JOHN SLADEK – Black Aura. Walker, US, hardcover, 1979; paperback, 1983. First edition: Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1974.

   Thackeray Phin, two years an Englishman and bemoaning his lack of a career as an amateur detective, decides to undertake an investigation on his own into the psychic medium business. His ensuing encounter with the Aetheric Mandala Society also, but not unexpectedly, brings him into another murder case at last.

   A sense of humor is both a requirement and the redeeming virtue here. Several deft jabs at the conventional murder mystery land none too gently. Several disappearances from locked rooms and one faulty attempt at levitation enter into the spirit of the occasion.

   The closing explanations are obviously written by an expert choreographer of such matters — the master, John Dickson Carr himself, would be well pleased — but do be warned that the characters are otherwise strictly of the stick figure variety.

Bibliographic Notes: A second and final case (**) for Thackeray Phin was Invisible Green, published in this country by Walker, also in 1979. John Sladek himself was primarily known as a science fiction writer.

(**) Not quite so. See the comments for information about two cases that Phin solved in short story form.

T-BIRD GANG. The Filmgroup, 1959. John Brinkley, Ed(win) Nelson, Tony Miller, Pat George, Coleman Francis, Nola Thorp. Music: Shelly Manne. Director: Richard Harbinger.

   You know the old adage about going to see a fight and having a hockey game break out? That’s what I thought of when watching T-Bird Gang, a Roger Corman-produced programmer that is significantly better, in both style and substance, than it has any natural right to be.

   The reason for this is that the movie occasionally makes you feel as if you’re at a jazz concert and somehow a crime film broke out. I joke. But the movie’s at times overwhelming score by West Coast jazz drummer Shelly Manne lends the proceedings a frantic, hip energy that makes what would have been an ordinary crime film into something a bit more memorable. It definitely kept me watching and tapping along.

   The plot isn’t all that inventive. Nor is it particularly difficult to follow. Future television star Ed Nelson (billed here as Edwin Nelson) portrays Alex Hendricks, the son of a warehouse night watchman gunned down in the line of duty. Alex takes it upon himself to avenge his father’s death and ingratiates himself into the good graces of the local criminal gang responsible for the crime. After Alex lands in police custody, he is given a choice. Give up his vigilantism and help the police to bring down the gang or go to jail.

   Alex chooses the former option and assists Captain Prell (Coleman Francis) in the police department’s efforts to nab the unsavory criminal element plaguing the local community. Did I mention that the head honcho in the outfit drives a white T-Bird? But don’t let the car or the lobby cards fool you, this really is more a gritty crime film than it is a juvenile delinquent film.

ROSS MACDONALD – The Chill. Lew Archer # 11. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1963. Paperback reprints include: Bantam F2913, 1965; Warner, July 1990; Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1996.

   Ross Macdonald is considered one of the finest writers of private eye fiction of all time, and rightly so. The Chill is both tightly plotted and smoothly laid out for the reader, who sees the story through one set of eyes, those of private eye Lew Archer only. One might wish that he would convey everything he thinks to the reader, but for better or worse, he does not.

   This leaves it up to the reader to interpret people and events at the same time Archer does, or decide to wait until the end, when, at least in The Chill, there is a seismic shift at work, one that once it has clicked into place, will make sudden sense out of what till then had been a huge and unmanageable set of connected coincidences. This is definitely not the case. Macdonald knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote this book, every inch of the way.

   Which begins with Archer being hired by a distraught young man to find his newlywed wife, who seems to have run out on him before their marriage has even been consummated. That’s the easy part. Before locating her, no more than a simple day’s work, Archer runs across several other people who had recently come in contact with her in one way or another, including several academics, one of whom briefly toys with hiring him herself; a man who may or may not be the girl’s father; plus a large group of other miscellaneous lovers, wives and mothers, some incidental, most not, all sharply described and delineated.

   One really does need a scorecard to read this densely written and populated book, as the story only escalates from there. Once found, the missing woman then comes very close to being booked for murder. Archer does not think she did it, and not wishing to give up on the case, he needs to find another client, and soon, which luckily he manages to do, and very quickly.

   The case takes him geographically from a small town on the California coast to Chicago and Reno and back to Pacific Point before it is done, and chronologically back 20 years or more, with several murders having occurred along the way, some of them “solved,” but perhaps not all.

   One of the themes of the book, to me, is one of Zeno’s ancient Grecian paradoxes, which as recounted by Aristotle, goes something like this:

   Which in everyday language, I take to mean: “No matter how fast you go, you’ll never get there.” Sounds like pure noir to me.

TEN DAYS IN PARIS. Columbia Pictures, UK, 1939; US, 1940. Also released as Missing Ten Days and Spy in the Pantry. Rex Harrison, Kaaren Verne, C. V. France, Joan Marion, Leo Genn, John Abbot, Andre Morell, Robert Rendel, Antony Holles. Screenplay by John Meehan Jr. and James Curtis, based on the novel The Disappearance of Roger Tremayne by Bruce Graeme. Directed by Tim Whelan.

   Ten Days in Paris is a comedy spy thriller with an excellent pedigree. To begin with, it stars Rex Harrison with support work from Leo Genn, John Abbott, Andre Morell, and the beautiful Kaaren Verne, and it is directed by Tim Whelan (Q Planes, aka Clouds Over Europe).

   Add to that a jaunty and exciting score by Miklos Rozsa and the fact it is based on a novel by Bruce Graeme (creator of a gentleman thief named Blackshirt very popular in the 1920s and 30s, and the author of many more non-series works), plus a witty and rapidly paced script, and you have a fine sub Hitchcockian romp.

   Harrison is a young Englishman, Robert Stephens, walking down the street on a Paris evening when a shot rings out, and he falls to the ground. Luckily the wound is superficial, but when he wakes up the last thing he recalls is a plane crash as he was flying over from London, and a passenger he offered a lift whose name he didn’t know.

   Being a bit of a playboy, neither his father or the French police believe his story that the last ten days are a total blank, especially because there is a note in his pocket obviously from a woman signed D. As soon as he is out of the hospital he finds himself approached by Andre (John Abbot) who seems to know him and who orders him to return to Madame D. She turns out to be the beautiful Kaaren Verne, and her chauffer/butler Barnes.

   She lives outside of Paris with her father, a retired general, and her precocious son whom only Barnes can handle, and is engaged to marry a Major in the French army (Andre Morrell) who is planning secret fortifications with her father for the war that is almost certain to come (ironic in retrospect considering the fate of the Maginot Line).

   The boy’s nanny, Denise (Joan Marion), is another spy planted by spy master Lanson (Leo Genn), and she, and every other woman in the house are enamored of the suave Barnes (playing on Harrison’s reputation as a lady’s man even then).

   Soon enough Barnes/Stephens is recognized and the race is on, as Genn plans to sabotage a supply train headed to the underground facility with a time bomb setting off the ammunition aboard and destroying the fortifications. Harrison and Verne race to stop the train, quipping all the way, she interrogating him about all his rumored affairs as Barnes, as he pleads amnesia, and both duck bullets from the French outposts they run through as time runs out.

   The film is dated, and the model work is obvious, but neither the cast nor the script falter, and if one or two things are left hanging loose, you really aren’t supposed to be that anal about the bubbles in champagne so long as it isn’t flat, and this isn’t. Highlights include Harrison playing William Tell with an automatic to interrogate a spy, a picnic that ends with a soaked and half-naked Harrison and Verne literally treed by a pack of dogs, the interplay between Verne and Harrison, and that final race to stop the train.

   Ten Days in Paris is a dessert wine, not a fine vintage, but a pleasant brut, bubbly, witty, and ideal for a pleasant diversion. It doesn’t rank with Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes or Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich, but it has its own charms and displays them with elan.

MILTON BASS -The Half-Hearted Detective. Vinnie Altobelli #1. Pocket, paperback original, 1993.

   I bought this on the basis of having liked Bass’s quartet of books back in the mid-to-late ’80s about a cop named Benny Freedman. Bad move. In this new series, Vinnie Altobelli is a San Bernardino cop until a heart attack drops him in his tracks, and off the force.

   He’s moping around, afraid to do anything, when a gangster offers to hire him to find out who’s trying to kill him. For a cool million. So off Vinnie goes to the family manse with the mobster, and finds himself in the middle of an Italian family straight out of The Godfather.

   I never got into this one. I lost patience early with Vinnie’s pill-popping and wimping about his heart, and there was nothing in the plot, characterization, or writing to keep me involved. I didn’t believe in the people, I didn’t believe the story, and frankly, Scarlett, I didn’t give a damn.

Bibliographic Note:  This book was followed by one additional outing for Vinnie Altobelli, The Broken-Hearted Detective (Pocket, 1994).

NICHOLAS BLAKE – End of Chapter. Harper & Brothers, 1957. Perennial Library, paperback, 1977, 1988. First published in the UK by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1957.

   The London publishing firm of Wenham & Geraldine has always been a conservative one, but now they are about to become embroiled in a scandal — a libel suit that could cost them both money and reputation. No one can prevent the suit from being filed, but something must be done to ensure that the unfortunate circumstances that prompted it will never happen again.

   Nigel Strangeways is summoned by the firm’s partners, who explain the problem of the memoirs of General Richard Thoresby: When the general’s manuscript was received, it contained passages that libeled Thoresby’s rival, Major General Sir Charles Blair-Chatterley. After some argument, the author agreed to delete them, and did so. However, before the manuscript was delivered to the printer,someone reinstated the passages. The book has been withdrawn, but the damage has already been done. Strangeways agrees to investigate, under the guise that he has been hired by the firm to do some specialized reading.

   The cast of characters Strangeways encounters includes Stephen Protheroe, the author of one great poem, who has withdrawn into the obscurity of his editorial office for twenty-five years; Millicent Miles, writer of torrid romances, who is currently using the office next to Stephen’s to write her steamy memoirs; Herbert Bates, the production manager, who has been forced into early retirement after many years with the firm; General Thoresby himself, and Cyprian Gleed,the ne’er-do-well son of Miss Miles.

   Any of these people — plus a number of less important employees — had the opportunity and motive to alter the proofs. But by the time Strangeways has delved deeper into the situation, murder has been done, and the motive turns out to be more complex than any he has imagined.

   This is a well-plotted novel and a good depiction of the publishing world, but it moves very slowly, and Nigel Strangeways fails to come alive in contrast to the other characters — some of whom are extremely memorable. Blake has an irritating habit of making cryptic forecasts such as “He could not know that one of the questions he had asked this morning would lead directly to a murder.” Without these, perhaps the suspense would be greater; as it is, End of Chapter contains few surprises.

   Strangeways’s other investigations include The Smiler with the Knife (1939); The Corpse in the Snowman (1941); Minute for Murder (1947), which Barzun and Taylor term Blake’s “masterpiece”; and The Worm of Death (1961). The best of Blake’s non-series crime novels is probably A Penknife in My Heart (1959).

         ———
   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.

CHARLES EINSTEIN – The Bloody Spur. Dell 1st Edition #5, paperback original, 1953. Black Curtain Press, softcover, 2013.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS. RKO, 1956. Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Sally Forrest, Ida Lupino, James Craig, Vincent Price, John Drew Barrymore. Robert Warwick. Screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the novel The Bloody Spur by Charles Einstein. Directed by the one & only Fritz Lang.

   Okay. At the time of this writing, and from all I can tell, this is the earliest film to be based on a paperback original. I’m open to other suggestions.

   Einstein’s book is what I call a novel-novel: a diverse cast of characters interacting in a dramatic but realistic situation, having affairs, changing jobs, getting drunk, palling around, quarreling and otherwise getting some drama into their day-to-day lives.

   In this case the impetus is the death of the second-in-command at the Kyne Publishing empire (the book opens, in fact, at his funeral) and the hustling of high-ranking underlings to get promoted to his place. As a sub-plot, there is a serial killer terrorizing New York and the race to the near-top quickly devolves into a competition to be the first with the scoop on the identity of the killer, an undertaking that turns into detective work, seduction, betrayal, and more drinking — these newsmen all act like they think they’re in a Fredric Brown story.

   Einstein does a capable job of cutting between them, though: a crusty old newspaper editor, an ambitious chief of wire services, a lascivious female columnist and a philandering ad man, punctuating the story with some catchy lower-level lives: a smart crime reporter, another not-so-smart reporter, cops, secretaries… and the killer himself.

   I said “capable” not “brilliant.” The Blood Spur will keep you reading, but it’s not the sort of thing one remembers for long or with a great deal of affection: passable but not much more. Surprising then that the film made from it is (to use a hack’s pet phrase) so gripping and suspenseful.

   Well, maybe not all that surprising. Director Fritz Lang mastered the Movies in the 1920s, adapted to social commentary in the 30s, moved to international intrigue and film noir in the 40s, and the 50s found him still attuned to the times, with an edgy rock-and-roll tempo that seems to roar right out of The Wild One.

   Of course it helps that he had a cast like that. Dana Andrews and Sally Forrest play the reporter/secretary couple with affection that never turns to cuteness, George Sanders is his reliably scheming self, playing nicely off Thomas Mitchell’s ink-stained editor, and Vincent Price is agreeably slimy as the big boss manipulating them all. Also I should make special mention of Ida Lupino as the -um- flirtatious columnist radiating no-nonsense sex appeal that contrasts nicely with Rhonda Fleming’s duplicitous trophy wife.

   With a few exceptions (which I’ll get to later) Casey Robinson’s screenplay follows Einstein’s novel closely — sometimes eerily so. Little bits of business, place names and odd phrases like “in cold daylight” appear on the screen with surprising faithfulness in a medium that was never known for its fidelity. But the changes are even more significant.

   Starting with the ending, well, in the book it’s pretty prosaic; the killer tries to assault a stranger ”in cold daylight,” a chase through the subway tunnels ensues, and if you can’t guess the outcome I won’t spoil it for you except to say one of our intrepid newsmen gets the scoop. In the film however, reporter Dana Andrews decides that the best way to catch the killer is to use his fiancée as bait, putting a personal and more involving twist on the proceedings.

   (PARENTHETICAL NOTE: I don’t know about you, but to me having your betrothed use you as the potential victim of a mad killer is a sign that this relationship may be in trouble. I’m just saying….)

   Another note of interest: in the novel, the killer obsessively reads the Bible; in the movie, he’s had his mind warped by Comic Books, and thank you, Dr. Wertham; I don’t think the Legion of Decency would have let them get away with that anyway.

   And finally, there’s a delicious in-joke near the beginning: The book kicks off with the death of the second-in-command at Kyne Enterprises; in the film the story is kicked off by the death of the patriarch himself, leaving his son (Vincent Price) to select someone to actually run the damn thing. Price lets the competition hinge on a comment his late daddy made about catching the serial killer – thus making While the City Sleeps the second film centered around the last words of a dead publisher whose name starts with “K.”

   No prizes for guessing the first.

FLOOD! Made-for-TV movie, NBC, 24 November 1976. Robert Culp, Martin Milner, Barbara Hershey, Richard Basehart, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall, Cameron Mitchell, Teresa Wright, Whit Bissell, Ann Doran. Irwin Allen Productions. Director: Earl Bellamy.

   What sets Flood!, a made-for-TV disaster movie about a flood destroying a small Pacific Northwest town, apart from so many other disaster films, before or since, is its stellar cast. Rather than rely on unknowns or mediocre stars, this Irwin Allen production features some of the finest actors around. These professionals may never have had as much star power as some leading men and women, but they had distinct screen presences all the same.

   Take Richard Basehart, for instance. He portrays John Cutler, a real estate businessman and the mayor of the small town threatened by an aging dam. More concerned with preserving the lake for fishing and tourism than he is with repairing an obviously faulty dam, Cutler v does his best to play down the clear and emerging threat to the town. Basehart is perfectly suited to the role, portraying a man who is so set on being right all the time that he becomes blinded to the peril in which he is putting his community.

   But Basehart’s not the only great actor in this one. There’s Robert Culp, a familiar and welcome presence in any feature, who portrays Steve Brannigan, a roguish helicopter pilot who becomes the town’s unlikely hero. Then there’s Adam-12’s Martin Milner and Barbara Hershey, who portray a romantic couple whose very relationship is threatened by the torrent of water that submerges their small town in water. Cameron Mitchell, Carol Lynley, and (briefly) Roddy McDowell also have roles in the production. Mitchell in particular plays his part with gusto.

   Ironically, for a disaster film, Flood! really doesn’t have all that much special going on in terms of special effects. Maybe it’s because was made for television and there were budget constraints or maybe it was thought that the characters would carry the movie. If it’s the latter case, then they were right. Despite a rather predictable and truthfully a somewhat mediocre plot, this TV movie punches well above its weight simply due to its superb cast.

LEO BRUCE – Death in Albert Park. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover; 1st US printing, 1979. Academy Chicago, US, paperback, 1983. First published in the UK by W. H. Allen, hardcover, 1964.

   Independently wealthy and increasingly discontent with a humdrum life as a senior history master at a snooty boys’ school in Newminster, Carolus Deene’s real passion in life is solving murders. If it weren’t such a contradiction in terms, he is what you might call an amateur private investigator.

   His style and/or approach as a detective consists largely of asking questions, followed by the working out of hunches that slowly become vaguely filled-in theories. In short, he reconstructs the murders in his mind very much as he would a crossword puzzle.

   This particular 15-year old British import involves a Ripper-like killer who has slain three women at random, each death with no apparent motive. Quite naturally, Deane wonders about this.

   The pace is slow, but until the end, remarkably even. The clues are fair, but the sense of urgency displayed by the suddenly philosophical Carolus Deene, as the killer readies his final blow, does not nearly match that of the reader’s.

Bibliographic Notes:   Rupert Croft-Cooke, writing as Leo Bruce, produced a total of 23 detective novels featuring Carolus Deene, and another eight in which Sgt. Beef was the leading character. Even though the Deene books continued to appear until 1974, all of Bruce’s books were definitely products of the Golden Age of Detection. (The Beef novels began in 1936 and ended in 1952; the first Deene book appeared in 1955.)

RUN, BUDDY, RUN. CBS, 1966-67. Talent Associates in association with CBS Television Studios. Cast: Jack Sheldon as Buddy Overstreet, Bruce Gordon as Mr. D. and Jim Connell as Junior. Created by Leonard Stern. Theme by Jerry Fielding.

   Successful TV producer Leonard Stern produced both the successful spy spoof Get Smart, and The Fugitive spoof Run, Buddy, Run. The two series were much alike but with very different results. Get Smart would become on of TV’s most memorable series, while Run, Buddy, Run has been long forgotten.

   Jazz musician Buddy Overstreet (Jack Sheldon) accidentally overhears a mob boss (Bruce Gordon) discuss “Operation Chicken Little,” a plan to kill an unnamed person. Buddy is discovered and makes a run for it. With the mob close behind, Buddy runs from town to town looking for a place he can be safe or until he can find out more about “Chicken Little” and prove to the cops he needs protection.

   Jack Sheldon began as a successful trumpet player in the West Coast jazz movement during the 1950s. He was a regular on The Merv Griffin Show for many years. Shelton has worked as a singer. He sang for the ABC-TV series Schoolhouse Rock (“Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill”). He has done voice work on The Simpsons and Family Guy. There is a documentary about him, Trying to Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon.

   A better musician than actor, Sheldon has appeared on old forgotten series The Cara Williams Show and The Girl with Something Extra. On Run, Buddy, Run, Sheldon makes Buddy likeable and an average guy the audience can root for, but he is not good enough to rise above the hit-and-miss writing.

   The series villain was well cast. Bruce Gordon a successful character actor best known as Frank Nitti in The Untouchables (1959-1963) played Mr. D., the head of the mob. At his side was his young son Junior played well by Jim Connell.

   Run, Buddy, Run could not outrun a quick cancellation but lasted long enough to air thirteen episodes. Airing Monday at 8:00 -8:30pm, Buddy would finish last in the ratings versus NBC’s I Dream of Jeannie and the last half-hour of ABC’s Iron Horse. It didn’t help that the three series that followed Buddy in CBS’s Monday night lineup — The Lucy Show, The Andy Griffith Show and Family Affair – finished in the top 15 for ratings.

“Steambath and Chicken Little.” (9/12/66) Written by Mel Tolkin and Ernie Chambers. Directed by Leonard Stern. Produced by David Susskind, David Melnick and Leonard Stern. Guest Cast: Bernie Kopell, Malcolm Atterbury, and Laurel Goodwin. *** Jazz musician Buddy Overstreet accidently overhears plans for a mob hit but is discovered. He escapes and now is on the run from the mob that wants him dead.

   On the run, he ends up in Rockford, Illinois helping a nice young woman and her sick father try to save their gas station from bankruptcy.

       Part One:

       Part Two:

       Part Three:

   The humor had its moments but was more often ruined by a lack of believability. While Get Smart is much better, Run, Buddy, Run is a good example of the silly stupid humor of the American TV comedy in the 60s.

   You can read more about the series at the TVParty website:
http://www.tvparty.com/recrunbuddy.html