the charisma and screen presence of unbuttered toast. Perhaps he did better in later performances, but I see no evidence of that here. What is supposed to be a smoldering killer with budding humanity beneath the ice cold mask instead looks slightly petulant and somewhat constipated as if his chewing gum lost its flavor.

   I have seldom seen a worst performance in a film from a major studio, or a less compelling one. Compared to Ivers, Alan Ladd was Olivier.

   Our other debut Georgann Johnson as Glory isn’t much better though somewhat more animated and certainly better to look at. Without the teasing peek a boo mix of playful sensuality and smoky sexuality that Lake exuded, the character of Glory just doesn’t make much sense. There is no reason for her to feel anything but fear of Iver’s Kyle, so her protection of him and aid seem perverse and a bit stupid. Minus the visible sparks that flowed on screen between Ladd and Lake, the plot doesn’t make much sense without Greene’s novelist voice to carry us through.

   No one else fares much better. William Bishop was always better cast as charming bad guys, and Jacques Aubuchon has the unenviable task of following Laird Cregar in the role of the cowardly immoral and effete bad guy , and frankly rather than a sense of menace and vague depravity, he only communicates dyspepsia and the snobbery of a punctilious head waiter at a second rate French restaurant.

   Murvyn Vye appears as Aubuchon’s sadistic chauffeur in a noirish touch, but it is so blatant and so flat that it comes across as unintended humor rather than noir. Unintended humor is pretty much the definition of this film that is often laughably off key, thanks to the performers and script.

   One dramatic scene where Kyle kills a cat to keep it from revealing his hiding place is supposed to be played for his horror and anguish at what he has done, but plays more like a Monty Python sketch gone horribly wrong.

   Painful as it is to write, James Cagney comes in for his full blame for this as well. His direction is unimaginative and pedestrian. He disdains any use of light and shadow beyond the simplest of shots, his camera is objective and cold, mostly in two shots and long shots even when extreme closeups would seem unavoidable, and he shows no sense of pace or suspense much less cinematic flair unfolding his story as static as episodic television at its most unimaginative.

   It is not surprising a man of his taste didn’t venture into the director’s chair again after this. I applaud his recognition of his limits.

   Short Cut to Hell was remade in 1979 as made for TV movie with Robert Wagner and Lou Antonio. I only hope it was better than this.

   There is a language of film, and it is always disappointing when someone you expect to know it intimately proves deaf to its rhythms and lyric style. This film is actively bad, perhaps not a bomb, but empty and devoid of any sense of style. It isn’t Ed Wood, and I am not suggesting that, but the combination of James Cagney, Graham Greene, W. R. Burnett, and a classic film should have been more than this.

   It is currently on YouTube, and I can only say if your curiosity overcomes you, watch at your own peril.