ELIZABETH BEAR & SARAH MONETTE “Boojum.†Short story. First appeared in Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Nightshade Books, 2008). Reprinted in three “Best of Year†anthologies edited by Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell; by Gardner Dozois; and by Rich Horton. Also reprinted in Cosmic Corsairs, edited by Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio (Baen, 2020).
Nothing says “space opera†more than pirates in space, and that’s exactly what this story’s about. What’s somewhat unique (though perhaps not entirely) is that the pirates’ ship is a living organism, a boojum, a spacefaring vessel they have named the Lavinia Whateley. She is described as “a vast spiny lionfish to the earth-adapted eye. Her sides were lined with gasbags filled with hydrogen; her vanes and wings furled tight. Her color was a blue-green so dark it seemed a glossy black unless the light struck it; her hide was impregnated with symbiotic algae.”
What is likely to be even more unique is that when the crew has finished plundering their latest prey, Vinnie finishes it off, hull, engines and all, by, um, eating it. Part of their loot in their latest score are some cylindrical metal containers containing human brains. Captain Song laughs it off, but Black Alice Bradley, a junior grade engineer, is not so sure about it. She is right.
The cylinders were a shipment intended for the Mi-Go, and they want what they paid for. The Mi-Go come “from the outer rim of the Solar System, the black cold hurtling rocks of the Öpik-Oort Cloud. Like the Boojums, they could swim between the stars.” Black Alice likens them to “the pseudoroaches of Venus … with too many legs, and horrible stiff wings.”
Black Alice likes living in Vinnie, and hopes someday Vinnie will respond in kind. Luckily she is on the outside of the ship on a repair mission when the Mi-Go show up … but you will have to read anything more than this on your own. This is as far as I go.
I think that Black Alice, who is the primary protagonist in this one, could be played in a TV show based on it by the young lady who stars in Poker Face, which I reviewed on this blog a while back. She’s a most sympathetic figure, in a definitely non-conformist way.
Other than the action that’s packed into this one, well, I assume you all recognized the Lewis Carroll reference. But what about the Livinia Whately(from The Dunwich Horror) and the Mi-Go (aka the Fungi from Yuggoth)? This gives the tale a whole new dimension, most certainly so.
PATRICK HAMILTON – Midnight Bell. Hardcover, UK, 1929. Little Brown, US, hardcover, 1930. Included in the 3-in-1 trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (Constable, UK, hardcover, 1935); republished by Vintage, 1998.
Fact and fiction. Where’s the line? Even your dreams are drawn from your life. Your life drawn from your dreams. They seep into one another. Like liquor in a cake. Sweet and bitter. As the case may be.
Patrick Hamilton, drawn from his life with little camouflage, pulls a draught, a drought, for the tolling of the Midnight Bell. ’Tis the name of a bar. The bar he tends. His name is Bob.
Bob falls for a young, pretty prostitute. Frail. And fallen. And he could save her. Maybe.
He feels like he’s slumming. Like he’s bound for much greater glories. A great author to be. But he feels for Jenny, the wayward waif. She’s got an innocence that belies her life. Her life is a lie that lays beneath her virtue: an innocence that cannot be spoilt. And innocence and purity that none of her Johns can plunder. That only he can see.
He has saved 80 pounds. By the hardest. And he asks her to go away with him. To flee, with him, this drudgery. ‘The glazed blue eyes of a carefree kleptomaniac.’
And she agrees. My Bob, she says. My Bob, come to save me.
She, thru the tried and true method of exchanging her bearing on every other meeting from warmth to coldness, she succeeds in extracting every last pound from ‘her Bob’. And leaves him flat. Preying on his prayers. Squeezing every last droplet of blood money from his innocence, his adoration, and his love.
She was ‘born to toil but did not toil….for that reason bold, lazy, ruthless, and insensitive: that they were women of the street.’
‘Possibly one of the peculiarly depressing situations in the world is this: to be a waiter who has once had eighty pounds, to have fallen incontinently in love with a blue-eyed young prostitute of twenty-one, to have arranged to meet her at Victoria so as to go away on a holiday with her, to have waited for an hour for her without result, to have decided to get wildly drunk, to have succeeded, to have had every penny of the last of your money stolen….to have been got to bed by the charity of another prostitute….and, finally, to wake up, trembling with cold, in a doss house, at the black bitter hour of half-past five, and slowly divine that all this has occurred.’
‘Were there any lower circles, he wondered, to which he might descent in hell?’
PATRICK HAMILTON – Hangover Square. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1941. Random House, US, hardcover, 1942. Film: TCF, 1945 (scw: Barre Lyndon; dir: John Brahm).
Patrick Hamilton would have his revenge. At least in dreams. In Hangover Square.
Here he calls himself Bone. George Harvey Bone.
Bone is in love. With Netta Longdon. Yet another wayward waif. Warm and cold. With greed.
‘Netta. The tangled net of her hair-the dark net-the brunette. The net in which he was caught-netted. Nettles. The wicked poison-nettles from which had been brewed the potion which was in his blood. Stinging nettles. She stung and wounded him with words from her red mouth. Nets. Fishing-nets. Mermaid’s nets. Bewitchment. Syrens — the unearthly beauty of the sea. Nets. Nest. To nestle. To nestle against her. Rest. Breast. In her net. Netta. You could go on like that for ever-all the way back to London.’
But while George Harvey Bone is ordinarily too soft, too British, to proper and repressed to dole out the punishment Netta deserves for her deceit, there is another George Harvey Bone. For Bone has broken into two. A psychotic break of which his proper personality is unaware. Except for the click of the switch.
‘Snap…Click! — just like that…
‘He was walking along the front at Brighton, in the sombre early dawn, in the deep blue cloudy not-quite-night, and it had happened again…
‘Click!…It was as though his head were a five-shilling Kodak camera, and someone had switched over the little trigger which makes the exposure. He knew the sensation so well, yet he never failed to marvel at its oddity.
‘Like a camera. But instead of an exposure having been made the opposite had happened — an inclosure — a shutting down, a locking in. A moment before his head, his brain, were out in the world, seeing, hearing, sensing objects directly; now they were enclosed behind glass (like Crown jewels, like Victorian wax fruit), behind a film — the film of the camera, perhaps, to continue the photographic analogy-a film behind which all things and people moved eerily, without colour, vivacity or meaning, grimly, puppet-like, without motive or conscious volition of the own…’
In his periods of psychotic trance he moves ineluctably, intractably, towards the single minded purpose that he must kill Netta. Kill her and escape to Maidenhead, pastoral land of his childhood, on a rowboat with his sister, in the warmth of the sun. And braying sheep. At Maidenhead he’ll be safe. But first, he must kill Netta.
So what we see thru the course of the novel is Netta jerking Bone around, yanking his chain when she needs money, insinuating her love, then coldly casting him aside when she gets it. Which only serves to deepen his adoration, his affliction — and his psychotic break.
Midnight Bell is a well-drawn slice of life. Reminiscent of Barfly. But serves best as an aperitif for Hangover Square.
Hangover Square is a terrific novel. One of the best I know. And what elevates the thing to a level with Simenon’s Stain in the Snow and Bataille’s Blue of Noon is its confluence with the rise of fascism in Europe. While George Harvey Bone is losing himself to psychosis, the threat of war is at hand. The climax of Hangover Square coordinates with the German invasion of Poland.
Violent eclipse was coming home. Schindler’s List ends with the quote: ‘Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.’ For George Harvey Bone, it’s the reverse.
EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Sumatra. Sam Durell #38. Fawcett Gold Medal M3139, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1974.
I continue to be amazed at the geographic background Aarons was able to include in all of his CIA agent Sam Durell novels – the sights and sounds of each of the locations the stories take place in. It is possible, of course, that I’m always fooled – I’ve been in, for all practical purposes, none of them– but they all seem real to me, and if I am fooled, that Aarons was faking it all the while by going to library and taking out a huge stack of books, it’s in good way, and I don’t mind at all.
There’s lots of local atmosphere in this one, which takes place, obviously, in Sumatra, where a Southeast Asia diplomatic conference is going on, and Sam’s assignment is to make sure the good Communist leader of one country is not assassinated and replaced by a body double while en route by a bad Communist leader of that country.
Assisting him, and definitely against his wishes, as he prefers to work alone, is a girl named Lydia (blonde and beautiful) who is a trained assassin herself. What follows is a non-stop tale of twists and turns, captures and narrow escapes and deadly double- crosses, from beginning to end.
There’s no need to go into them all. Either you will want to read this book without knowing anything more about it than this, or you’ve already read it and you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Option C, that you aren’t interested in books like this, we won’t even bring up.
It is too bad that the Aarons estate has been so difficult to track down. Several publishers specializing in reprinting old vintage tough guy novels such as this are very very interested. On the other hand, the books were extremely popular, back in the day, and for readers, used copies are still extremely easy to find.
POSTSCRIPT: I forgot to say that the conclusion of this one is as tough and hard-boiled an ending as any that I’ve read in a long, long time.
ERNEST HILL – Pity About Earth. Ace Double H-566; 1st printing, 1968. Published back to back with Space Chantey, by R. A. Lafferty, reviewed here. Cover art by Kelly Freas.
In a future more than 30,000 years from now, man has lost his place in the universe, to the machines that have taken away even his humanity. The Publisher controls all forms of communication: TV, tapes, and papers that sell only advertising space.
Archexecutive Shale represents mankind’s loss of feeling and does not know what it means to care. The hybrid half-ape Marylin he befriends is more human than he. The scientific laboratory’s experiments on living humans are something worse than black comedy. Is this any way to run a universe?
Marylin takes the role of Publisher and initiates the slow process of restoring to man the illusion he controls [his existence]. Not very subtle, but tending to be both fascinating and dull.
Rating: ***½
— May 1968.
Bibliographic Update: Ernest Hill was a British SF writer whose other two novels were published only in the UK: The G. C. Radiation (1971) and The Quark Invasion (1978). Of several dozen short stories, most if not all also appear to have been published only in the UK, many for New Worlds SF.
Intro: Those of you who have been following this blog for almost as long as I have must be wondering what happened to Walker Martin’s annual PulpCon / PulpFest report. He’s missed only one since the tradition began, and that was my fault. I was too busy with personal matters to get it up and running that year, and it appeared on Sai Shankar’s PulpFlakes blog instead.
This year, though, Walker did attend but managed to catch Covid while there, and while he’s doing much better now, it took him a while to recover, and he never did manage to write up a report. As you may have surmised, “Martin Walker,†whose report follows, is a pseudonym, but I can guarantee the facts he relates are 100% accurate. Bill Lampkin, whose photos I used is real, however, and I thank both him and our anonymous reporter for this year’s annual PulpFest report, at last!
*****
2023 PulpFest Convention Report, by Martin Walker.
Except for the year 2020, there has been a summertime pulp convention since 1972. First, it was Pulpcon, running through 2008. Next came PulpFest, beginning in 2009 and running straight through this year (except for that year lost to COVID).
PulpFest 2023 got underway early on Wednesday evening, August 2, when the convention’s chairperson, Jack Cullers, opened the dealers’ room at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry for vendors to set up for the convention. Many PulpFest dealers took advantage of this early setup to load in their wares and socialize with friends whom they see but once, twice, or thrice each year.
According to PulpFest’s marketing and programming director, Mike Chomko, the DoubleTree staff went above and beyond to have the hotel’s exhibition hall ready and waiting for the convention’s dealers. He recommends that all PulpFest vendors take advantage of the convention’s early set-up hours to prepare their exhibits for the convention’s official opening the next day.
PulpFest 2023 officially got underway on Thursday morning, August 3, with the arrival of more dealers for unloading and setup. Early-bird shopping began around 9 a.m. and continued until 4:45 p.m. Most dealers reported brisk sales following the official opening of the convention.
One of the highlights of the dealers’ room was the initial offering from the extensive holdings of longtime collector Everard P. Digges LaTouche. Ed Hulse, editor and publisher of Blood ’n’ Thunder, had several long-boxes of Digges’ pulps for sale, with many rarities among his stacks. Other dealers with substantial pulp offerings included Adventure House, Ray Walsh’s Archives Book Shop, Books from the Crypt, Jack Cullers, Doug Ellis & Deb Fulton, Heartwood Books & Art, Paul Herman, Mark Hickman, John McMahan, Peter Macuga, Phil Nelson, Steranko, Sheila Vanderbeek, and Todd & Ross Warren. You could also find original artwork offered by Doug Ellis & Deb Fulton, George Hagenauer, Jackie Pollen, Craig Poole, and others.
With nearly 80 dealers registered for PulpFest 2023, the dealers’ room was a sell-out. And the exhibitors on hand didn’t disappoint. In addition to pulps and original artwork, you could find digests, vintage paperbacks, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, first-edition hardcovers, genre fiction, series books, Big Little Books, B-movies, vintage television shows, movie serials, Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and pulp-related comic books, and more.
Additionally, one could find contemporary creations including artwork, new fiction, and fanzines produced by The Burroughs Bibliophiles, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Flinch! Books, Doug Klauba, Craig McDonald, Will Murray, Stark House, Steeger Books, Joab Stieglitz, Michael Tierney, Anthony Tollin, Mark Wheatley, and others.
The third annual PulpFest Pizza Party followed the closure of the dealers’ room at 5 p.m. Over fifty pizzas were baked for the convention’s members, thanks to the generosity of PulpFest’s dealers. Since it was started in 2021, the annual pizza gathering has become a very popular fixture at PulpFest. The convention’s advertising director, Bill Lampkin, promises more pizzas in the years to come.
Following opening remarks by chairman Cullers, the convention’s admirable programming line-up began with a salute to the centennial of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Edgar Rice Burroughs founded the corporation in 1923.
Joining ERB’s Director of Publishing, Christopher Paul Carey, and Vice President of Operations, Cathy Mann Wilbanks, were authors Chris Adams, Win Scott Eckert, and Will Murray to discuss their upcoming Burroughs-inspired books.
Morgan Holmes — who has been called the world’s greatest expert on sword and sorcery — was up next with a look at sword and sorcery in Weird Tales. Also on hand was Chris Kalb, creator of “The Spider Returns†website. Joining him were award-winning authors Will Murray and Gary Phillips to talk about “The Master of Men†on the occasion of the character’s 90th anniversary.
Jim Beard followed the Spider presentation with a look at Conan, “The Multimedia Barbarian,†while old-time-radio expert Karl Schadow, closed out the programming with a discussion of Weird Tales on radio.
Despite a long day of buying and selling and an evening packed with programming, many conventioneers gathered in the hotel lounge to talk and reminisce about their favorite authors, cover artists, and pulp characters long into the night.
Following the FarmerCon XVIII presentation was a discussion of jungle fiction in the pulps, featuring Henry G. Franke III — editor of The Burroughs Bulletin — and Ed Hulse — editor of Blood ’n’ Thunder. The presentation was part of the 2023 ERBFest, another “convention within a convention†that’s held at PulpFest. An art show — hosted by Franke — was also part of this year’s ERBFest. It featured original comic strip art, paperback and limited edition hardcover artwork, and much more. Taking place in the early afternoon hours, the show was very well attended and garnered a good many compliments.
After the dinner break came more evening programming, beginning with a look at PulpFest 2024, presented by committee members Cullers and Chomko. Afterward, Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle — co-editors of “The Men’s Adventure Library†— offered a look at “Those Weird Men’s Adventure Magazines,†an exploration of supernatural stories and creature features that found their way into the men’s magazines of the late twentieth century.
Up next, a trio of contemporary artists — Mark Schultz and Mark Wheatley, with Don Simpson moderating — discussed illustrating Conan for the commercial market, part of the convention’s salute to the character’s 90th anniversary. Pulp art expert David Saunders followed with a look at fantasy and adventure artist J. Allen St. John, best known for illustrating the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Finishing up PulpFest’s salute to the centennial of Weird Tales was a panel featuring Darrell Schweitzer and John Betancourt. Writers and editors, both men helped to revive the magazine in 1988. Since then, Weird Taleshas, more or less, been published continuously. Moderating the panel was Tony Davis.
Closing out Friday night’s programming was Nicholas Parisi — author of Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination — with a discussion of “The Sports Stories of Rod Serling.†Afterward, for those not ready to turn in, a “Barsoomian Bull Session†followed in the hotel’s lounge area.
On Saturday, August 5, the dealers’ room opened yet again at 9 a.m. and brisk business continued. All told, nearly 400 people passed through the entrance to the PulpFest 2023 dealers’ room where they were tempted by 150 tables filled with thousands of pulp magazines, digests, vintage paperbacks, original art, and more.
Once again, the “Inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs†art show was open for viewing during the early afternoon hours. Afterward, Christopher Paul Carey, Henry G. Franke III, and Garyn Roberts paid tribute to “100 Years of The Moon Maid.†The first segment of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ trilogy was originally serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1923.
Closing out the afternoon programming was “Doc Savage and His Offspring,†a panel presentation featuring writers Win Scott Eckert, Craig McDonald, Will Murray, and Gary Phillips. Moderated by Jennifer DiGiacomo — the former publisher of The Savage Society of Bronze — the panel explored the work of the writers, all inspired by Lester Dent’s “Man of Bronze.â€
Saturday’s evening programming began with journalist and pulp historian Michelle Nolan discussing the first sports pulp — Sport Story Magazine — with pulp collector Alex Daoundakis. Published by Street & Smith, Sport Story Magazinedebuted 100 years ago in 1923.
Following the convention’s final programming presentation, Walker Martin — who has attended every Pulpcon/PulpFest since the very first one in 1972 — announced the winner of the 2023 Munsey Award. Recognizing an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community — be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy — this year’s Munsey was awarded to Richard Bleiler, a bibliographer and researcher in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and adventure fiction. You can read the full text of Richard’s acceptance speech on the PulpFest website.
Closing out the evening was the convention’s Saturday night auction. It featured about 90 lots from the estate of Vermont collector Carl Joecks, over 80 lots consigned by Dearly Departed Books of Alliance, Ohio, and more than 100 lots submitted by PulpFest 2023 members.
The highlights of the auction included the first eight volumes of the Tom Corbett juvenile series, a trio of early edition hardcovers by Robert A. Heinlein, the first authorized American edition of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, nine early edition hardcovers by E. E. “Doc†Smith, thirties issues of The Shadow Magazine and Weird Tales, the December 1939 Marvel Tales, a large lot of fanzines and related materials, and a set of Shadow paperbacks in very fine condition. Overshadowing all of the lots was a very scarce ink stamp pulp premium from “The Shadow Club.†Originally offered through The Shadow Magazinefrom April 1, 1934, to the end of August 1934, the stamp sold for $750.
Nearly $12,000 exchanged hands during the auction. Afterward, those with change still in their pockets retired to the hotel lounge for a late-night session of “Fraternizing at FarmerCon.â€
Although the convention opened once again on Sunday, August 6, buying and selling opportunities were limited as dealers packed up and prepared for the drive home. Unfortunately, a number of attendees contracted COVID during the convention. Thankfully, most cases were relatively mild.
PulpFest 2024 will take place August 1 – 4 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. The convention will be celebrating “Spice, Spies, Shaw, and More†in 2024. You can learn more by visiting pulpfest.com. I hope to see you there.
BLACK SADDLE “Client Meade.†NBC, Four Star Productions. 17 January 1959 (Season One, Episode Two). Peter Breck (Clay Culhane), Russell Johnson (Marshal Gib Scott), Anna Lisa (Nora Travers). Guest Cast: Clu Gulager (Andy Meade), Ned Glass. Director: Roger Kay. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).
The premise of this TV western series that ran for two seasons, the first for NBC, the second on ABC (*) was that when gunslinger Clay Culhane quit his gunslingers ways he turned instead to practicing law. There was more to his backstory than this, but all that was presumably covered in the first episode of season one. This is the second.
Not yet having watched the first episode, I do not know the significance of his black saddle. Other than a carry over from his more wayward way of making a living, perhaps there was none. And of course even though he is now a lawyer, there are times when his guns are needed.
Clay’s client in this one is Andy Meade (Clu Gulager), a drifter who is handy with a gun who is followed into town by three men with vengeance is their eyes toward him, but when the oldest confronts him, the man dies. A witness could verify that it was self defense, and he does at first, but when it comes time for a hearing, frightened for his family, he changes his testimony.
This is the crux of the story, but for a tale that’s 30 minutes long, including time for commercials, there is a lot more action to come, including a break from jail, another shootout, and a recanting of the changed testimony, which comes too late for everyone to survive.
As for the players, I hesitate to suggest this, but I think Clu Gulager had more onscreen charisma than Peter Brock and Russell Johnson combined (none), but maybe that’s just me. Anna Lisa, as the woman behind the front desk of the hotel, had little to do in this one.
What this is, overall, as “adult†westerns on TV at the time so often were – and there surely were a lot of time – is a short little morality play. Don’t tell lies, and let the law be the guide. Done, and done, and most neatly so.
(*) Thanks to Mike Doran and his Comment #1 for the correction on this.
Captain Roadstrun and his crew decide not to return ti Earth immediately after the war ends. Thus begins a wild, woolly and sometimes wonderful parody of the Odyssey. All the important episodes are evident, though coming out strangely different through Lafferty’s eyes and brain.
Nero Wolfe on Page and (Small U.S.) Screen: Three Witnessess
by Matthew R. Bradley
Rex Stout published one Nero Wolfe novel every year from 1946 (The Silent Speaker) to ’66 (Death of Doxy), and often a collection as well; the 1954 crop included, respectively, The Black Mountainand Three Men Out. Each novella first appeared in The American Magazine under a different title: “Invitation to Murder†(as “Will to Murder,†August 1953), “The Zero Clue†(as “Scared to Death,†December 1953), and “This Won’t Kill You†(as, oddly, “This Will Kill You,†September 1952). In “Invitation,†Archie lures Wolfe out of the house while trying to determine which of three women aspire to marry a wealthy widower in a wheelchair, and may have made him one with ptomaine poisoning.
“The Zero Clue†concerns the murder of a probability expert and former math professor, Leo Heller, whose penchant for complex formulae strongly recalls F.O. Savarese of And Be a Villain (1948). Justifying the collection’s sabermetric title, “This Won’t Kill You†opens with the unlikely spectacle of Wolfe acceding to the request by house guest Pierre Mondor — one of Les Quinze Maîtres, introduced in Too Many Cooks (1938) — to attend a baseball game at the Polo Grounds. The murder of a player, and drugging of four others, costs the Giants the seventh and deciding World Series contest against the Red Sox, with Wolfe hired by part-owner and oil millionaire Emil Chisholm, already deeply in his debt.
A pivotal entry, The Black Mountain builds on the events of Over My Dead Body (1940), and opens as Wolfe visits the morgue to see his boyhood friend Marko Vukcic, owner of Rusterman’s Restaurant, shot outside his home on East 54th Street. Widow Carla Britton (formerly Lovchen), Wolfe’s adopted daughter, believes agents of Belgrade or Moscow killed him for supporting rebels in their homeland of Montenegro (the Black Mountain), now part of Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia. Sending weapons is against U.S. law, so her disappearance provokes a return visit from G-man Stahl, and after learning of her death in Montenegro from Paolo Telesio in Bari, Italy, Wolfe says he requires a passport.
As we follow them to London (where Ethelbert Hitchcock is now Geoffrey), Rome, and across the Adriatic, Archie notes, “The basic setup between [us] was upset,†making him rely on Wolfe, as he knows the turf blindfolded, speaks eight languages, and translates as he can. Marko’s nephew, Danilo, is paid by both Titoists and Russians while guarding an arms cache for the Spirit of the Black Mountain, who may harbor a spy; in an old Roman fort, Archie avenges Carla, shooting Moscow’s Albanian puppets as they torture Marko’s killer, Peter Zov. In an impressive con job, Wolfe persuades his superior, Gospo Stritar, that they should bring him back to America for “safetyâ€â€¦then turns him over to Cramer.
In Before Midnight(1955), Wolfe is hired to find out not who shot Louis Dahlmann, but who took the answers in a million-dollar perfume contest from his body. The novellas in Three Witnesses(1956) also premiered in The American Magazine: “The Next Witness†(as “The Last Witness,†May 1955), “When a Man Murders…†(May 1954), and “Die Like a Dog†(as “The Body in the Hall,†December 1954). “When a Man Murders…†introduces Tim Evarts, described as the Hotel Churchill’s “first assistant security officer, not to be called a house dick,†in Before Midnight; we also learn that “Only two assistant district attorneys rate corner rooms, and [ADA Irving] Mandelbaum wasn’t one of them.â€
In “The Next Witness,†Archie sees him “perform in a courtroom†for the first time as he tries to convict theatrical producer Leonard Ashe for strangling stage-struck Marie Willis and questions employer Clyde Bagby, the president of answering service Bagby Answers Ink.
She reportedly refused to perform a “special service†eavesdropping on Ashe’s wife, ex-actress Robina Keane, and intended to warn her idol; subpoenaed to testify, Wolfe had turned down Ashe, who says he was summoned to Bagby’s office by an anonymous call, arriving to find her dead. On deck after Bagby, Wolfe risks a fine by taking Archie there to prevent a “justicial transgression†by refuting Mandelbaum’s thesis and clearing Ashe.
Wolfe seeks to question employees Helen Weltz — now off-duty — Alice Hart, and Bella Velardi, but new receptionist Pearl Fleming was not working there then. Alice, like Lily Rowan, owns a Van Gogh, allegedly bought with her savings; Bella claims she makes her race-track bets on behalf of friends, while Helen has a Jaguar and may have been Marie’s rival for the affections of Guy Unger. Bearding Helen in her Westchester summer rental, and now officially AWOL, they find Guy with her, but although Wolfe is convinced that the quartet is concealing something, Helen refuses to unload in the presence of Guy, who offers a retainer for undefined investigative services, and they head for Saul’s apartment.
Spotting Purley on his way in, they detour first to defense attorney Jimmy Donovan, who won’t get Wolfe in to see Ashe, and then to Keane, who will; Helen agrees to meet Wolfe chez Saul, the site of “friendly and ferocious poker†on Saturday nights, escorted there by Archie from Grand Central.
Cut to the courtroom the next morning when Wolfe takes the stand — placed under arrest and threat of a contempt charge by Judge Corbett. Questioned by Mandelbaum, he says Ashe tried to hire him to learn Marie’s identity and propose the eavesdropping, and relates their conversation just one hour ago, noting that an answering service could be a goldmine for a blackmailer, before he is cross-examined by Donovan.
“As a witness for the prosecution, with a warrant out for my arrest, I was in a difficult situation,†but this stratagem allows Wolfe to get “information which cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt…before the court and the jury…†He concluded that the suspiciously well-off operators had colluded in an eavesdropping conspiracy — as Helen confirmed — with Guy and Bagby, and that Marie became a threat when she’d refused their orders to accept Ashe’s proposal. Wolfe fingers Bagby as the killer; Corbett dismisses the charge of contempt; Ashe shows his appreciation with “a handsome check,†despite not being a formal client; and the case is solved in a narrative set completely outside the brownstone.
“Die Like a Dog†finds Archie trying to return a raincoat to Richard Meegan, who took his by mistake after Wolfe declined to take on a marital case, but arriving at his building, Archie sees Purley on the way in (again) and a black Labrador retriever that follows him, fetching his wind-blown hat. He mischievously brings “Nero†home, perhaps forgetting the rage displayed by Wolfe — who says he had a dog as a boy — at the injustice to Nobby from In the Best Families (1950). Archie’s call to trace his tag number elicits a visit from Cramer, revealing that owner Philip Kampf was strangled in that building, also occupied by lawyer Victor Talento, painter Ross Chaffee, and night-club performer Jerome Aland.
Arguing that Archie is obliged to see to his welfare, Wolfe refuses to let Cramer take Jet (as he calls him), whose leash was the murder weapon, to Arbor Street to see which door he goes to; to resolve the situation by solving the murder, he sends Archie back with the raincoat. Seeing Talento leaving, Archie tips him off that he’s being tailed by the police, and agrees to make excuses to singer Jewel Jones at their rendezvous in exchange for his pledge to see Wolfe the next morning.
She comes immediately, and is recognized by the dog (real name: Bootsy), having formerly lived in what is now Meegan’s apartment and been intimate with Kampf, but says they had no quarrel, and Talento is merely her friend.
Wolfe consents to Cramer’s experiment with dog expert Sgt. Loftus, provided Archie is present; Aland credits Bootsy’s dislike to a misunderstanding at a party chez Kampf, and Meegan claims never to have seen him, while Talento and especially Chaffee seem to be on good terms with Bootsy.
Willfully assumed to be a cop, Archie questions Aland, who got his job through Jewel, and Pittsburgh commercial photographer Meegan, who sought his estranged wife, Margaret Ryan. After seeing her depicted in Chaffee’s Three Young Mares at Pasture, he took the now-vacant apartment in the hope of locating her, since he disbelieved Chaffee’s claim that he couldn’t remember her among his numerous models.
On a hunch, Archie infiltrates the home of Chaffee’s frequent buyer Herman Braunstein, photographs the painting — which he’d recently lent to the Pittsburgh Art Institute — and confirms that Jewel is Mrs. Meegan.
Brought to the brownstone, she says she feared for her life due to Dick’s jealousy, and when Wolfe summons the tenants, the rest of whom concealed knowledge of her from Meegan, Cramer and Purley crash the party. Bootsy, it transpires, had followed not Archie but the coat, in reality Kampf’s; having inadvertently switched coats not once but twice, Meegan strangled Kampf (who’d threatened to expose Jewel if she did not resume their relationship), and unwittingly put Archie’s coat on him.
The second season of A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery included the consecutive episodes “The Next Witness†(4/21/02) and “Die Like a Dog†(4/28/02), both directed by repertory player James Tolkan and adapted by the redoubtable Sharon Elizabeth Doyle. Shown internationally in a double-length version, “The Next Witness†upgrades Mandelbaum (Wayne Best) to D.A. and — unlike the novella— includes Cramer (Bill Smitrovich), who gleefully serves Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and Archie (Timothy Hutton) personally. They arrive two hours late, eliciting sarcasm from Corbett (Beau Starr); the “Smelly Woman†(Carolyn Taylor) beside Wolfe, applying perfume, is the straw breaking the camel’s back.
Bagby (Boyd Banks) circumvents labor-law restrictions by having his operators provide their 24-hour service while living and working in the same apartment, so Pearl (Kathryn Zenna) takes a board while Wolfe questions Alice (Nicky Guadagni) and Bella (Christine Brubaker) in their rooms. In Katonah, he notes that Helen (Francie Swift) is “on the edge of hysteria,†and as he confers privately with Guy (Richard Waugh), she breaks down in tears walking with Archie.
The latter declines to call Donovan (Robert Bockstael) — who as a sworn officer of the court would have to serve the warrants — and after leaving Keane (Rebecca Jenkins), they head for Saul (Conrad Dunn) with no sign of Purley (R.D. Reid).
Doyle depicts the start of the meeting at which he shares his theories with Ashe (David Schurmann), merely related in the novella on the stand. Under Donovan’s cross-examination, as Wolfe begins to unfold the story of the blackmail operation that included Marie (Brittney Banks) and was run by Alice, Archie’s timely warning to the guard stops her, Bella, and Guy from making a beeline to the exit once they realize that the jig is up…
Interestingly, while director Tolkan doubles as Loftus in “Die Like a Dog,†the episodes shared no repertory players (so defined, if you’re curious, as those appearing in three or more adaptations), who filled all other roles except the policeman played by Robbie Rox, also seen in “Cop Killer†(8/11/02).
As usual, Doyle dramatizes events just alluded to by Stout, e.g., Meegan (Bill MacDonald) grabbing the raincoat while leaving in a huff; when Archie returns, she retains his mention of Fritz’s turtle and Theodore’s parakeets, perhaps for the only time in the canon. Seeing Bootsy/Ebony/Inky/Jet/Nero (Jessie and Guinness) while announcing dinner, Fritz (Colin Fox) wryly asks, “Is the animal dining with you?â€
Kari Matchett — whose roles range from Wolfe’s adopted daughter to Archie’s recurring romantic interest, Lily Rowan — is properly seductive as Jewel, intercepted on behalf of Talento (Alex Poch-Goldin). After the experiment with Chaffee (Steve Cumyn), Aland (Julian Richings), and the others fails, Wolfe explains that Bootsy showed no interest in the spot where Kampf was found because he was clad in, first, Meegan’s coat, and then Archie’s.
Leaving the dog in care of a cabbie (Angelo Tsarouchas), Archie risks letting the tenants assume he is a cop, having been arrested for the same stunt in Prisoner’s Base (1952) by Lt. Rowcliff, aptly also played by MacDonald (suitably abrasive as Meegan).
In Wolfe’s office, the terrified Jewel says that Kampf “had to go see Dick again anyway, because Dick had gone off with his raincoat. Phil thought it was funny that Dick had his raincoat and he had Dick’s wife. I’ll bet that’s just what he told you, hunh?…that I was coming back to him, and he thought that was a good trade — a raincoat for a wife.†The novella, if not the episode, ends with the implication that Bootsy, who “responds to Jet now,†will remain in residence at the brownstone. But I will not be surprised if, like the aforementioned alleged pets or Felix’s “beloved†parrot in the Odd Couple episode “It’s All Over Now, Baby Bird†(12/3/70), Albert, he will never be seen or heard about again.
GIL BREWER – The Red Scarf. Crest 310; paperback reprint, July 1959; cover art by Robert McGinnis. Hardcover: Mystery House, 1958. Stark House, paperback, 2-in-1 edition with A Killer Is Loose, June 2018. First published in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1955 (probably abridged).
Roy Nichols has a dream. A mediocre dream, maybe. But it’s his. To run a motel with his wife, who he adores. He’s got the motel. And he’s got the wife. The problem is, the motel is in the red, and the bank’s gonna foreclose if he can’t come up with a lump sum quick.
So Roy visits his rich brother. Who turns him down. I’m doing it for you, he says. Wouldn’t want to hurt your pride by giving you the money. Plus, it’s bad for you to be beholden to anybody. Best thing is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps — stop relying on other people to bail you out.
So that’s that. No money. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s gonna do now. Except lose the hotel, and his dreams, and disappoint his wife who deserves better. Who deserves the world.
He decides to hitchhike home to save what little money he has left.
There’s a Bonnie & Clyde looking couple at the greasy spoon, and he flirts with the sexy Bonnie and gloms himself a ride. Then they crash and there’s a briefcase. With all the money you’d ever need. Plenty to pay off the bank and much besides.
But the money ain’t free and clear. It’s mob money. And hot.
The Clyde-looking guy looks asdead as a crash test dummy, so our protagonist and the Bonnie-looking lass make a run for it. To help her get away, she promises half the money. And all of her body. And he accepts. Lustily.
He hides her out in a room in his motel. And the mob shows up.
Roy Nichols is such an asshole it’s hard to root for him. He says he loves his wife, and she is clearly devoted to him, and beautiful. Yet he’s a complete douchebag, sleeping with whatever the cat dragged in and lying about it. If he reminds me of anybody, maybe it’s William H. Macy in Fargo. He’s a greedy wimp. He’s hard to root for.
So when the mob comes to town you figure he’ll finally wake up and get the cops involved. But no. Not Roy Nichols! He’s going to outsmart the mob, pay off his bank loan, and things are gonna be milk and honey from here on out.
Except the mob isn’t nearly as stupid as Roy Nichols thinks. And neither is his wife.
He’s a loser who keeps on losing. You don’t like him enough to care if he succeeds. You don’t hate him enough to care if he fails. So, at the end of the day, I just didn’t care what happened one way or the other.
You’ve heard of love/hate relationships. With Gil Brewer I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve got more of a somewhat-appreciate/hate relationship with him. A Killer Is Looseand 13 French Street are quite successful in their way. Kind of perverted John D. MacDonald/Jim Thompson standalones. Which is high praise.
But Brewer’s always got a creepy vibe. His protagonists are all lecherous. Even when they think they’re being stand-up guys, every woman they see, they want. And not in an upfront Mike Hammer way. More in a side-eyed repressive lust that takes whatever’s there, and wants whatever isn’t. Vulturous. Sepulcherous. Whatever carrion it can carry away.
It just leaves me standing there. Mouth agape. Rubber-necking. Shaking my head in disgust.
PHILIP R. CRAIG – Death on a Vineyard Beach. J. W. Jackson #7. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1996. Avon, paperback, 1997.
This is a series I’ve quit a couple of times because of stupid plots. Oh, well …
J. W. and his nurse ladylove Zee finally get married, and are no sooner hitched than a rich old man with a shady background who lives on the island wants J. W. to look into an attempt on his life; one that J. W. had serendipitously foiled on their Boston honeymoon. Now Zee is reluctantly taking handgun lessons, and hoping she won’t need them …
First, let me say that I liked this better than any of this series I can remember. There was no plot foolishness, no cowboy action, and remarkably little violence; just a decent story with believable characters.
There’s a bit of Robert Parker in Craig’s writing. He likes to describe meal preparation in some detail, and some of the dialogue between Jackson and Zee is a bit reminiscent of the earlier, less egregious Spenser/ Susan relationship.
I never had any Problems with Craig’s prose, and I still don’t. His first-person narration is well-paced, and he gives a good feel for Martha’s Vineyard without going overboard. Craig finally wrote the kind of book I like to read. Took him long enough, though.
— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #26, July 1996.
