JOHN CREASEY – Double for the Toff.

Popular Library, paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1972. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1959. Walker (US), 1965. UK paperback editions: Hodder/Coronet, 1963,1973; Sphere, 1967. Earlier US paperback edition: Pyramid R-1221, Aug 1965.

   I’ll make no attempt here to do a general bibliographic discussion of John Creasey and the multitude of mysteries he produced. While that will have to wait for another time, this is certainly the place. As for the Toff, in real life Richard Rollison, I don’t believe it was ever a matter of a secret identity, only an honorific nomenclature.

   England seems to have had a long history of gentleman adventurers that did not seem to ever have been as popular in the United States as they were over there. The Toff, like Simon Templar, aka the Saint, before him (adventures recorded by Leslie Charteris), was merely another in a lengthy line of swashbucklers, figuratively speaking.

   And again, someone else may be better to write the history of such British adventurers, although again, this is certainly the place. In fact what I know about the Toff is minimal, but of course I will tell you what I know anyway.

   Let’s begin with a list of the books. These are in more or less the order in which they appeared in England. A hyphen (-) indicates the lack of an US edition. A star (*) means that there was one. A double star (**) indicates that the first US edition was a paperback. Alternate US titles are also included, if first appearances. (Thanks to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV for most of this information.)

Introducing the Toff. 1938. (-)
The Toff Goes On. 1939. (-)
The Toff Steps Out. 1939. (-)
Here Comes the Toff. 1940. (*) 1967.
The Toff Breaks In. 1940. (-)
Salute the Toff. 1941. (*) 1971.
The Toff Proceeds. 1941. (*) 1968.
The Toff Goes to Market. 1942. (*) 1967.
The Toff Is Back. 1942. (*) 1974.
The Toff on the Trail. 1942. (-)
Accuse the Toff. 1943. (*) 1975.
The Toff Among the Millions. 1943. (*) 1976.
The Toff and the Curate. 1944. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Great Illusion. 1944. (*) 1967.
Feathers for the Toff. 1945. (*) 1970.
The Toff and the Lady. 1946. (*) 1975.
Hammer the Toff. 1947. (-)
The Toff on Ice. 1947. (** – Poison for the Toff) 1965.
The Toff and Old Harry. 1948. (*) 1970.
The Toff in Town. 1948. (*) 1977.
The Toff Takes Shares. 1948. (*) 1972.

The Toff on Board. 1949. (*) 1973.
Fool the Toff. 1950. (*) 1966.
Kill the Toff. 1950. (*) 1966.
A Knife for the Toff. 1951. (**) 1964.
The Toff Goes Gay. 1951. (* – A Mask for the Toff) 1966.
Hunt the Toff. 1952. (*) 1969.
Call the Toff. 1953. (*) 1969.
Murder Out of the Past. 1953. (-)
The Toff Down Under. 1953. (*) 1969.
The Toff at Butlin’s. 1954. (*) 1976.
The Toff at the Fair. 1954. (*) 1968.
A Six for the Toff. 1955. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Deep Blue Sea. 1955. (*) 1967.
Make-Up for the Toff. 1956. (*) 1967.
The Toff in New York. 1956. (**) 1964.
Model for the Toff. 1957. (**) 1965.
The Toff on Fire. 1957. (*) 1966.
The Toff and the Stolen Tresses. 1958. (*) 1965.
The Toff on the Farm. 1958. (*) 1964.
A Doll for the Toff. 1959. (*) 1965.
Double for the Toff. 1959. (*) 1965.
The Toff and the Runaway Bride. 1959. (*) 1964.
A Rocket for the Toff. 1960. (**) 1964.
The Toff and the Kidnapped Child. 1960. (*) 1965.
Follow the Toff. 1961. (*) 1967.

The Toff and the Teds. 1961. (* – The Toff and theToughs) 1968.
Leave It to the Toff. 1963. (**) 1964.
The Toff and the Spider. 1965. (*) 1966.
The Toff in Wax. 1966. (*) 1966.
A Bundle for the Toff. 1967. (*) 1968.
Stars for the Toff. 1968. (*) 1968.
The Toff and the Golden Boy. 1969. (*) 1969.
The Toff and the Fallen Angels. 1970. (*) 1970.
Vote for the Toff. 1971. (*) 1971.
The Toff and the Trip-Trip-Triplets. 1972. (*) 1972.
The Toff and the Terrified Taxman. 1973. (*) 1973.
The Toff and the Sleepy Cowboy. 1974. (*) 1975.
The Toff and the Crooked Copper. 1977. (-)

   There was even a three-act play in which the Toff was a leading character: “The Toff.” UK, 1963.

   Creasey died in 1973, so the final three books had been written and were still awaiting publication when he passed away. The Toff was popular enough in England that when his publisher (Hodder & Stoughton) ran out of Toff books to sell, they hired William Vivian Butler to write a very last one: The Toff and the Dead Man’s Finger (1978; no US publication).

   Besides three books of his own, Butler also wrote the final five Commander George Gideon novels, Gideon being Creasey’s Scotland Yard detective whose adventures he wrote as J. J. Marric.

   In creating this list of Toff books, there are several things I discovered that I hadn’t known before. First, I didn’t realize how many of the books were published in the US. If that were the question, the answer would be “almost all of them.” I also didn’t realize that the Toff was introduced to American readers in paperback form when Pyramid published a number of them in 1964-65, even though I purchased my copies when they did. They must have done quite well, since Walker soon took over and all of the rest of them came out in hardcover first. (Paperback editions of the Toff stories that appeared from Lancer and Popular Library were all reprints, although occasionally they altered the titles to suit editorial or marketing whims. These are not noted in the list above.)

   I also suspect (but so far I have not investigated) that the early Toff books were revised and/or updated when published in this country. I understand that it was a common habit for Creasey to revise his books for whatever his current market might be, and I do not expect the Toff books to have been an exception to this general rule.

   A little Googlizing on the Internet reveals that the Toff first appeared in the two-penny weekly The Thriller in 1933, so the gent with a bent for crime was really around for quite a long while. (As a useful frame of reference, the Saint first appeared in the novel Meet — The Tiger! in 1928, while several of his earliest short story cases were told in The Thriller in the years from 1929 to 1931. Simon Templar, once again, was there first, in other words.)

   The issue shown is #422, March 6, 1937, and includes the Toff story “The Man Who Knew.”

   On the same website as above, but on another page, is a description of the Toff’s first book-length adventure, Introducing the Toff:

   This seems to have come from the back cover of a recent British paperback edition, which perhaps explains the confusion over the date, but other than that, this blurb typifies exactly what I would have imagined the Toff’s early adventures to have been like.

   Returning to the book at hand, however, one can certainly read it without knowing all of the baggage that earlier stories might have brought along. One does get the sense that many of the secondary cast has been around for a while, but just as Della Street and Paul Drake were with Perry from the beginning, you can pick one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s books from the last 1960s as the first one in the series you read and not miss a beat.

   Creasey does not do a lot in terms of describing Richard Rollison. I made a few notes as I went along: he’s very handsome, a head taller than average, and in admirable physical condition. That’s about it. He’s on good terms with Scotland Yard, with Superintendent Bill Grice, apparently an old friend and only a semi-antagonist, willing to give the Toff a free hand whenever he sees a reason for it.

   The title comes from the fact that the Toff is handed two separate cases almost at one time, and after mulling over the possibilities, he decides he can handle both of them. Are they two separate cases? The reader knows better, but only the better reader will figure out how they are related before the Toff does.

   Which is due to two factors, the first being that even though this is a pretty good detective story, Creasey is determined to tell it as if it were a thriller, with lots of action and close calls for the Toff and his friends before it is over, and doing his best to keep the reader’s eyes away from the clues. The second factor is that the time table of events is wrong, or at least, let’s put it this way. The Toff’s reactions and apparent enlightenment on page 174 do not seem to match up with his deductions. In particular, please take note of his explanation to Grice on page 187 why he did something on page 168, well before he learned what he did that put the connections together on page, yes, 174.

   Inconsistencies are something you may have to learn to put up with when you read Creasey. On page 14 it is impossible to read the registration number on a motor-cycle, but on page 51 the Toff somehow knows that the motor-cycle had false number-plates. On pages 120-121 two men (bad guys) who have been gassed suddenly turn into three.

   Things like these used to drive me nutty when I was younger. I try not to let them any more. The book could have (and should have) been better. But taken as a given that you have to put your mind into a lower gear when you read his tales, Creasey was certainly a grand storyteller, with (as it turns out) a kind and sentimental streak in his books (or in this one, at least) a yard wide.

STUART BROCK – Bring Back Her Body

Ace Double D-23; paperback original; 1st printing, 1953. Published back-to-back with Passing Strange, by Richard Sale.

   Stuart Brock, as all vintage paperback collectors know, especially those who collect mystery fiction also, was the pen name of Louis Trimble, who started his career writing hardcover detective novels for Phoenix Press in the early 1940s. Eventually he ended up writing westerns and science fiction novels for Donald A. Wollheim, first at Ace, then (SF only) at DAW, which would have been in the mid-1970s.

   Trimble also wrote westerns as Stuart Brock, but here, taken from Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, is a list of all four mysteries he wrote under that name:

   BROCK, STUART; pseudonym of Louis Trimble, (1917-1988)

      Death Is My Lover. M. S. Mill Co., hc, 1948. Readers Choice Library #38, pb, 1952 (abridged).

      Just Around the Coroner. M. S. Mill Co., hc, 1948. Dell 337, mapback, 1949.

      Bring Back Her Body. Ace Double D-23, pbo, 1953.

      Killer’s Choice. Graphic #136, pbo, 1956.

   The detective in the latter book is a private eye named Bert Norden. I apologize to say that I don’t know who did the sleuthing in the first two books, but I’m sure that all four books are in the same deep pure pulp tradition as Bring Back Her Body, in which the detective work is done by a gent named Abel Cain. I don’t really think he ever had another case to solve, and if he did, it would be hard to imagine one more, well, remarkable than this one.

   Cain’s father was, according to page 9, a renegade minister and had given his son his name as a joke, along with “a somewhat agnostic realism that Cain found to be incompatible with modern civilization.” He had been a bootlegger and a commercial fisherman, the latter which he still was when he needed the money, but mostly his time is his own, except when he acts as an unpaid, unlicensed private eye.

   Which he is in this case, hired by a rich businessman to keep an eye out for his stepdaughter Paula, who has disappeared and who also just happens to have enough stock in her possession to worry her stepfather when important business deals come along, which as the book opens, will be soon.

   Paula’s stepsister, Honor Ryerson, hangs out with the much older Abel Cain, and whew, is she a handful. She is an ardent believer in both astronomy and nudism, often at the same time, and is also obsessed with Cain as a would-be lover. He thinks she is a child, and she thinks not. In the course of hunting for her sister, Cain finds another woman whom he finds himself falling for, the threesome making for an odd, well, threesome, although not in the sense that may come immediately to mind.

   On page 35 comes a staggering discovery, an unveiling (or unlidding, in this case) held as the climax to what you might consider a wholly decadent party: “Stretched out in the coffin, clad in a shroud, was the still, pale form of Paula Ryerson.”

   As I said earlier, pure pulp, and perhaps even more risque. Well, no “perhaps” about it. It is risque to the point of edginess. There is more to the story than the last line of the previous paragraph suggests, but you will have to read the story for yourself to learn what I mean. There are certain things that I cannot begin to tell you in the context of a review without telling you too much.

   Once the story begins, so does the action, and the action never lets up for the entire 142 pages of the story, which begins humorously and ends with a couple of tough, chilling scenes that are also rather shocking, mostly because … I can’t tell you.

   It ends happily enough, however, as did most of the stories in the old pulp magazines. No exception here.

   As you may have noticed, I’ve recently completed Author and Book profiles for the 15 total nominees in each of the three categories for the 2007 Shamus awards. The easiest way to access them is to return to the first announcement page, where I’ve created links to each of the individual profiles.

   It took me longer to do this than I expected it would when I started, but I’m glad I did, because I learned quite a bit in getting it done. First of all, even though I think I keep up to date with new books as they come out, unless you spend all of your spare time in doing so, you’re bound to miss something. There are two or three books I didn’t know about before they were nominated, and I’m glad I do now.

   It also seems to me, without naming individual instances, that the concept of a character being a private eye has been stretched in a few cases. I’m not the judge of such things, but in my own mind, I did question at least more than one of the nominees as being true PI novels. This is not a complaint. It’s only an observation.

   The amount of violence described as being involved in again at least more than one of the nominees makes me, personally, less likely to track them down. That’s my own individual preference. I also don’t make a point of hunting down cozy novels in which deaths are treated lightly.

   I’ve never been able to put into words at what point too much emphasis is put on violence in detective fiction, or when it’s too little, but believe me, I “know it when I see it.”

   Over the years I’ve also grown to more than mildly not care for detective fiction in which the supernatural or the paranormal is part of the telling. For what it’s worth, which may be very little, one of the nominees may have crossed whatever line in the sand I have constructed for myself in that direction.

   I wonder how many of the stories begin with a client coming into the PI’s office wanting to hire him (or her) for this, that or the other. Without going back right now to look, I’d hazard to say that it’s probably not very many, and for a couple of very good reasons. More than a couple of very good reasons, now that I think about it, but somewhere deep down inside, I sort of, just kind of, wish it weren’t so.

   Please note. In none of the cases I’m vaguely referring to above am I questioning the quality of the book or books involved. I don’t see any way I could. I’ve not read any of them.

   Yet.

   British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has come up with two more books to add to the list of Rob Eden novels given in my review of his ‘alter ego’ Adam Bliss’s The Camden Ruby Murder. What’s more, based on descriptions of their story lines, Al Hubin has agreed that they should go into Crime Fiction IV, albeit with a dash before each of their titles indicating only marginal crime content.

   Complete bibliographic details will be available in the next Addenda for CFIV. For now, here are the titles and short synopses of their plots:

      THE WRONG GIRL, by Rob Eden

    “Trudy Vernon was only a clerk at the ribbon counter in Dana’s Department Store. But she looked like Sharon Carr, a famous dancer in a popular show.

    “Sharon wanted privacy and Trudy wanted to meet Phil Dana, who would never see her behind a counter. So she consented to pose as the dancer. She was frightened at the risk – but it was only for a week-end, she told herself. How could she, at twenty, know that a week-end could mar two lives – that her resemblance to Sharon would throw them into a whirlwind of romance, adventure and intrigue?

    “Here is a grand, up-to-the-minute story with a full quota of thrills and excitement, that rushes from country estates to Atlantic Cty beauty pageants, from millionaires to kidnappers.”

      THE GIRL AND THE RING, by Rob Eden

    “Take one attractive young lady, wandering into an auction room simply to while away a few minutes. Take one odd silver ring with a four-leaf clover design, which she somehow found herself bidding for, and buying. Take one brown-haired, blue-eyed, pleasant-voiced young man, so interested in her purchase that he stopped Madge outside the auction rooms and offered to take the ring off her hands at ten times what she’d paid for it. Take a dash of mystery, a dash of danger, a generous sprinkling of romance. Result: Rob Eden’s latest absorbing story of human hearts.”

   The home of Dr. William Petit in Cheshire CT was invaded yesterday, and he and his family were held hostage for several hours before the attack ended in deadly fashion. As you may have read about or learned from TV or the Internet, his wife and two daughters were killed, and he was severely injured.

   A noted diabetes specialist in the state of Connecticut, Dr. Petit has been treating me for my thyroid problems over the past six years. I’ve had appointments with him only twice a year, and I did not know him personally, but I’m very much shaken by this. He’s a tall, affable man who always greeted me with a hearty handshake. As someone something like this could happen to, it does not seem possible.

NoirCon will be held from April 3rd to April 6th, 2008, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

   We all have a deep seeded need to see the “dark, bleak and lonely” side of life.

   NoirCon offers the opportunity to look behind the faces and the lives of the tortured souls captured on the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Brueghel and David Goodis.

   NoirCon will bring to life the sins, moral failings and dark existential truths of the human condition. All of these will be set against the backdrop of a living, breathing city – Philadelphia.

   NoirCon will be a gathering of some of the brightest writers, academicians, fans, editors, publishers and movie lovers of the Noir genre today.

   Please come and celebrate the incredibly visceral poetry of Ken Bruen as he will be the first recipient of the David Goodis Award. The David Goodis Award is given to that individual who upholds the Goodis’s writing style. We will also be celebrating the incomparable Dennis McMillan’s 25 years in the publishing business. Dennis will be the recipient of the Kogan Award for Literary Excellence. The first Kogan Award was given this year posthumously to David Goodis at GoodisCon.

   We plan to have panels of writers, editors/publishers, screen writers and movie aficionados of the Noir. Other panels include true crime specialists and various Noir trips in Philadelphia.

   However, we will not just sit back and passively observe the “dark, bleak and lonely” side of life, rather we will actively try to help the down trodden and the forgotten by having an auction to benefit a very worthy charity. Out of the darkness, we will bring light and hope to those in need not only in words, but through action!

   There will be ample time for people to meet, to discuss and to share each others company. NoirCon is a symposium in the truest sense of the word. Be a part of it! Do not miss out on the opportunity to say you were part of the event that everyone will be talking about! Register today!

GEORGE D. SHUMAN – 18 Seconds. Nominated for Best Private Eye First Novel of the Year, 2007.

Simon & Schuster, hardcover, March 2006. Pocket Star, paperback, March 2007.

   Book Description:

Investigative consultant Sherry Moore is blind and stunningly beautiful, with the extraordinary ability to “see” the deceased’s last eighteen seconds of memory by touching the corpse. At age five, she was found near death on the steps of a city hospital. A head injury had left her without sight and prevented her from remembering her past. When Sherry discovers she does have sight — sight that transcends death — she learns to use her gift to help others solve mysteries that only she can tap into.

Serial killer Earl Sykes was never caught for his vicious murders. Instead, a deadly traffic accident landed him in prison. Now, almost thirty years later, he returns to the seaside town of Wildwood, New Jersey — and to abducting young female victims from desolate areas of the boardwalk for his gruesome games.

Wildwood police lieutenant Kelly O’Shaughnessy is stymied over the disappearance of young women from the boardwalk — crimes horrifyingly reminiscent of unsolved cases from the seventies. When an old man’s untimely death leads Sherry Moore to Wildwood, O’Shaughnessy’s desperation to stem the bloodshed forces her to accept Sherry’s help, but not without consequence. As the two women join forces to discover the killer’s identity, they unwittingly become the hunted, marching deeper with every step into the monster’s lair.

A law enforcement veteran himself, Shuman packs a realistic style and authentic investigative detail into this taut tale filled with pulse-pounding tension that will send readers right to the edge.

   About the Author:

George Shuman is a twenty-year veteran of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police force. This is his first novel.

   Review excerpts:

Publishers Weekly: “Beautiful, blind Sherry Moore is matter-of-fact when telling two police detectives about her agonizing gift – the ability to see the last 18 seconds of a dead person’s life. It’s not supernatural, in her telling; it’s science imperfectly understood. […] Narrative relief from a litany of horrific crimes comes when the scene shifts to Sherry’s tender relationship with a married police detective, and to police lieutenant Kelly Lynch-O’Shaughnessy’s marital struggles. While the large number of characters and cross-cutting of their perspectives leads to occasional confusion, the vividly drawn central figures and authoritative voice keep the reader grimly committed.”

Booklist: “Here’s a high-concept thriller that, in places, could almost sink under the weight of its own premise. Sherry Moore is beautiful, blind, and psychic. But she doesn’t read minds; Sherry’s gift — although some might say it’s more of a curse — is this: if she touches a dead person, she can see the last 18 seconds of that person’s life. […] Unfortunately, Shuman, a veteran police officer, spends so much time justifying his premise that he tends to sound like he doesn’t quite believe it himself. Sometimes you just have to let readers suspend their own disbelief.”

DECLAN HUGHES – The Wrong Kind of Blood. Nominated for Best Private Eye First Novel of the Year, 2007.

William Morrow, hardcover, February 2006. Harper, paperback, February 2007.

Book Description:

After twenty years in Los Angeles, Ed Loy has come home to bury his mother. But hers is only the first dead body he encounters after crossing an ocean.

The city Loy once knew is an unrecognizable place, filled with gangsters, seducers, hucksters, and crazies, each with a scheme and an angle. But he can’t refuse the sexy former schoolmate who asks him to find her missing husband – or the old pal-turned-small time criminal who shows up on Loy’s doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun. Suddenly, a tragic homecoming could prove fatal for the grieving investigator, as an unexplained photograph of his long-vanished father, a murky property deal, and a corpse discovered in the foundations of town hall combine to turn a curious case into a dark obsession – dragging Ed Loy into a violent underworld of drugs, extortion, and murder … and through his own haunted past where the dead will never rest.

   About the Author:

Declan Hughes has worked for more than twenty years in the theater in Dublin as director and playwright. In 1984, he cofounded Rough Magic, Ireland’s leading independent theater company. He has been writer in association with the Abbey Theatre and remains an artistic associate of Rough Magic. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

   Review excerpts:

Publishers Weekly: “In this overly busy and bloody crime thriller from Irish playwright Hughes, Edward Loy, an Irish PI transplanted to L.A., returns home to Dublin for his mother’s funeral. […] When the pace momentarily slackens, the author supplies some nicely observed pastoral views of Dublin and the Irish countryside, but the ongoing cacophony of violence deafens one to all but the most sanguinary details. Hughes has talent, but this caper, his first, doesn’t whet one’s appetite for more of the same.”

Booklist: “Loy is the sort of brash PI who would as soon use his head for inflicting blunt-force trauma as for cogitation. Hughes lacks his countryman Ken Bruen’s knack for making such feral types compelling, and his fine turn of phrase is marred by a proclivity for long expository speeches. On the other hand, he vividly conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of the Dublin streets. He’s clearly a cut or two below such gritty Irish bards as Bruen, John Connolly, and Adrian McKinty, but he bears watching.”

   Newly released and forthcoming Ed Loy novels:

The Color of Blood. William Morrow, hardcover, April 2007. Harper, paperback, March 2008.

The Price of Blood. William Morrow, hardcover, March 2008.

      Carter Brown Interview:

Opening:    [Music]    Carter Brown Mysteries! Adventures in excitement and suspense based on the best-selling novels by the slick story-telling sensation Carter Brown.   [Music]

   We take pride in bringing you the first in a new series a program drawn from the celebrated books by Carter Brown which have sold more than ten million copies and continue to sell at the rate of over one million copies a year. Each week you’ll hear a complete story dramatised in the smooth modern style which has been responsible for Carter Brown’s enormous popularity both in Australia and abroad. And here to introduce the Carter Brown Mystery Theatre is Carter Brown himself.

   How do you do, ladies and gentlemen. I am very pleased indeed, and I must admit flattered too, to have been asked to bring my stories to you.

   Mr Brown, I know you’ve led a pretty adventurous life yourself you’ve travelled around the world yourself as a salesman, publicity writer, film technician. And now finally as a best selling author. And quite a number of people seem think that the heroes in your stories are really yourself, now is that true?

   No, it’s not and if I sound very definite about that it’s because my wife’s listening to me and I don’t think she’d like the idea of my running into so many blondes, brunettes and redheads as the gentlemen in my books do.

   Nooo, nor as much trouble as they do.

   No I don’t think she’d like that either, I hope.

   Yes, your heroes certainly do wind up strife. Like Johnny Lane, for instance. Johnny’s a newspaper columnist and they’ve got a premium on problems. Not that they all run into the same bother as Johnny. They wouldn’t want to. Well, he’s a cocky character with an eye for a beautiful babe and printer’s ink instead of blood. But suppose you find out for yourselves, here’s Johnny Lane to tell the story which we’ve titled, “Call for a Columnist.”

   I am currently working on the Carter Brown Mysteries/Mystery Theatre. Is anyone interested in my findings? I’m happy to submit a summary for y’all.

   Can I also recommend “Swimsuit Sweetheart” for anyone who wants to get a ‘feel’ for the less hardboiled/later style of Carter Brown?    — Cheers,  Toni from Down Under   🙂  

   Click on the following for MP3 recordings of:

          Call for a Columnist, Part 1.

          Call for a Columnist, Part 2.

          Call for a Columnist, Part 3.

          Call for a Columnist, Part 4.

          Swimsuit Sweetheart.

JOHN R. FEEGEL – Autopsy.

Avon 22574. Paperback original, 1975.

   When a Florida tomato salesman apparently commits suicide in a second-rate Connecticut motel, the insurance company naturally refuses to payoff, and off to court they go.

   A lot of book is summarized in that one line. Feegel is both a lawyer and a practicing forensic pathologist, quoting from inside the back cover, and he lovingly fills in all the clinical details of embalming, funeral procedures, exhumations and so on that any of us would ever want to know. His courtroom expertise is equally evident, but may I say that the insurance company’s defense attorneys do a hopelessly inadequate job, and that’s a tremendously difficult premise to swallow.

   The detective story aspect rings completely false as well, which is surprising, since this book won an MWA Edgar as the best paperback mystery of the year. Again if I may, I’d say that Feegel is guilty of [literary malpractice] in his portrayal of the killer’s [deliberately misleading] post-mortem behavior, and the way he handles the questioning of the girl in the next room is most singularly strange. In fact, while Feegel, a Floridian, obviously doesn’t think much at all of coroners and policemen up here in good old Connecticut, that’s hardly a reason to make every one of his characters from this state a completely stereotyped caricature. How can a book so eminently readable also be so woefully inadequate?    (B minus)

[UPDATE] 07-22-07. It’s far too late, I know, but I’ll issue the author an apology anyway for misspelling his name as “Fleegel” throughout this review, and it’s been corrected. I also said earlier that I wouldn’t change anything in these old reviews, but in this case I overruled myself and made an exception, as you’ll see above.

   The following was taken from an online obituary for the author:

   From Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list of his fictional work that qualifies as crime-related, slightly expanded:

      o Autopsy (n.) Avon, pbo, 1975.
      o Death Sails the Bay (n.) Avon, pbo, 1978.
      o The Dance Card (n.) Dial Press, hardcover, 1981. Avon, pb, 1982.
      o Malpractice (n.) New American Library, hardcover, 1981. Signet, pb, 1982.
      o Not a Stranger (n.) New American Library, hardcover, 1983. Signet, pb, 1984.

[Later.] I’ve just noticed that the obituary said that John Feegel wrote seven mysteries, but Al Hubin lists only five. Hmm. That’s something that should be looked into.

[Still later.] Aha. I’ve found both of the missing titles:

      o Eco-Park: The Al-Hikma Legacy (n.) Authors Choice Press, softcover, March 2001.
      o Death Among the Ruins (n.) Writers Club Press, softcover, September 2002.

[UPDATE] 07-23-07.   In my original post I included a comment that cover images for Feegel’s books were difficult to come by. The only one I could find yesterday was the one for Malpractice.

   In this morning’s email Bill Crider, whose supply of old mystery paperbacks is nearly endless, sent me two additional ones, both of which you now see here. Unfortunately the silver reflective covers don’t scan well, so the results are not up to either Bill’s or my standards, but I think they will do.

   I also asked Bill if he’d ever read one or both. His reply: “I read the first one because it won the Edgar. I remember nothing at all about it except that I was impressed by the forensic details. I thought of the book back when Patsy Cornwell was becoming famous and wondered if it was one of the first to introduce that kind of stuff.”

   Not being a fan of forensic details myself, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but I really think that Bill is onto something here.