ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – August 1967. Overall rating: ***½.

HUGH PENTECOST “The False Face Murder,” A rejected suitor wearing a mask is killed, and everyone is ready to assume the guilt. Would seems to have Meaning, but it all ends as typical detective story. (4)

THE GORDONS “The Terror Racket.” Short novel. First published in The American Magazine, June 1953, as “Case File — F.B.I.: The Faceless Killer.” An anonymous caller threatens a widow’s daughter with violence unless he is paid $10,000. The FBI is called in for protection, and they work quickly to decide which of the mother’s acquaintances is the extortionist. Marred by sloppy writing: the roles of the characters are introduced without introduction, and with no real purpose; and by bad writing: the rookie agent who has to be explained everything, (3)

EDWARD D, HOCH “The Spy Who Worked for Peace.” Rand of Double-C discovers that a defector’s secretary is actually the spy, One of the better ones in the series. (4)

JOHN LUTZ “Quid Pro Quo.” A computer service arranges murders for a price. (3)

AMY. M. GRAINGERHALL (NORMA SCHIER) “Mr, Copable, Criminologist.” Anagram pastiche of Mr. Campion. Otherwise not bad. (1)

MARGERY ALINGHAM “The Chocolate Dog.” First appeared in The Daily Mail, 07 June 1939, as “The Dog Day,” Not a mystery story, but one of British charm. Mr. Campion. (2)

STEVEN PETERS “George Washington, Detective.” First story. Washington traps a spy just before crossing the Delaware, Interesting, (3)’

STEVEN PETERS “The Backyard Dig.” An amateur archaeologist’s discovery. Obvious with a clever twist, (4)

PATRICIA ANN HOLLISTER “The Woman Who Couldn’t Wear Red.” First story. At least her husband didn’t think so. (1)

JULIAN SYMONS “The Main Chance,” First US printing. A con-man gets caught up in a truly fantastic scheme for murder, (5)

BOB BRISTOW “No Margin for Error.” A woman has a secret way of knowing when her husband is out with other women. (4)

H. R. F. KEATING “The Justice Boy.” Novelette. A pet robin is killed at a British boys’ prep school, and an investigation is begun. The appeal is that of reading details of the background. (3)

JOHN McPARTLAND – I’ll See You in Hell. Gold Medal #571, paperback original, 1956. Cover art by Barye Phillips. Centipede Press, hardcover, 2020.

   Lee Farr and Pearl Dobson are partners. They met in the war. Now they co-own a crop duster.

   Then Pearl Dobson reads a story in the paper about the symptoms of uranium poisoning. And something rings a bell. Back where Pearl comes from, nowheresville Arkansas, there were deaths a long time ago that happened around Witch Cave. With the same symptoms! Maybe there’s uranium in them there hills! We’ll be rich, dagnabbit!

   So Pearl heads out to Arkansas to follow his million dollar uranium dreams. And he’ll call up Lee as soon as he knows something for sure.

   Lee finally gets a call — and sure enough, Pearl’s excited! He’s found the mother lode! Come on Lee! Stop what you’re doing and come hither to the Ozarks stat!

   So Lee heads over to the Ozarks and up to Pearl Dobson’s cabin. But when he gets there: “He found the bodies one by one. The dog first.” Inside the cabin he finds Pearl’s grandparents, executed, and Pearl sitting in a chair, ensnared by ropes, tortured to death.

   Lee reports the deaths to the sheriff’s deputy, who immediately decides that Lee is guilty of the murders. And the deputy, in this here town, is judge, jury and executioner.

   Lee escapes custody and now he’s on the run, with nary a friend in nowheresville. He’s gotta find the killer before he gets killed first.

   A fairly thrilling ride.

HENRY FARRELL – How Awful About Allan. Holt Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1963. Avon, paperback, date? Also a 1970 American made-for-television horror psychological thriller film directed by Curtis Harrington.

   Everyone in his neighborhood is saying it: “How awful about Allan!” Allan Colleigh, the rather dim bulb in an otherwise brilliant family, has had a shattering mental breakdown following his father’s death in a fire from which Alan could not save him. One of the symptoms is hysterical blindness, and now that Allan has been released from the mental hospital, his admirable sister, Katherine, must shoulder the burden of caring for and supporting him in the old half-burned house where their father died.

   Money is short, and when Katherine suggests they take in a boarder from the university where she works, Allan tries to cooperate. But there is something about the student that disturbs him — perhaps his whispery voice, caused by a childhood accident — and Allan suffers a relapse.

   At first he tries to control himself — after all, he’s made so much progress with Dr. Greenough. the psychiatrist who has taken him on for Katherine’s sake. But then he begins to feel he’s being watched, being spied on. His friend and neighbor Olive Dearborn has never seen the student, and since Allan can’t see him, he isn’t sure whom he is dealing with.

   When he hears that Katherine’s old boyfriend, Eric Walters, has returned to town, he’s sure Katherine has brought Eric into the house, disguised as the mild-mannered college student. And soon he begins to believe that Eric and Katherine are trying to kill him.

   The story is an exercise in mounting paranoia and terror, more frightening because Allan’s fears seem to be backed up by fact. And the resolution, while it is something he has repressed all along, is more frightening than any of his paranoid imaginings. The resolution, however, is not quite the end of the story, and the ultimate climax is sure to shock you more than what has gone before.

   Do read this — but don’t read it while alone!

   Farrell is an expert at inspiring terror in the hearts of his readers, as evidenced by his well-known Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960), which was the basis for the chilling 1962 film starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The author of numerous TV and film scripts, Farrell has also written the novels Death on the Sixth Day (1961) and Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1967).

     ———
   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.