Following up on my comments after Steve’s review of Manning Coles’ No Entry:

   In Drink to Yesterday, as Hambledon and Saunders/Kingston are escaping toward Ostend, they stop to requisition gas and oil from a German depot of some sort. There are some British POWs at the depot making pointed remarks, and one of them refers to Hambledon as a “wee fat man.” Now, he’s dressed as a German major and is probably wearing a greatcoat, so he may not be all that portly, but still…

   Earlier, Saunders describes a non-existent bad guy as someone taller than himself, and says the man was five-eight or five-ten, which would imply that Saunders was of average height; that might make Hambledon sound shorter in the scene described above. But Saunders was impersonating the major’s driver, so he may have been seated the entire time, in which case the POW would not have used him as a reference for Hambledon’s height. Who knows? My guess would be Tommy was about five-seven or five-eight and well-fed; the POWs were pretty skinny, I’d imagine, so anyone who wasn’t in their condition would probably appear heavier than he really was.

   On page 1 of A Toast to Tomorrow Hambledon as Lehman is described as “short and cheerful.” Several pages later, after he’s surfaced to British Intelligence (without identifying his job in Germany) he’s described by the agent he’s put across the Belgian border as “a nondescript little man, grey eyes, rather ginger hair going grey, short but not fat, thin face with duelling scars across his right cheek, quick, energetic walk, rather a pleasant voice, cheerful-looking fellow, looked as though he could see a joke. Short nose, wide mouth, rather thin-lipped, square jaw.” Both those descriptions are in 1933.

   When he is recovering from the near-drowning in hospital in 1918 the doctor thought he was in his late twenties.

   I think that’s as much as we’re gonna get.

Hi Steve,

   Please find below a brief biography (well, the only one I have found) on the writer who, as Armitage Trail, wrote the novel Scarface.

   I wonder if anyone has ever done any research to track down the pseudonymous work mentioned in it. I asked Victor Berch who knows little more — apparently he could not even find him in the census for the years he was alive. (Apparently his brother, also difficult to trace in official records, wrote over 20 episodes for the Addams Family [television show] amongst other work).

   Just wonder if he is worth putting in your blog to see if anyone can add to the bio?

   Armitage Trail was a pseudonym for the American author Maurice Coons. The son of a theatrical impresario who managed the road tours of the New Orleans Opera Company, and also manufactured furniture and farm silos, Maurice Coons left school at 16 to devote all his time to writing stories. By 17 or 18, he was already selling stories to magazines. By his early twenties he was writing whole issues of various detective-story magazines under a great assortment of various names. And at 28 — after going to New York to write more stories, and from there to Hollywood to write movies — he dropped dead of a heart attack at the downtown Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles.

   At the time of his death, he weighed 315 pounds, had a flowing brown moustache, and wore Barrymore-brim Borsalina hats. He was survived by his brother, humorous writer Hannibal Coons.

   Maurice Coons gathered the elements for Scarface when living in Chicago, where he became acquainted with many local Sicilian gangs. For a couple of years, Coons spent most of his nights prowling Chicago’s gangland with his friend, a lawyer, and spent his days sitting in the sun room of his Oak Park apartment writing Scarface. He never did meet Al Capone, who was the inspiration for his immortal character, though Capone was very much alive when his book was published.

   When Howard Hughes was making plans to produce the movie, Coons wanted Edward G. Robinson to play the leading role because of his resemblance to Capone but being Hollywood, it ended up with Paul [Muni] playing Scarface, a different-looking sort of man altogether. The author did not live to see the picture, but Al Capone did, and screenwriter Ben Hecht had to talk fast to convince his henchmen that Scarface was not based on him. Scarface was also made into a film in 1983, directed by Brian de Palma and starring AI Pacino. Armitage Trail’s only other surviving novel is The Thirteenth Guest ( 1929). Both his novels prefigure the birth of hard-boiled fiction and Black Mask magazine.

   From Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

COONS, MAURICE (1902-1930); see pseudonym Armitage Trail.

TRAIL, ARMITAGE; pseudonym of Maurice Coons.

   * * Scarface (Clode, 1930, hc) [Chicago, IL] Long, 1931. Film: United Artists, 1932 (scw: Fred Palsey, W. R. Burnett, John Lee Mahin, Seton I. Miller, Ben Hecht; dir: Howard Hawks). Also: Universal, 1983 (scw: Oliver Stone; dir: Brian De Palma).

   * * The Thirteenth Guest (Whitman, 1929, hc) Film: Monogram, 1932 (scw: Francis Hyland, Arthur Hoerl, Armitage Trail; dir: Albert Ray). Also: Monogram, 1943, as Mystery of the Thirteenth Guest (scw: Charles Marlon, Tim Ryan, Arthur Hoerl; dir: William Beaudine).

Private Eye Writers of America

      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 13, 2007

      CONTACT: Ted Fitzgerald – Shamus Awards Chair tedfitz [at] msn.com

PRIVATE EYE WRITERS OF AMERICA ANNOUNCES 2007 SHAMUS AWARDS NOMINEES

The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) is proud to announce the nominees for the 26th annual Shamus Awards, given annually to recognize outstanding achievement in private eye fiction. The 2007 awards cover works published in the U.S. in 2006. The awards will be presented on September 28, 2007, at the PWA banquet in Anchorage, Alaska, during the weekend of the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.

2007 Shamus Awards Nominees (for works published in 2006)

Best Hardcover

The Dramatist by Ken Bruen (St. Martins Minotaur), featuring Jack Taylor

The Darkest Place by Daniel Judson (St. Martins Minotaur), featuring Reggie Clay

The Do-Re-Mi by Ken Kuhlken (Poisoned Pen Press), featuring Clifford and Tom Hickey

Vanishing Point by Marcia Muller (Mysterious Press), featuring Sharon McCone

Days of Rage by Kris Nelscott (St. Martins Minotaur), featuring Smokey Dalton

Best Paperback Original

Hallowed Ground by Lori G. Armstrong (Medallion Press), featuring Julie Collins

The Prop by Pete Hautman (Simon and Schuster), featuring Peeky Kane

An Unquiet Grave by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle), featuring Louis Kincaid

The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos, translated by Carlos Lopez (Akashic Books), featuring Hector Belascoaran Shayne

Crooked by Brian M. Wiprud (Dell), featuring Nicholas Palihnic

Best First Novel

Lost Angel by Mike Doogan (Putnam), featuring Nik Kane

A Safe Place for Dying by Jack Fredrickson. (St. Martin’s Minotaur), featuring Dek Elstrom,

Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin’s Minotaur), featuring Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer

The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes. (Wm. Morrow), featuring Ed Loy

18 Seconds by George D. Shuman. (Simon & Schuster), featuring Sherry Moore.

Best Short Story

“Sudden Stop” by Mitch Alderman. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006, featuring Bubba Simms

“The Heart Has Reasons” by O’Neil De Noux. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2006, featuring Lucien Kaye

“Square One” by Loren D. Estleman. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006, featuring Amos Walker

“Devil’s Brew” by Bill Pronzini. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. December 2006, featuring John Quincannon.

“Smoke Got In My Eyes” by Bruce Rubenstein. TWIN CITIES NOIR (Akashic), featuring Martin McDonough

PWA was founded in 1981 by Robert J. Randisi to recognize the private eye genre and its writers. Previous Shamus winners include Lawrence Block, Ken Bruen, Harlan Coben, Max Allan Collins, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Brendan DuBois, Loren D. Estleman, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Sue Grafton, James W. Hall, Steve Hamilton, Jeremiah Healy, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, John Lutz, Bill Pronzini, S.J. Rozan, Sandra Scoppettone and Don Winslow

   Just as the word “noir” means many things to many people, it is not easy to define exactly was is meant by a “cozy” mystery. It’s usually a matter of saying “I can’t define it, but I certainly know one when I see one.” But pointing out examples is always good; also worth doing is a list of the common characteristics that cozies almost always seem to have.

   Danna Beckett does a super job of both on her Cozy Mystery website, which she’s just told me about and which I recommend to you highly. You’ll find a long detailed alphabetical list of authors there, from Jeff Abbott and Alina Adams (*) to Cornell Woolrich and Eric Wright, as well as a smaller section of TV and movie cozies.

   (*) Skipping over Pearl Abraham (not a mystery writer) and Peter Abrahams (not a cozy writer), but there are very good reasons why they’re included. Why make a list of mystery writers and not include your favorites? It works for me.

  Hello Steve,

   I would like to submit a follow-up on the interesting observations about The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (for which, incidentally, Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Collins’s “The Moonstone” were also planned, but remained unproduced) and Orson Welles Great Mysteries.

   Orson Welles Great Mysteries, produced by Anglia Television (an independent British TV company serving the commercial network for the east of England), was a syndicated (taped) series of 26 half-hour episodes and was first broadcast in the London area from 6 July to 18 December 1974 (1st series) and then 18 September to 16 December 1975 (2nd series). The suitably haunting title music was by John Barry. Unfortunately, a very-unhaunting Orson Welles was brought in to introduce the stories, garbed in a black, swirling cloak and a slouch hat (suggesting the appearance of an Oliver Hardy as The Shadow).

    The story sources for the individual episodes are as follows:

   Captain Rogers (based on a story by W.W. Jacobs)
   The Leather Funnel (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
   A Terribly Strange Bed (Wilkie Collins)
   La Grande Breteche (Honore de Balzac)
   The Dinner Party (James Michael Ullman)
   Money To Burn (Margery Allingham; dramatised by Michael Gilbert)
   In the Confessional (Alice Scanlon Reach; with Milo O’Shea as Father Crumlish.
   Unseen Alibi (Bruce Graeme)
   Battle of Wits (Miriam Sharman)
   A Point of Law (W. Somerset Maugham)
   The Monkey’s Paw (W.W. Jacobs)
   The Ingenious Reporter (Pontsevrez)
   Death of an Old-Fashioned Girl (Stanley Ellin
   Farewell to the Faulkners (Mirian Allen de Ford)
   For Sale — Silence (Don Knowlton)
   Inspiration of Mr. Budd (Dorothy L. Sayers)
   An Affair of Honour (F. Britten Austin)
   The Power of Fear (Lawrence Treat; dramatised by N.J Crisp)
   Where There’s a Will (billed as an original script by Michael Gilbert, but wasn’t there an Agatha Christie story…?) Here, Richard Johnson plays Bruce Sexton.
   A Time to Remember (James Reach)
   Ice Storm (Jerome Barry; dramatised by N.J. Crisp)
   Come Into My Parlour (Gloria Amoury)
   Compliments of the Season (O. Henry)
   Under Suspicion (Norman Edwards)
   Trial for Murder (C.A. Collins and Charles Dickens)
   The Furnished Room (O. Henry)

   The script editor for the above series was John Rosenberg, who later became the producer for Anglia TV’s Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected (1979) and (now minus Dahl) Tales of the Unexpected (1980-88). The videotaped look and feel, rather disappointingly, was similar to the earlier Welles series.

   Interestingly, during the year of Dow Hour‘s monthly presentations, 1960, a lesser-known genre author also had his works (or at least his characters) produced — as Diagnosis: Unknown (CBS, July-September). Lawrence G. Blochman’s police pathologist Dr Daniel Coffee was played by Patrick O’Neal (with Cal Bellini as Dr Motilal Mookerji and Chester Morris as Captain Max Ritter) in a series of only 10 hour-long episodes. The mystery here is that this fascinating-sounding series, which nobody seems to have seen, either back then or in more recent times, seems to have disappeared entirely. Fortunately, two of the Dr Coffee books (the collection Diagnosis: Homicide, 1950, and novel Recipe for Homicide, 1952) do crop up on AbeBooks.

  Hi Steve,

   I’m a little late with this. The John Shepherd review reminded me to send you these comments.

   Some 25 years ago, when I was researching the life of Norbert Davis, I came across a couple of little-known facts about W.T. Ballard. Did you know that Rex Stout and Ballard were cousins? That’s why they have the same middle name: Todhunter.

   I also learned that Ballard did not have the use of his right arm. I suppose this means that in each of his most productive years he typed over a million words using one hand. I don’t know when or how he developed the handicap.

Hi —

   I’ve been searching for a mystery I read in about 1974 — it may have been several years old when I read it. Don’t know the author or title. The story takes place in NYC — a young medical student murders his pregnant girlfriend through some ingenious medical means. The friend or roommate of the murdered woman falls in love with the medical student and later figures out the truth about him. Since for some reason she cannot prove it, she marries the (now) doctor as a kind of daily punishment for him, with the truth disclosed in a letter kept with her lawyer “in case anything happens to her.”

   I believe the author was a woman. The book was well written, and I’ve been wracking my brains for years trying to come up with the title and author. Seems the title had something to do with her ironic “punishment” of the murderous doctor. Any idea?

   Last night I dreamed I went to Pulpcon again. In retrospect, getting on the hotel shuttle bus on early Sunday morning on the way back to the Dayton airport, it seemed as if the four preceding days had simply flown by, and it still does.

   Attendance was down once again, but not significantly, I’m told, from last year. The convention began the day after July 4th, and that was suggested as having a good deal to do with it. Sales were down also, or so I heard, but perhaps that was due to prices generally being up, on the pulps at least. With eBay as a backup, no dealer wants to sell his wares too low.

   And the selection was limited, mostly because the supply of pulp magazines not already in collectors’ hands is diminishing at an ever-increasing rate. But there were plenty of pulp reprints in the dealers’ room, for those who want only to read the odd-ball titles, and tons of paperbacks, hardcover books (mostly science fiction), and other reading material in the room. When I say tons, I am not exaggerating.

   Martin Grams had his usual pair of tables filled with DVDs of vintage TV shows, of which I resisted and bought only three: an obscure series on ABC in 1960, Dante, starring Howard Duff. I ought to look, but I believe that means I have 24 of the 26 total episodes. It’s a crime show in which night club owner Willie Dante (Duff) is trying to go straight, but his past keeps interfering.

   Coincidentally enough, as you’ll see in a minute, Martin has just published his latest book on Old Time Radio, this one a history of the Sam Spade series, starring (for the first part of the run) none other than Howard Duff. I bought a copy, and if you were to happen to ask me, I’d tell you that you should too.

   Most of the time at the show itself, disregarding periodic intervals for eating and visiting area bookstores, is spent by most everyone by walking around the dealers’ room and stopping for long talks with people on either side of the tables, fellow collectors you see perhaps only once or twice a year. Lots of discussion going on about what author’s works are going to be reprinted next, what big finds were made, how’s the family, and what are you looking for now?

   Randy Cox (editor of Dime Novel Roundup) made his first appearance in three years. Six of us, Randy, Jim Goodrich, Paul Herman, Walter and Jim Albert, and I, spent much time dining out and catching up with each other’s lives at great lengths. By the way, one piece of crushingly bad news was the demise of the Breakfast Club, a small café we’d discovered and frequented many mornings over the past five or six years.

   Mike Nevins also appeared, as full of bountiful energy as ever and promising me a new column for this blog as soon as he can do it. I also talked at length with Walker Martin, John Locke, Al Tonik, Ed Hulse and many others, including Jim Felton, whose enthusiasm for Robert Martin continues unabated and without bounds. Ed Hulse, publisher of Blood ’n’ Thunder magazine, won this year’s Lamont Award for his outstanding contributions to the hobby of pulp collecting. It was a popular choice.

   Guests of honor were David Saunders, son of famed pulp artist Norman Saunders, and Glenn Lord, a long time administrator of Robert E. Howard’s estate.

   And believe it or not, I bought a pulp, the one whose cover you see here. I was sorely tempted many many times, with hundreds of others I thought about, thought again, but did not buy. Every time I almost pulled the trigger, I thought of all the boxes of unread pulps I have in my basement and garage, and asked myself (foolishly, I know), do I really want to buy more?

   In all but one case the answer was no, but the one case is an example of one that I do not have boxes and boxes of, Black Mask for April 1930. You can’t tell from the cover, which mentions only Frederick Nebel and J. J. des Ormeaux, but this issue also contains two Raoul Whitfield stories, one as by Ramon Decola, and an installment of “The Glass Key,” by Dashiell Hammett.

   The condition is fairly iffy, but the stories are good. Maybe I’ll pick up Part Three next year. One can only dream, can’t one?

   Rather than be in town on the 4th for hamburgers and hot dogs, not to mention barbecue ribs, I’ll be flying to Dayton tomorrow for this year’s Pulpcon, where collectors of old pulp magazines, vintage paperbacks and all kinds of similar items gather to buy, swap and tell yarns of the ones that either they hooked or got away.

   I’m sure I’ll see some of you there, or if you don’t read this until you get back, I’m sure you had a good time, too.

   But I’m going to stay away from computers for a while, and there’ll be no postings until I’m home again, which will be next Sunday. The mid-summer hiatus may even be longer than that, I’m sorry to say. My son Jonathan is leaving home again. Next week he’ll be moving into a new place of his own a couple of towns north of here, and I’m the one who’ll be loading the SUV, driving the SUV, and unloading the SUV, not to mention waiting around for the real movers to bring his major stuff up from Maryland. (Well, he’ll help.)

   My scanner’s gotten cranky on me, too. I’m not too happy with the sharpness on the images included in that last post, and I certainly don’t feel like dealing with it any more this evening. It’s time to take a break all around. You may as well assume I’ll be off for a week or so. I hope it’s no longer than that. In the meantime, don’t do anything rash and stay cool.

[UPDATE] 07-11-07. I’ve done some work on the images I was unhappy about last week. I think there’s some improvement, but maybe it’s wishful thinking. I’ll take another look tomorrow, but at the moment it’s ten in the evening, and there’s a book calling my name…!

   I’m always on the lookout for previously unknown and/or unidentified private eyes, the fictional variety. Kevin Burton Smith keeps a pretty good list on his Thrilling Detective website, but he doesn’t have them all. I’ve helped in adding a few, and I thought I had another one when I came across the books of Bernard Bannerman, who chronicled the adventures of one Dave Woolf, a London-based PI about whom I’ll tell you more in a minute.

   It turns out, however, that Kevin has heard of Dave Woolf. He’s listed as a PI on his website, but only by name. There’s no page there for him, yet.

   Here’s what Bannerman’s entry looks like in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

   BANNERMAN, BERNARD; pseudonym of Andrew Arden (1948- )

      * Controlling Interest (n.) Sphere 1989 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * The Last Wednesday (n.) Sphere 1989 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * The Judge’s Song (n.) Sphere 1991 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * Orbach’s Judgment (n.) Sphere 1991 [Dave Woolf; London]

   Under his own name, Andrew Arden has one mystery novel to his credit:

   ARDEN, ANDREW (1948- ); see pseudonym Bernard Bannerman

      * The Motive Not the Deed (n.) Talmy Franklin 1975 [London]

   I don’t know anything about this book, but from the Internet, I have learned more about the author himself. Taken from his website:

   Fiction — the novels which appeared under his own name:

      * The Motive Not The Deed, 1974
      * No Certain Roof, 1984 [Landlord of working-class family wants to turn their house into flats.]
      * The Object Man, 1987
      * The Programme, 2001 [A law firm gets mixed up with a quasi-religious cult.]

   If you may have gotten the feeling that legal matters have something to do with the cases that Dave Woolf works on, you’d be right. I hasten to add that I’ve not read any of them yet, but I’ve recently put together a complete set of his adventures, as told by Bernard Bannerman.

   Each of the first two books mentions the other as a selling point, so perhaps they came out at the same time. But one has a lower publisher’s number than the other, so I’ll go with that one as the first of the two. (The same is true for the second pair of books.)

   Quoting from the back cover of each of the books:

THE LAST WEDNESDAY. Sphere 0382, pbo, 1989.

   No one falls out as viciously, as painfully or as messily as lawyers. Jack Nicholas, left-wing barrister, was supposed to have died in an accident. Drunk, said the coroner. Murdered, said his mother. Enter Dave Woolf, ex-solicitor, boozer and down-at-heel private eye.

   Even before Woolf starts asking questions, he finds that he is investigating not one death, but the wholesale despatch of Jack Nicolas’ erstwhile colleagues. There is very little for Woolf to go on – as he treks through the glitz and sleaze of London, through France and Norway in search of an elusive German – other than the apparent coincidence that all the deaths had occurred on the last Wednesday of every month.

CONTROLLING INTEREST. Sphere 0383, pbo, 1989.

   “The body of a woman solicitor was discovered by staff arriving yesterday morning at the Holborn offices of the prestigious London solicitors, Mather’s. Katrina Parkhurst, 32, has been shot. Police are investigating.”

   A murder on the premises is bad news for a law firm. It discourages clients. It also discourages recruits which is damaging to a firm like Mather’s with a reputation, a lot of clients, but very few partners. But, as Dave Woolf, one-time lawyer, part-time boozer and (almost) full-time private eye realizes, a thorough professional would prefer a murder to a leak any day of the week. Dead men can’t leak information on gambling debts, treachery, the darker side of freemasonry, and a dodgy business dating back forty years …

THE JUDGE’S SONG. Sphere 0520, pbo, 1991.

   It was, as Dave Woolf said, “the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in England.” High-count corruption, gangsters, fire-bombs and a bit of murder on the side – all of it against the backdrop of a family drama raging through London, the West Country and the South of France.

   It’s not the sort of thing that solicitors ought to be investigating. But Woolf is not ordinary solicitor. Back in the legal fold after a spell as a private eye, he’s roped into a spot of detection for the usual reason – an irresistible fee. Sustained by hefty slugs of Southern Comfort, Camels and his new Aussie sidekick, he’s ready to haul a few skeletons out of family cupboards. The trouble is, they’re still alive …

ORBACH’S JUDGEMENT. Sphere 0521, pbo, 1991.

   Dave Woolf, solicitor and private eye, has had respectability thrust upon him. He’s also been saddled with the most sensational case of his career.

   High Court Judge Sir Russell Orbach is a pillar of the establishment and a doting guardian to the orphaned Frankie. In public, that is. In private, according to Frankie’s famous half-sister, he’s a murderer. What’s more, she’s going to say so n her forthcoming autobiography. Would Woolf, asked the petrified publisher, check up on this bizarre accusation?

   It’s just up Woolf’s street; he specialises in investigating the misconduct of members of the legal profession. It’s sometimes like biting the hand that feeds you; but when that hand is adept at bullying, blackmail and bundling bodies into the ocean, it’s Woolf who’s in danger of being bitten … and badly.

Comments: First of all, I do like that last line. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve not read these, but I have skimmed through them. Not well enough, I admit, to identify Woolf’s new Aussie sidekick in The Judge’s Song, but enough to know that these are books that are not likely ever to be published in the US, a country whose inhabitants have no idea what a solicitor is, nor how he or she is different from a barrister.

   My impression is, and I could be wrong, is that these books are like the rough-and-tumble adventures of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy capers, only with a backdrop of courtroom drama and stodgy legal wrangling rather than the much more dodgy antiques business. More reliable input would be welcome.