A live performance of a song that’s also the lead track on Brazilian jazz vocalist and pianist Tania Maria’s 1997 CD, Europe.

A MATTER OF WHO. MGM, UK, 1961; US, 1962. Terry-Thomas, Sonja Zeimann, Alex Nichol, Richard Briers (debut), Honor Blackman, Carol White, Guy Deghy, Martin Benson, Geoffrey Keen. Screenplay by Milton Homes & Patricia Lee, based on her article with Paul Dickinson. Directed by Don Chaffey.

   This unlikely comedy-mystery builds up real suspense with Terry-Thomas playing mostly straight as an eccentric British ‘germ’ detective for WHO, the World Health Organization.

   It begins innocently enough with an American businessman apparently succumbing to too much alcohol on his honeymoon flight to London. Taken to the hospital at Heathrow until the cause of his condition can be determined, his new bride (Sonja Zeimann) and business partner, a fellow Texas oilman (Alex Nichol), meet each other and Archibald Bannister (Terry-Thomas) a representative of WHO while waiting for news of the ailing man.

   When it turns out smallpox and not alcohol is the cause of the ailing oilman’s ill turn, the international WHO organization is mobilized, with British representative Bannister and his assistant (Richard Briers, best remembered for the series Good Neighbors, making his film debut) out to find where the victim acquired the disease and using every means at their disposal to do it.

   That proves more than a little dangerous for both Bannister and the victim’s business partner, as international politics, skullduggery in the cutthroat oil business, the mysterious new bride who knows something she won’t tell, a smuggled dog, a kidnapped corpse, a remote Austrian village stricken with a smallpox epidemic, Bannister a fugitive from the law, and a shady international playboy are all added to the mix until the climax in an Austrian cable car.

   The mystery is excellent, the twists frequent, the heroes meet numerous setbacks, and the comedy is generally played quietly arising from the situation and the people in it and not contrived silliness (there is a contrived car chase).

   Other than his bad driving, clothes, and car, Bannister is presented as a good man who knows his job and does it with rare skill. You likely haven’t seen Thomas like this in a film, and may, like me, be a little surprised how well he handles the role without resorting to his usual schtick.

   This one works fully on all levels. It is sexy and smart, sharply written and played, well directed by Don Chaffey, and both the mystery and suspense well served, both they and the clues arising from the nature of the real criminal, the disease smallpox, and its nature and behavior. And don’t assume you have out-guessed it or Bannister, as both have surprises up their sleeves right to the end.

   I spent a long time looking for this one, and I’m pleased to say than other than the theme song, it was no disappointment. A Matter of WHO is a fine little film with a first class cast and more than enough to keep you glued to your seat until the last clue is sorted.

JILL McGOWN – Murder … Now and Then. [Det. Insp.] Lloyd & [Det. Sgt.] Hill #6. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1993. Fawcett, US, paperback, 1995. First published in the UK by Macmillan, hardcover, 1993.

   How many times do I have to tell you? Jill McGown is one of the best British crime novelists currently writing. I put her in the same class with Reginald Hill and John Harvey, and ahead of Ruth Rendell.

   Now, in 1993, Lloyd is in official attendance at a business ceremony where a new owner is taking over a company. A new manager has been promoted, one very unpopular with the old owner. When the new owner walks in, the new manager’s wife faints. Shortly thereafter, the new manager is caught slapping and berating her. Before the night is ended, murder is done.

   Then, 15 years before, the players set in motion a chain of events that culminate in unsolved murder in that time, and lead to murder in the present. Lloyd and Hill were there at the beginning as they will be at the end when all the sealed boxes are opened.

   McGown is noted (at least by me) for her complex plots, and this is one of her twistiest. Viewpoints and times shift back and forth rapidly, and it’s a mark of her virtuosity that the reader is not left completely at sea. Her prose is terse and straight-forward, but by the end of the story all of the major players have become fully realized people.

   Lloyd (first name unknown) and Judy Hill have over the course of the series become among the most realistic of contemporary cops as human beings, and their relationship equally so. There isn’t anything I dislike about McGown’s Lloyd and Hill books, and they’ve yet to disappoint me. There are damned few series about which I can say those things.

Bibliographic Note:   There were 13 books in the Lloyd & Hill series, the last being Unlucky for Some (2004)

ALEXANDER JABLOKOV “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry.” Sere Glagolit #1. Novella. Lead story in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2017.

   Of the three (or maybe four) SF print magazines still remaining, I think the best science fiction stories come from Asimov’s. (Not surprisingly, the best fantasy stories appear in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.)

   Analog SF is tied a little too closely to the traditional SF tale, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what the magazine’s readers want and have come to expect. The science fiction in Asimov’s is considerably more adventurous and what’s more, the stories in it are noticeably better written.

   Case in point, this the first appearance of PI Sere Glagolit. Having had her business stolen out from under her by her former partner, she’s working on her own now, and having a difficult time of it. The planet where she lives, by the way, is not Earth. It’s a world with two suns and in particular, Sere works in a city called Tempest, one that is populated by pockets of all shapes and varieties of alien races, including humans (called the Om).

   She’s hired to find out who’s been buying up the leases of a collected sequence of properties leading from the bottom of Drur Reef to the top. She soon learns that a cleaning organization called Ferrulin is involved, not a criminal enterprise, by any means, but as Sere says, they have “more than a couple of toes over the line.” While working on the case, she also learns how it was that a small time exterminator accidentally killed himself in a tunnel through the mysterious butte, a landmark of some note in the city.

   As in all good private eye stories, there is a lot of footwork (and more) to be done, lots of false leads, lots of non-human characters with non-human motivations to talk to, and above all, a setting with lots of exotic scenery for the reader to gradually learn his/her own way around in. Thankfully, at novella length (over 30 oversized pages of solid print), there’s plenty of time and space to do so.

   More stories are promised, which is good news indeed.

CHARLES WILLIAMS – Talk of the Town. Dell First Edition A164, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1958. Cover artist: Darcy (Ernest Chiriacka). Expanded from “Stain of Suspicion,” a story published in Cosmopolitan, April 1958. This earlier title was also that of the British edition: Stain of Suspicion, Cassell, hardcover, 1959. Reprinted later in the US under the same title: Pocket, paperback, 1973.

   The master at the top of his game, crafting a taut, fast-moving tale back in the days when you could tell a great story in less than 200 pages.

   Bill Chatham narrates the tale and starts out by getting his car badly wrinkled by someone pulling out of a parking space in a small north Florida town. Stuck there for three days, he meets Georgia Langston, the proprietor of the motel where he’s staying, and quickly gets drawn into her problems.

   It seems Ms. Langston is recently widowed and suspected in the death of her late husband. He was found murdered in the pre-dawn hours by a man who was staying at the motel who had connections in Langston’s home town. Moreover, a woman was seen leaving the crime scene, and when police contacted Georgia they found her wide awake at that unghodly hour. The murderer was killed by police, so he’s not talking, but a cloud of doubt has settled over the widow who is ostracized by the community and persecuted by anonymous obscene and threatening calls.

   I’m always impressed by the speed with which Williams can set up a plot and establish his characters. As the story unfolds we find that Chatham is a divorced ex-cop, kicked off the force for excessive brutality (Read the backstory and see if you don’t sympathize with him.) and Ms. Langston is a tough and resourceful woman slowly being ground down by the community she once called her home.

   Meanwhile, just to keep things roiling, Chatham gets in a fight every few pages, there are threats, vandalism, a near-murder and some colorful side characters to help things along. And it’s here where Williams does a clever bit of writing…

   If I may wax philosophical for a moment, I want to say that in my experience there are two kinds of corruption: Selfish corruption of the sort practiced for profit; and the more altruistic sort, committed by those who feel it’s all right to cut a few legal/ethical corners in a good cause. Williams evokes both sorts, from honest cops who don’t feel much like following up a criminal’s complaints to…

   Well, that would be telling, and it would be a shame to spoil a story as tightly written as this one. Suffice it to say that when the selfish-corrupt ones finally show themselves, they are a nasty sight indeed — very well-limned by the author in a few deft strokes — but perhaps not so scary as those who thought they had Right or God or Whatever on their side.

TARGET ZERO. Warner Brothers, 1955. Richard Conte, Peggie Castle, Charles Bronson Richard (Wyler) Stapley, L. Q. Jones, Chuck Connors. Screenplay: James Warner Bellah & Sam Rolfe. Director: Harmon Jones.

   In the Korean War movie Target Zero, Richard Conte stars as Lt. Tom Flagler, a hard-nosed soldier devoted to ensuring that his men get through the war alive. It’s not a bad trait to have, especially given that Flagler’s patrol has been cut off from their main unit: Easy Company. Joining the patrol for the perilous journey in hostile territory is Ann Galloway (Peggie Castle), a United Nations scientist working in the Korean peninsula, and a British tank crew.

   For a war movie, there’s comparatively little action for large segments of the movie. Indeed, the movie is more of a character-driven, than a plot-driven, film. Although the plot – lost patrol seeks to make its way to safety – it’s the film’s story, or multiple stories – that make it worth watching. Flagler is, on the surface, tough as nails and reminds Ann that “everyone fights his own war” as an excuse for some of the behavior he encounters from soldiers under his command.

   But it’s clear that the war has gotten to Flagler. His effort to please his troops and to pretend he cares about them personally is beginning to look like a charade, a mere veil to cover his own insecurities and worries. Fortunately, Flagler has a relatively competent bunch under his command. There’s Sgt. Vince Gaspari (Charles Bronson), Pvt. Moose (Chuck Connors), and Felix (L.Q. Jones in a standout supporting role). There’s also a South Korean soldier and a Native American soldier in his patrol, giving the 1950s film the racial diversity often found in World War II combat films.

   You’ll probably be none too surprised to learn that there’s a romantic angle to the movie. Despite his initial resistance, Flagler finds himself falling for Ann. Romance during wartime is a standard film theme. But romance blossoming amidst combat in an otherwise all male patrol is somewhat unique and actually works well to flesh out Flagler’s personality.

   Still, Target Zero is primarily a war film, not a romantic drama. There’s a relatively harrowing scene in which the patrol machine guns down a group of North Korean soldiers attempting to escape after Flagler and his men successfully commandeering a communist convoy in order to steal their petrol for the British tank crew. The final battle sequence, however, feels like a bit of a let down. The ending, in which the patrol finds itself on a ridge surrounded by thousands of North Korean troops, has a deus ex machina aspect to it. Did someone say, “Call in air support?”

REESE SULLIVAN – Deadly Like a .45. Ace Double M-140, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Published back-to-back with Last Stage to Gomorrah, by Barry Cord.

   The first story by Giles A Lutz (1910-1982) to have been published in the western pulp magazines may have been “Square in the Saddle,” which appeared in the July 1945 issue of Western Story Magazine. (Thanks to the online Western Fiction Index for this information.)

   From the mid-50s on, according to his entry on Wikipedia, Lutz not only wrote under his own name, but he also used Wade Everett, Alex Hawk, Hunter Ingram, Reese Sullivan, and Gene Thompson as bylines for the huge amount of western fiction he produced, mostly in the form of paperback novels.

   Even though it barely qualifies as a novel — Deadly Like a .45 is only 132 pages long, and there’s only one story line — it’s a good one, and in it, it’s up to Gard Hubach, deputy marshal for a small town in eastern Oregon, to be one of the few to stand up for what’s right.

   It’s this way. Breck Costigan, owner of the large ranch not far out of town figures he owns the whole town as well, and when a small farmer rustles one of his cattle, he thinks nothing of having his crew break him out of jail for a good old-fashioned lynching.

   The sheriff is in Costigan’s pocket. The only one who will stand with Gard is Dolph Emery, the town blacksmith. The only other important character is Emery’s daughter, Martha. Lutz writing as as Reese Sullivan manages to wring all of the drama out of this fairly standard set-up and make the reader wish for more.

   It’s also a dark, violent tale on more than one occasion, surprisingly so. Short, and while not a deep story, nonetheless an effective one.

PostScript:   The other half of this Ace Double, a story by Barry Cord, a pen name of Peter Germano, also a western pulp writer of some standing, is not nearly as successful. The length is the same, and both the plot and the number of characters are a lot more ambitious, but what it boils down to is this: A stagecoach carrying a fortune in gold disappears and a mine played out long ago suddenly starts producing high grade ore again. Much action ensues, but only in peripheral over-busy fashion.

GAVIN HOLT – Six Minutes Past Twelve. Prof. Luther Bastion #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1928. No US edition.

   Luther Bastion, O.B.E., D.Sc., F.R.S., F.A.S.L., and Major Kettering-Bevis, D.S.O. only, are holidaying in the country after strenuous travel abroad. The man from whom they are renting their cottage, Samuel Dubeyne, a chap who is the company promoter personified, is found one morning partly in the local creek, shot to death with the pistol by his side, a definite, according to the police, suicide. Professor Bastion, however, has other ideas.

   Well, of course, the Professor is correct. He and the Major, with the Major protesting occasionally, begin their own investigation, and they discover that Dubeyne was a thorough scoundrel, that he was murdered, and that many people had reasonable cause to do him in.

   For a time, the Professor and the Major work with the police, but then their ways part, somewhat against the Major’s wishes. The Professor knows, or is guessing, more than he is telling, and he wraps the case up to his own, though certainly not the police’s, satisfaction. He is also not above a spot of burglary and concealing evidence.

   This is not a fair-play novel. Much information is withheld from the reader. Several people who were not known about before are brought in at the end. But the enjoyment in the book should come through following the investigations and the machinations of the Professor, with the Major travelling along behind physically and mentally.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   There were sixteen Professor Bastion novels to follow, the last appearing in 1936. Gavin Holt was the pseudonym of Charles Rodda, (1891-1976); he also wrote mysteries as by Gardner Low and Eliot Reed.

MARTIN L. SHOEMAKER “Not Far Enough.” Novella. Captain Nick Aames #4. Lead story in Analog SF, July/August 2017.

    Michael L. Shoemaker is a new author for me, but he’s been writing science fiction since 2011, mostly of the nuts and bolts “hard” variety, and was nominated for a Nebula for Best Short Story in 2016 (“Today I Am Paul,” Clarkesworld #107).

    “Not Far Enough” is the fourth in a series of stories chronicling the adventures of a space captain named Nick Aames, but the blurb a the beginning of the story adds the additional information that a pair of crew members named Anson Carter (Lieutenant Jr. Grade) and Smith (Ensign, and female) are in at least two of the three earlier ones.

    The latter is the one telling this particular tale, that of the fate of a pair of simultaneous landing parties on Mars, six members in each. After a series of serious accidents, including one to the mother ship still in orbit, they find themselves stranded there, with little hope of rescue. How they manage to survive is the crux of the story. What it takes is sheer smartness and determination, and despite some serious interpersonal relationships that have to be worked through.

    Typical Analog material, in other words. Parts of the story are very good, especially the technical end of things. Details at the beginning could have been more clearly delineated, however, and some of the dialogue seems awkward and stilted to me. But overall, though, if you’re interested in what the early history of what exploration in space might be like, keep an eye out for this one.

  LAWRENCE BLOCK – Death Pulls a Doublecross. Ed London #1. Gold Medal s1162, paperback original, 1961. Reprinted as Coward’s Kiss by Countryman Press, 1987; Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1996.

   The private eye in this case is a fellow by the name of Ed London, and while this is the only full length novel he appeared in, he did show up again later in three novelettes from the men’s magazines in the 1960s, stories that have since been collected as The Lost Cases of Ed London (Crippen & Landru, hardcover, 2001).

   Based in Manhattan, Ed London was a relatively high-scale operative in the true Playboy sort of image: a pipe smoker, fond of both Courvoisier cognac and Mozart, with fine books and Bokhara rugs in his apartment. He’s hired in this case by his sister’s husband to dump the body of his dead mistress in Central Park, a task that I don’t believe had ever come up before in the annals of PI fiction, or since. He found her shot to death in the apartment he kept for her, and he has no idea who might have done it.

   Task completed, with his brother-in-law in the clear, the case takes on unexpected added complexities when several interested parties call on London, each wanting a briefcase that should have been in the girl’s apartment. London doesn’t have it, but he can’t make anyone believe it. He has to play offense, he decides, rather than getting beat up again, and by professionals.

   Although not similar in most other ways, including the lack of comic overtones, the voice of Ed London, telling his own story, is remarkably the same as that of Bernie Rhodenbarr, Lawrence Block’s hero of all his later “Burglar” books. It’s a complicated tale, but the long explanation of how London knew what he knew and when he knew it seems to hang together.

   It’s too bad there was the only one novel with Ed London in it, but with all of Block’s other books and series, most of which I have yet to open, I don’t imagine there’s really any reason to complain.

      The Ed London short stories —

“The Naked and the Deadly” (1962, Man’s Magazine)
“Twin Call Girls”(1962, Man’s Magazine)
“Stag Party Girl” (February 1965, Man’s Magazine?)