June 2024


Reviewed by TONY BAER:

   

DENNIS LEHANE – Gone Baby Gone. Patrick Kenzie & Angie Gennaro #4. William Morrow, hardcover, 1998; paperback, 1999. Reprinted several times since. Film: 2007, with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan.

   Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are Boston PI’s.

   They get hired to try to find a missing child. The child’s mother is a wastrel, a waste, heavy drug using, sexed up, alcoholic piece of used jet trash. And neglectful to boot, constantly leaving her young child untended, sunburned at the beach, or left to rot in front of the television. Yet she wants the child back.

   Turns out the kidnapping is part of a much deeper conspiracy, and the mother was a drug mule who absconded with a couple hundred thousand dollars from some guys you better not mess with.

   And the deeper Kenzie and Gennaro dive into things, the deeper the conspiracy goes.

   The book is much longer than is my wont, clocking in at over 400 pages. But it came in #9 on the Thrilling Detective poll of the top 14 PI novels of all time — so that put it in my TBR.

   It was alright. Compelling enough to keep me flipping the pages. But it doesn’t, to my mind, rank that high as a PI novel. It’s fine for a marginally disturbing beach read. But that’s about it.

   Then again, I’m quite biased in favor of mid-century PI novels. I feel like something of the immediacy of the language, terseness, to the point-ness, joltiness, briskness, tightness, has been lost somewhere between the mid-century and now.

   I can’t quite put my finger on it. But our language has become flaccid. It’s certainly not a problem unique to Lehane — he’s better than most. I feel like it infects/inflects most of our contemporary use of language.

   And I’m no exception.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

   

LUCAS WEBB – Eli’s Road. Doubleday, hardcover, 1971. Popular Library, paperback, no date stated.

   I recently went back to a used book store to buy the copy of Green Ice they’ve had there for years, and got distracted once again. This time by a novel called Eli’s Road,  by Lucas Webb.

   Considering the quality of this thing, I’m surprised Webb and his novel aren’t better-known. It starts off a bit awkward, but soon gets the reader involved in a first person narrative spanning ante-bellum Kansas to 1880s Wyoming.

   Webb does a remarkable job of keeping his narrator believable from the time he writes as a callow teen-ager till he ends up in stoic middle-age, quite a feat of style, and the story: Bloody Kansas, rogue mountain men, orphan girls, pro-slavers, store-keepers, abolitionists, border ruffians, emigrants, freed slaves… and the mysterious Brother Frank.

   Seek it out.

— Reprinted from The Hound of Dr. Johnson #34, September 2004.

JACK WILLIAMSON – Bright New Universe. Ace G-641, paperback original, 1967. Cover art by John Schoenherr. Collected in Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction Pioneer (Hafner Press, hardcover, 2004).

   Idealism is confronted with reality, as Adam Cave meets opposition, then disappointment, as he rejects the material comfort which could be his on Earth. The Moon is the site of Project Lifeline, aimed at sending signals to space, seeking other life in the universe. He does not know contact has been made, with his own father, believed dead, and organized opposition has already been created,

   His conflict is with those who feel change is always destructive, and indeed with white racists who know their values cannot withstand the shock if the alien culture as it overwhelms Earth’s. The symbol of his triumph is a small Negro boy who now has the power of a transgalactic civilization at his fingertips.

   There is a message here, and it is obvious. […] The characters are symbols and little more. It comes as a shock to realize how crude the writing style is, as compared to a craftsman such as [for example] mystery writer Ross Macdonald. There are the ideas, though. Williamson meant for better things, but [this time around], he doesn’t succeed.

— July 1968.

   It’s just not been my year. Thankfully this latest thing doesn’t affect the blog, at least not directly. It seems as though Cox, my Internet provider, has decided to go out of the email business and has shut down all of their customers’ email accounts. The good news is that they have made arrangements with Yahoo (you’ve heard of them) to take over all of their previous email business. They promise a smooth transition.

   Me, I’ve heard people tell me that before. Combine this with back-to-back afternoons of previously scheduled medical appointments, and you’ll have to excuse me for closing down the blog again for a few days while I tackle all this. It shouldn’t be longer than that, but as past experience tells me, who knows.

Reviewed by TONY BAER:

   

B. TRAVEN – The Bridge in the Jungle. Serialized in Vorwärts in 1927 (in German) and published in an extended book form in 1929. Knopf, 1st US edition, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted several times. Originally written as a short story and intended to be the title piece of Traven’s short story collection The Collected Works of B. Traven: The Bridge in the Jungle.  Available online at the Internet Archive website. Film: United Artists, 1971.

   Told in the first person, our American narrator is hunting alligators in the Mexican jungles. Makeshift native settlements dot the river banks. In one such settlement, our narrator runs into an acquaintance of his, another gringo named ‘Sleigh’ who has married into the community. He decides to stay for a couple of nights.

   There is a pump station there that runs water to the railroads. The pump station attendant has the status of local royalty as he has the finest of huts, an actual mattress to sleep on, and pots and pans to cook with. Once in a while the pump station attendant brings in beer and soda and some musicians for a party and sells the beer and soda for a little profit. Such a party is scheduled for tonight.

   For the party, a young man returns for the weekend from the Texas oil fields to flaunt his riches, sow his oats, and play with his little brother Carlosito who worships him. He comes bearing gifts: a beautiful shining black pair of shoes for Carlosito. The first shoes the child has ever had. He is tremendously excited to put them on and show them off — yet for a boy who has never worn shoes before, the shoes prove to be a bit of an encumbrance to the boy’s exuberant comings and goings and jumping around.

   Between the pump station and the settlement is a rickety old bridge without any railings, the 12 foot deep river running beneath.

   The party begins, and villagers from all around descend upon the pump station, hazarding the bridge in the pitch jungle darkness. The mood is festive, there’s laughter, giggling girls, coy boys, dancing and gossip.

   And then Carlosito disappears.

   At first the disappearance and the mother’s fears are dismissed: it’s only been half an hour; boys will hide and run away — but they always come back. But as the hours pass and the boy fails to return, the mother’s fears turn more and more hysterical, while the grounds for her hysteria become harder and harder to dismiss.

   It’s a powerful story of the depths of maternal love and grief and the interpersonal scope of tribal motherhood where every mother in the village shares trepidation and grief, joining the aggrieved ​in union, in unison, giving everything they have despite their squalor, for no other reason than love.

   I liked it. Maybe not as much as I loved Death Ship (which to me is one of the best books ever). Nor was there the breadth of adventure and psychopathology of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, nor the Death Ship-lite sarcastic voice of The Cotton Pickers. But there is a purity here presenting the native maternal heritage where one rightly wonders whether civilization has wrought a more or less civilized humanity as we struggle through love and loss, together and alone.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

   

ON THE WATERFRONT. Columbia, 1954. With Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden. Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Elia Kazan.

THE HARDER THEY FALL. Columbia, 1956. With Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, and Jan Sterling. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Mark Robson.

   I should not be surprised that two movies from the same studio, with the same writer, should feel so similar, but I watched these back-to-back, and it was like having the same dream twice.

   Both films involve corrupt bosses enriching themselves by exploiting simple (and simple-minded) men who make a living by brute strength. In Waterfront it’s longshoremen jumping to the tune of Lee J. Cobb as Union Boss Johnny Friendly; Fall offers Rod Steiger as Nick Benko, Fight Promoter, but they’re both basically the same character: venal, ruthless, and possessed of a sublime indifference to the pain of others.

   But the similarities don’t end there — they’re just beginning. Early on in both films, someone who crosses the bosses meets an untimely and violent end. More to the point of the narrative, both feature a protagonist who works for the Boss, uneasy about things he sees going on, but compromised by his position in the organization:

   Waterfront’s Terry Malloy (Brando) has a brother (Rod Steiger) in Cobbs’s inner circle; in Fall, Bogart is a well-respected (but out-of-work) sportswriter, helping Steiger (again) build up odds on an oversized Bum, but both men are essentially hiring themselves out as tools to enable the exploitation of others. And in both movies, the drama builds as our heroes begin to ask themselves “What kind of tool am I?”

   Sorry about that. But the question never is satisfactorily answered in either film. In both cases, they manufacture dramatic crises to provide a “Movie-Ending” that rings palpably false — in my ears, anyway. Schulberg and Kazan don’t explain how Terry Molloy, shunned for squealing and avoided for safety’s sake one minute, becomes the rallying point for the dock workers after he gets his ass whupped by Cobb’s goons. But the ending of Fall is even worse than that, with Bogart sitting down at his typewriter to do an exposé of “The Boxing Racket.”

   I hasten to add that these unsatisfactory (to me) finales come late in the films, too late to spoil a couple of very watchable movies. On the Waterfront is an acknowledged classic, and The Harder They Fall is an underrated gem. Maybe not a spectacular coda to a career like Bogart’s but not bad at all.

   I want to say something about the acting. Waterfront was Brando’s sixth film, and by now he was comfortable on the screen, but still visibly hard-working. He’s also surrounded by actors from the same school where he learned his craft, and the interplay between them is like watching a well-oiled machine operating perfectly.

   But I find the thesping in Harder more fun to watch. Rod Steiger attacks his part with real method-madness: animated, powerful, and vigorously phony; his performance is fascinating to watch, but obviously a performance.

   Bogart, in his seventy-fifth and final film, simply walks across the screen and dominates it effortlessly with the assurance of an established Star. Acting never enters into it; he simply is Bogart. And the clash of the two actors and the two styles brings a riveting intensity to their roles that is no less impressive for having probably been inadvertent.

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

A TRAGEDY AT MIDNIGHT. Republic Pictures, 1942) John Howard, Margaret Lindsey, Keye Luke, Mona Barrie, Roscoe Karns, Miles Mande.r Screenplay by Isabel Dawn, based on a story by Hal Hudson and Sam Duncan. Directed by Joseph Santley. Currently streaming on YouTube (added below, but see Comment #1).

   Radio detective Greg Sherman (John Howard) is roundly disliked by the police who he harasses with his weekly program solving crimes while they twiddle their thumbs, so when he wakes up to find a murdered woman in the twin bed in the borrowed apartment of Dr. and Mrs. Wilton (Miles Mander and Mona Barrie) where his new wife Beth (Margaret Lindsey) should be, while their apartment across the hall is being painted, it looks bad, and when Lt. Cassidy (Roscoe Karns) shows up and arrests him, it looks even worse.

   Luckily for Sherman, with a little help from his wife and houseboy Ah Foo (Keye Luke), he quickly escapes, but now he is on the run not even knowing the name of the murder victim.

   Obviously modeled on The Thin Man, and despite the stereotyped Chinese houseboy who speaks in pidgin English (but luckily has brains and knows judo) this film from Republic Pictures moves fast and has a decent mystery at its heart, as Sherman and his attractive wife discover the dead woman had two names, two apartments, and two lovers, one a club owning gangster.

   As murder and circumstance eliminates their best suspects Sherman races to find the solution and manage to make the deadline for his next broadcast where he has to produce the killer.

   Howard and Lindsey make for an attractive minor substitute for William Powell and Myrna Loy and have some natural presence playing off of each other. The suspects are the usual lot. and there are a number of decent red herrings along the way before Howard closes in on the real killer on the air.

   Of course there are holes in the plot. and you probably don’t want to think too much about it, but the solution is satisfying and one of those “that was obvious” endings that aren’t really obvious until you actually hear them explained.

   The whole stereotyped Chinese houseboy business is. as you might suspect, offensive, but frankly Luke seems to be playing it tongue ’n cheek and brings such energy to the part, it’s hard to dwell on the injustice. He was an actor who was invariably better than the material he was given. It’s hard to imagine why the pidgin English though, considering his years as the thoroughly American Jimmie Chan. He’s at least integral to the plot and not just comedy relief.

   There’s nothing new here, but it is done with energy and at least some thought to the mystery and not merely the comedy and quick patter. As a B, it does exactly what it aims to, which is worth commending in any film.
   

ACCUSED OF MURDER. Republic Pictures, 1956. David Brian, Vera Ralston, Sidney Blackmer, Virginia Grey, Warren Stevens, Lee Van Cleef, Barry Kelley, Elisha Cook Jr. Screenplay by W. R. Burnett, based on his novel, Vanity Row. Director: Joseph Kane. Currently available on YouTube (see below). (The book is reviewed by Dan Stumpf here.)

ACCUSED OF MURDER

   Time was starting to run out for Republic Pictures when this film was produced, and as it so happened, the end of Vera (Hruba) Ralston’s motion picture career was close to ending as well. Republic lasted until 1959, while Miss Ralston’s last appearance on film was in 1958. That their fortunes were so long tied together is due to one fact: she was the longtime protege of Republic Pictures studio head Herbert J. Yates, whose last year on top was also — you guessed it — 1958.

   Her acting abilities, never regarded very highly, were probably adequate for most of the generally low budget films she was in, and over the years, there were 27 of them. In Accused of Murder she’s a night club singer who’s suspected of murdering a high-flying attorney (Sidney Blackmer) in debt to the mob, but luckily for her, the homicide lieutenant in charge of case (David Brian) finds himself falling in love with her, and he’s the only person standing between her and a life in prison.

ACCUSED OF MURDER

   Definitely not believing her story is Brian’s second-in-command, a very young Lee Van Cleef, whose way of carrying himself reminded me a lot of Lee Marvin, lean and lanky and in so smooth control of himself.

   There’s more to the story than this, including a scar-faced hit man (Warren Stevens) whom we see being paid for killing Blackmer, and a would-be blackmailer, a dime-a-dance girl (Virginia Grey) who saw Stevens at the scene of the crime. There are a few twists to the tale, some of them quite clever, or there would have been if we (the viewer) hadn’t been shown too much in the beginning, and yet not enough to stop us from puzzling over whatever it was that wasn’t shown. Speaking entirely for myself, you understand.

   Adequate, therefore, but all around? Only adequate. There’s no other word that might apply, unless it was mediocre, and truthfully, Accused of Murder is a step above that. It’s a small step, but a step, nonetheless.

ACCUSED OF MURDER

   

UPDATE: This review was first posted on this blog on 17 November 2011. The reason for its revival is that it’s the second listing (alphabetically) in Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of FILM NOIR, by Arthur Lyons (Da Capo Press, 2000). I’m in the process of working my way through it, one movie at a time. The first nine Comments that follow are from its earlier posting.
   

REVIEWED BY MIKE TOONEY:

   

(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Spring 2024. Issue #65. Editor: Arthur Vidro. Old-Time Detection Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd. 36 pages (including covers). Cover image: Stuart Palmer’s The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree.

   It goes without saying that Old-Time Detection is an indispensable repository of information for the devotee of classic detective fiction, mixing the old with the new in this particular literary genre; and who better than Arthur Vidro to curate it.

   First up is a short 1976 EQMM interview with Stanley Ellin: “The problem here was to get an ending which was right.”

   Next, Charles Shibuk continues his Paperback Revolution from 1974: “As I write this, 1973 is slowly dissolving into a hopeful new year, and 1973 has certainly not been a good one — especially in the reprint field.” Shibuk notes reissues from Margery Allingham (“an extremely erratic performer, but she seems to be her best in the short form”); James M. Cain (“hardboiled prose by a master of the genre”); Agatha Christie (“presents Poirot as a Nero Wolfe imitator”); Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr (“exploits in farce and detection”); Dick Francis (“a superb work”); R. Austin Freeman (“the creator of Dr. Thorndyke was one of the giants in this field”); Jacques Futrelle (“they [his stories] still retain their freshness and devilish ingenuity today”); Frank Gruber (“a fast and funny romp”); John D. MacDonald (“the patented brand of MacDonald philosophy, which this reader could live without”); Ngaio Marsh (“not among Marsh’s best work”); Rex Stout (“one of Stout’s better early novels”); and Trevanian (“overpraised”).

   Dr. John Curran, the foremost Christie expert extant, sadly traces the damage committed by meddlesome Hollywood and its even more heavily politicized ugly twin, the BBC, when adapting Agatha’s Murder Is Easy (a.k.a. Easy To Kill) and looks forward apprehensively to an upcoming “adaptation” of Towards Zero. Curran hits the truth button on why Agatha Christie’s “entire back catalogue is still in print”: “It is because she stuck to writing what she knew she could write: clever, entertaining whodunits. . . she rarely, if ever, weighed down her stories with discussion of religion or politics.”

   The second part of Francis M. Nevins’s article about Erle Stanley Gardner has a wealth of information concerning ESG’s middle period (including the two largely unknown prototypes of Perry Mason and Della Street) and his first Mason novels, featuring a far different character than most readers and TV viewers are accustomed to (“The Mason of these novels is a tiger in the social Darwinian jungle . . .”). And there’s more to come.

   In 1958 Julian Symons compiled a heavily annotated list of what he regarded as the “100 Best Crime Stories,” starting with William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), and running up to 1957. Those familiar with Symons’stastes in detective fiction won’t be surprised at some of his choices, but it’s heartening to see that he didn’t overlook Freeman, Futrelle, Van Dine, and EQ, among deserving others.

   Pietro De Palma offers up this issue’s fiction piece, “A Double Locked Room” (6 pages): “In the seafront office of the Bari Police Station, two men were discussing this fresh case, which seemed less a police matter than a matter for an escapologist.”

   From the mid-80s we have Jon L. Breen’s in-depth reviews of three contemporary novels: Max Allan Collins’s Kill Your Darlings (1984: “excellent dialogue, characterization, and mystery plot”); Robert J. Randisi’s Full Contact (1984: “a well-crafted and quick-paced story”); and Reginald Hill’s A Clubbable Woman (1970, first U. S. publication 1984: “one of the outstanding firsts in detective fiction history”).

   Editor Arthur Vidro shares his thoughts about the (usually) benign madness associated with book collecting, which sometimes becomes uncontrollable at auctions, and his own personal “game plan.”

   From a 1979 issue of The Armchair Detective we delve once more into “The Non-Fiction World of Edward D. Hoch,” as he reminisces about “Growing Up with Ellery Queen” (“I think I wanted to be a writer even then”).

   When he reviewed Doug Greene’s recently published John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995), Michael Dirda rightly entitled it “The Houdini of the Mystery” (“Carr excels in his plotting and narrative pacing, in the rush of unfathomable, seemingly unconnected clues . . . reading a writer like Carr is being reminded that good fiction doesn’t require richly beautiful sentences or complex psychological probing . . .”).

   Arthur Vidro returns with two concise reviews: Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968: “her enthusiasm comes through in the prose”) and Stuart Palmer’s The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933: “The fourth outing for Hildegarde Withers takes her to California”).

   Letters from OTD-ers and a fiendish puzzle wrap up what we’ve come to expect, a quality issue of Old-Time Detection full of good stuff.

      ____

   Subscription information:

   Published three times a year: spring, summer, and autumn. – Sample copy: $6.00 in U.S.; $10.00 anywhere else. – One-year U.S.: $18.00. – One-year overseas: $40.00 (or 25 pounds sterling or 30 euros). – Payment: Checks payable to Arthur Vidro, or cash from any nation, or U.S. postage stamps or PayPal. – Mailing address: Arthur Vidro, editor, Old-Time Detection, 2 Ellery Street, Claremont, New Hampshire 03743.

Web address: vidro@myfairpoint.net

Reviewed by TONY BAER:

   

BART SPICER – The Golden Door. Carney Wilde #3. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1951. Bantam #975, paperback, 1952.

   “The Golden Door” are the last three words on the Statue of Liberty:

         “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
         I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

   Carney Wilde has been able to sustain his private eye business through a retainer as security detail for the fancy Jonas Department Store in downtown Philadelphia. It’s been a pretty cushy gig — but lately it seems like there’s some insider theft going on. So Wilde has to earn his keep.

   While working on the case, the son of the Jonas Department Store mogul asks for help with an ‘unrelated issue’. The so-called unrelated issue has to do with stolen files from his non-profit agency “Future Americans”. “Future Americans” helps displaced eastern European Jewish survivors of WWII immigrate to the U.S., frequently by promising jobs with the Jonas Department Store. The missing files contain sensitive personal information of prospective immigrants.

   Of course, if you’ve read any detective stories before you know there’s no such thing as an unrelated case.

   The store thief ends up dead, and he’s not the only one. Turns out some of the “Future Americans” think the ‘golden door’ ought to be melted down and cashed in. And that’s pretty much just what they try to do.

   Carney Wilde is a terrific hardboiled detective and Bart Spicer exercises great narrative control. Despite seeming coincidences tying everything together, I never doubted the credibility of the story. No plodder, he’s a skillful plotter. Everything fits; you get a satisfying denouement.

   So I’ll say it again. I have no idea why the Carney Wilde books are out of print. They’re exciting vintage hardboiled detective novels. Some of the best I’ve read by anyone not named Chandler or Hammett.
   

      The Carney Wilde series —

The Dark Light (1949)
Blues For the Prince (1950)
The Golden Door (1951)
Black Sheep, Run (1951)
The Long Green (1952)
The Taming of Carney Wilde (1954)
Exit, Running (1959)

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