The latest batch of covers uploaded to Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3 Cents a Day website are those for Gateway Books, 1939-1942.

   Here’s Bill Pronzini’s introduction to the page where you’ll find them:

   Authors include Norman Daniels, once under his own name and twice as William Dale; John L. Benton (Tom Curry) with two titles; Will F. Jenkins, aka Murray Leinster; G. T. Fleming-Roberts, as Frank Rawlings, with The Lisping Man, a novel featuring magician George Chance, aka The Ghost.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, MURDER – John Shepherd.

Belmont 215, paperback original, 1960.

   This book is advertised on the front cover as “a new Bill Lennox mystery – over 1,000,000 copies sold.” That might have puzzled many a would-be buyer, trying to think back as to when he’d seen a book by John Shepherd before. And to tell you the truth, he wouldn’t have, as this was the first book that John Shepherd ever wrote.

   I’d better take that back. John Shepherd is a common enough name that it could have easily been the byline of plenty of books. In the interest of utmost accuracy, I’ll rephrase what I just said. This was the first mystery that any John Shepherd ever wrote.

   What about Bill Lennox? Was he a mystery character who’d be immediately recognized as a hot sales commodity in 1960? He could have been, but if you’d like my best guess, probably not. Bill Lennox had last appeared in mystery form a mere six years before, in a book called Dealing Out Death, published as a paperback reprint in 1954 by an obscure company called Graphic Books. The byline? Not John Shepherd. The byline for Dealing Out Death was W. T. Ballard. It would have taken a lot of rather esoteric knowledge on the part of a would-be buyer before this book would have snapped up off the newsstand on the basis of this particular sales pitch.

   Of course, maybe you know all of this, and I’m berating the unberatable, not now, not almost 50 years later. (And by the way, my spell-checker doesn’t know that word either.) Both Bill Lennox and W. T. Ballard have come up for discussion here on the Mystery*File blog not too long ago, mostly, as you’ll recall, in relation to his pulp magazine appearances in Black Mask between 1933 and 1942.

   As mentioned then, but it’s worth repeating now, when he stopped writing about him for the pulp fiction magazines, Ballard took his character over to book-length hardcover cases, but unlike Erle Stanley Gardner, neither he nor Bill Lennox managed to succeed very well in making the transition. While putting together a more comprehensive, detailed list of the books that Bill Lennox, the Hollywood trouble-shooter, appeared in, I decided to go all out and using Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV as a guide, come up with a list of all of Ballard’s crime fiction in book length form:

The Bill Lennox books:

      Say Yes to Murder. Putnam, 1942. Penguin 566, pb, October 1945. Reprinted as The Demise of a Louse, as by John Shepherd. Belmont 91-248, pb, 1962.
      Murder Can’t Stop. McKay. 1946. Graphic #26, pb, 1950.

      Dealing Out Death. McKay, 1948. Graphic #72, pb, 1954.
      Lights, Camera, Murder, as by John Shepherd. Belmont 215, pbo, 1960.

The Tony Costaine/Bert McCall books, as by Neil MacNeil:

      Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal 807, pbo, September 1958.

      Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal s844, pbo, January 1959.
      Two Guns for Hire. Gold Medal s898, pbo, July 1959.
      Hot Dam. Gold Medal 964, pbo, January 1960.
      The Death Ride. Gold Medal 1005, pbo, November 1960.

      Mexican Slay Ride. Gold Medal s1182, pbo, January 1962.
      The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal d1658, pbo, 1966.

The Lt. Max Hunter books:

      Pretty Miss Murder. Permabook M-4228, pbo, December 1961.

      The Seven Sisters. Permabook M-4258, pbo, October 1962.
      Three for the Money. Permabook M-4297, pbo, November 1963.

Non-series books:

      Murder Picks the Jury, as by Harrison Hunt. [Co-written with Norbert Davis.] Samuel Curl/Mystery House, 1947.
      Walk in Fear. Gold Medal 259, pbo, September 1952. [Based on “I Could Kill You,” a story that appeared in The Shadow magazine in 1948.]
      Chance Elson. Cardinal C-277; pbo, November 1958.
      Age of the Junkman, as by P. D. Ballard. Gold Medal d1352, pbo, 1963.
      End of a Millionaire, as by P. D. Ballard. Gold Medal d1486, pbo, 1964.
      Murder Las Vegas Style. Tower 42-778, pbo, 1967.
      Brothers in Blood, as by P.D. Ballard. Gold Medal T2563, pbo, 1972.
      The Kremlin File, as by Nick Carter. Award AN1165, pbo, 1973.
      The Death Brokers, as by P.D. Ballard. Gold Medal M2867, pbo, 1973.

   After World War II, W. T. Ballard seems to have been more successful in writing westerns than he was with his mystery fiction, but I haven’t taken the time to do any research in that particular direction. And this review is nominally of Lights, Camera, Murder, so let’s get back to that, shall we?

   Sadly to say, however, and I’ll say this upfront, this is a book that’s little more than ordinary, and in some ways less. It is, after all, as Bill Pronzini has pointed out to me, a book that was published under a never-before-used pseudonym and put out by a second-rate publisher. On the other hand, I read the book all the way through, and I can’t say that about every book I pick up to read.

   The greatest appeal this book probably has today is to completists: those who want every Bill Lennox story there is to read; or those who want every novel that W. T. Ballard wrote; or simply those who collect everything that Belmont ever published. (These completists have been arranged in order of decreased (although not negligible) likelihood. My spell-checker doesn’t recognize the word completist either, but we know you’re out there, don’t we?)

   To begin at the beginning, though, the story begins when Lennox is called upon to salvage a movie that’s in production down in Mexico, where one of the leading male stars has been found knifed to death in his room. The leading female star is in jail for the crime, having been seen leaving his room quietly the night before. This is the kind of disastrous situation in which a legendary trouble-shooter is always called upon to save the day, and quickly.

   In quick order we are re-introduced to Sol Spurk, the head of the studio and the only man that Lennox reports to. In the pulp stories, though, I am sure he spelled his last name as Spurck, and sure enough, on page 97, it is spelled that way too. We also meet Lennox’s steady girl friend, a movie columnist named Nancy Hobbs, although very briefly. Their relationship is a loose one, meaning that neither places any restrictions on the other.

   Which is a good thing, one realizes quickly on, as Lennox does not offer much resistance, first of all, to the leading star (Sylvia Armstrong) who is in jail for the crime she did not commit, or so she says, even though she was seen leaving his room during the night the murder was committed. Since she is in essence a victim of nymphomania, perhaps what she says may not entirely be the truth, even though the dead man was said to be homosexual.

   But it is the beautiful and unsullied Candy Kyle, new to motion pictures, motion picture making and motion picture people, whom Lennox finds himself falling for. On her part, she serves as his assistant in crime-solving by keeping tabs of people, knowing where they are or should be, being shot at together, and being rammed on the open sea by power craft together.

   This is, as you fully well realize, the way that bad guys have of warning detectives off. It is also the approach which of course never works, even with high rolling gamblers and drug kingpins calling the shots, and is rather typical of the clichés and not-very-involving story line that ensue as soon as Lennox crosses the Mexican border.

   Lennox’s past, which began back in 1933, as you may recall, has been updated into the TV era and the age of beatnicks (sic) and the aforementioned drug-pushing industry. On page five, past history irregardless, it is said that he has had a ten year’s tenure working for Spurk. The usual time compression procedure is at play here, and don’t get me wrong. It’s happened to the best of fictional detectives, from Perry Mason, Hercule Poirot on down, though perhaps their creators were less blatant about it.

   The plot itself is not very interesting, as I suggested before. If anything, I was more interested in the players themselves. Even though some come from solid stock companies, some, including Lennox, came to life, including Candy Kyle, and some more than others.

   Speaking of which, the ending is a wowser, one of those endings that really make you wonder what is going to happen next. Except, of course, there was no “next.” This is all he wrote.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Brothers Keepers

Fawcett Crest 2-2962; paperback reprint, no date stated. Hardcover edition: M. Evans & Co., 1975. Later paperback edition: Mysterious Press, 1993.

   Donald Westlake has written a long list of crime and mystery fiction over his writing career, all of the books avidly read and well celebrated. He’s well regarded for his comic novels too, and sometimes his crime fiction and his comic novels are one and the same. Not so this time. Even though I’m reviewing Brothers Keepers here on Mystery*File, and wickedly funny it is indeed, it’s a stretch to call it crime fiction in any shape, whatsit or form. You really have to hunt to find anything truly criminous in it all all. Al Hubin in Crime Fiction IV agrees with me, marking the title with a dash in front, indicating that it’s only marginally crime-related.

   For the basic plot line, I’m going to quote from the back cover of the Mysterious Press paperback. The book from Crest is actually closer at hand, since it happens to be the one I read, but I think the story is summarized a whole lot better in this later edition:

   There’s some exaggeration there in the last line, I’m sorry to say, all the more to sell books, I’m sure, but the rest is fairly well on the mark. The only crime, as far as I could see, occurs on page 139, when the Brothers learn to their dismay that the lease to their monastery, the one that will prevent them from being evicted has been stolen. Was it an inside job? Or has someone managed to infiltrate the monastery without anyone noticing? Good questions, both.

   As a purely personal matter, Brother Benedict may sin against God in this book, but his sins generally fall below the standard of being a crime, lust (for Mrs. Bone, the landlord’s divorced daughter) being not generally being a prosecutable offense in most courts of the land. Please note the outer cover of the Crest paperback (with the cutout hole part of the manufacture) versus the inner illustration behind. You may have a lot of sympathy for Brother Benedict’s anguish.

   Quoting would be a good idea once again, I believe. From page 107 this time, as Brother Benedict, who tells the story, is taking his first ride in an automobile in ten years:

   I see Gina Gershon in the part. Maybe Matt Damon as Brother Benedict, although I haven’t thought about that half of the casting anywhere near long enough. A better name may come to me later.

   I didn’t keep an exact count, but I’d estimate that this book averages a laugh-out-loud guffaw every six pages. This includes Brother Oliver’s comment about an edifice complex on page 68. This may not seem to you like a very high ratio, but considering all of the smiles and grins in between, and the fact that most books do not have a laugh-out-loud cause for guffaw anywhere in them at all, and I think you might pause to reconsider, and rightfully so.

   In Pity Him Afterwards, a book by Mr. Westlake which I reviewed some time back, he showed me that he knows his way around a summer playhouse with the ease of one who’s been around one often, and on the inside. The same is true, as difficult as it may to believe, of Mr. Westlake and monasteries. Of course I’ve never been in one or part of one, and maybe I’m easily convinced, but if verisimilitude is what you’re looking for, as far as the settings where the books you read take place, this one has it, and in a bushel full.

   The only part of this small affair – but a huge one for the monks involved, who are almost totally ignorant of the ways of the outside world – that I am a little hesitant about recommending outright is the ending, which didn’t go in the direction I was thinking that it was going to go. But it’s still a terrific ending – I just read it again, and it certainly works for me.

   What the heck. Forget my quibble. Let’s call it an outright recommendation. For a partially irreverent view of religion and the outside world of high finance as well, tossing in a bit of angst-filled bawdiness to boot, this is book that will challenge all comers, crime fiction or no.

   I don’t know if you know this, but I collect gothic romances. Nobody’s publishing them today. They’re dead in the water as far as today’s publishing world is concerned, as dead as can be, but from the mid-60s on into the later 1970s, they were as hot a category in bookstores and newsstands across the country as anything you can imagine, except for Harry Potter.

   In the later 70s, the so-called bodice-ripper romances began to take over, and the gothics, which themselves on occasion verged into the supernatural, either continued on in that direction into occult fiction of various kinds, eventually becoming the very popular paranormal romances of today, complete with vampires, werewolves and all kinds of sexy shape-changers. Or, to continue on with the “either” in the preceding sentence, they became novels of romantic suspense, still very much a common category today.

   I recently had the opportunity, while striving to “clean out” my basement, to go through a box of gothic romances I have – the ones having covers with a girl in the foreground and a spooky house in the background with a light on in a second story window – in order to add anything I find that’s new to add to Al Hubin’s Addenda for Crime Fiction IV. Most of these additions are in the form of previously unknown settings, but once in a while a brand new previously unknown title comes to fore, as happens once in the ten titles below.

   All of this data is in Part 16 of the ongoing Addenda, which I’ve just uploaded this afternoon. As for Al, he’s still working and Part 17 is well under way. But please take a special look at the covers, if you would. I’m sorry they’re small enough that you can’t make out all of the details, but for variations on a theme, you probably couldn’t ask for much more than this, from a small sample of size ten.

JAN ALEXANDER. The Glass House. Add setting: Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia)

LOUISE BERGSTROM. The Pink Camillia. Add setting: Washington state (San Juan Islands)

THERESA CHARLES. The Man for Me. U.S. title: The Shrouded Tower. Ace, 1966. Add setting: England.

SUSAN HUFFORD. The Devil’s Sonata. Add setting: Massachusetts [South Egremont].

PAULE MASON. The Shadow. US title: The Man in the Garden. Add setting: London (England).

SARAH NICHOLS. ADD: Grave’s Company. Popular Library, pbo, 1975. Setting: Ohio; past.

MARY KAY SIMMONS. Smuggler’s Gate. Add setting: Maine.

FRANCES PATTON STATHAM. Bright Star, Dark Moon. Note: Author’s full name is used on this book. Add setting: South Carolina (Charleston); 1883.

SHARON WAGNER. Dark Waters of Death. Add setting: Montana.

DAOMA WINSTON. A Visit After Dark. Add setting: Texas.

   Following up on the entry posted earlier here on Olive Harper, a lady who specialized in novelizing mystery plays around the beginning of last century, Victor Berch has made some revisions, corrections and additions to the previous list of books she wrote. None of these changes are major, but all of them are essential.

   Many of these novelizations are, of course, included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, but the true origins of these stories were not known for most of them when CFIV came out. This new entry for Olive Harper will show up shortly in the ongoing Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   The changes have been made in the previous blog entry, which you can see by following the link above. Victor also sent along another ten or twelve more cover images, some of which you see here, but there are simply too many of them for small blog entries like this one. So what I’ve done is to create a new separate page on the original Mystery*File website page, one that’s large enough to hold them all, along with the newly revisions.

   Take a look now, if you would, at www.mysteryfile.com/Harper/Compleat.html. It’s as complete now as we can get it. So far.

[UPDATE] 06-28-07. This didn’t take long, did it? Victor’s found two more cover images, and I’ve just uploaded them both to The Compleat OLIVE HARPER webpage. (See the link in the last paragraph above.)

   The Hillman-Curl cover scans found at Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3 Cents a Day website are complete now from 1936 to 1939, which marked the end of their “Clue Club” line. I uploaded the covers for 1939 over the weekend, but I haven’t had a chance to let you know till now. (It’s been a busy week, and it promises to get even busier.)

   Included in this last batch are a Bulldog Drummond title by Gerald Fairlie, one by pulp writer Steve Fisher, and two by Barry Perowne, one of them a Raffles adventure. Coming next: perhaps Arcadia House (1939-1967) or Mystery House (1940-1959), but one of the smaller companies like Gateway (1939-1942) may sneak in ahead of both of the two larger ones.

   There’s not much that’s known about a mystery writer named Mike Teagle. He wrote a pair of detective novels published by Hillman-Curl in the late 1930s, but after the second was published, he seems to have vanished completely. There’s not a single source that has any biographical data about him. The two books appear to be the only legacy he’s left behind.

   We can make some preliminary judgments and surmises, though. Since “Mike Teagle” is a character in his first book, the odds are that the name’s a pseudonym — possibly but not very likely to be the author’s too. Bill Pronzini says, “Judging from the political story, theme, and characters in Death over San Silvestro, I would guess that he was a newspaperman with leftist leanings, probably based in New York City or environs. His knowledge of NYC and Long Island is evident in the background descriptions in Murders in Silk.”

   Bill goes on to say: “Both novels are ultra-hardboiled. I prefer Silk, but that’s because I’m not a political animal. Silk is flawed, but it has well-drawn characters, good dialogue, an abundance (probably an overabundance) of violent action, and moves at a breakneck pace.”

Death Over San Silvestro. Hillman-Curl, hardcover, 1936. Two printings known.

Leading character: Mike Teagle, bodyguard.

Setting: New York City

Jacket Blurb: Every American is a suspect in the strange murders which rock the country as the people of he United States approach their most crucial presidential election.

   In the midst of this fog of death and hidden conflict moves the figure of Horace J. Breasted, sometimes sinister, always powerful, driving ruthlessly toward his secret goal. A strange man, Horace J. Breasted – a multi-millionaire publisher of newspapers and magazines, friend of presidents and foreign dictators, paramour of beautiful women, owner of vast fields and factories and mines. A man hated by millions, feared by millions, envied by millions – doomed to die at the hands of an assassin.

   Caught up with Breasted in this whirlwind of mystery and danger are the President of the United States and his Republican opponent, gangsters and society matrons, show girls and senators, a general with a secret, and a girl with a cause. Caught up with them, flung about in the madness of speeded-up America at the crisis, are all the others, too – millionaires and starving men, Communists and Fascists, Democrats, Republicans and Socialists.

   How many of these are involved in the mysterious murders that shock America? Which of these know the forces that are at work behind the scenes to gain power over the American people for their own secret purposes? And which of these will be the next to die?

Review excerpts: “The book is probably the nearest thing to Marxist mystery-mongering the circulating library patrons have had to date.” – Carlton Brown, New Republic

    “The story is well told, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”– Isaac Anderson, New York Times

    “Tough ’n terrible.”– Saturday Review of Literature

       [Taken from the front flap of Murders in Silk:]

    “Makes The Thin Man seem like a juvenile.” – Alvin C. Hammer

    “Most audacious mystery novel of the year.” – Toledo News Bee

    “The most exciting fiction story you have read since the ban was lifted on Nick Carter.” – Springfield Union

Murders in Silk. Hillman-Curl, hardcover, 1938. Mystery Novel of the Month, no number [#1], digest paperback, no date. Lion #60, paperback, 1951. John Long, UK, hc, 1939. Phantom Books #598, Australia, digest pb, 1954.

Leading characters: Tiberius Bixby and Zeb Bixby.

Setting: New York City and Long Island

Jacket Blurb: The troubles of Tiberius Bixby began when the man with the purple tie got his throat cut in the women’s washroom on a Long Island Railroad train. And mixed up in the bloody jigsaw jumble were:

   The girl in the red calot who strangely hid her knowledge of a dead man and thought murder didn’t constitute a social introduction;

   The blonde Paula, who celebrated because her father was mysteriously burned to death;

   Nicky Pet and the woman dentist; a Ghurka knife and the cryptic cry of a dead man’s wife – all tangled in a fog of alcohol and murder.

   What have all these to do with silk?

   The answer was found by eccentric old Pa Bixby, who, at seventy, was still able to appreciate a well-filled stocking as he mixed his whiskey with philosophy.

Review excerpts: “The story is fast, slick, exciting and altogether an outstanding example of the tough trend; it also contains additional features in the way of character and real amusement. If you must have a ten-minute egg, read Murders in Silk.” – Will Cuppy, Books

    “Good-natured cynicism, a clever plot well told, and a seventy-year-old chronic alcoholic make this book a feature of the mystery season. Three murders … and a wholly surprising denouement are some of the other factors that entitle this story to high praise.”– Boston Transcript.

W. T. BALLARD – Hollywood Troubleshooter. Edited by JAMES L. TRAYLOR. Popular Press, Bowling Green University; trade paperback; 1985. Also published in hardcover.

   Subtitled “W. T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox Stories,” not only does this book contain five of the twenty-seven of them that appeared in Black Mask during that magazine’s heyday, probably the best-known detective pulp of them all, but all of the following are included as well: an overview of Ballard’s career by Traylor and a short biographical sketch by Ballard himself, both extremely informative; an introduction to the Lennox stories and novels; and last but not least, a complete bibliography for all of Ballard’s long and prolific writing career.

   It’s a cliché, I suppose, but this is a book that should be on the shelf of every pulp detective fan, no ifs, ands or buts. After a lengthy career for the pulp magazines — even before he started writing for Black Mask in 1933, he had already been published in the October 1927 issue of Brief Stories — Ballard switched with the times to writing novels, some in hardcover, but most of them paperback originals.

   When he found the market for his mystery fiction was drying up, Ballard switched to writing westerns, most of these coming out under the pen names of either Todhunter Ballard or John Hunter. In the 1950s and 60s he wrote a number of television plays as well, for such series as Death Valley Days, Wild Bill Hickok and Shotgun Slade.

   While the Lennox stories in Black Mask appeared only from 1933 to 1942, he was apparently fond enough of Lennox as a character to continue writing about his adventures in hardcover form: Say Yes to Murder (Putnam, 1942), Murder Can’t Stop (McKay, 1946), and Dealing Out Death (McKay, 1947). Much later on, a fourth book, Lights, Camera, Murder (Belmont, pb, 1960), finally appeared, published for some reason under the name of John Shepherd.

   Here’s a suggestion from me. Lennox may have been the first Hollywood troubleshooter to have appeared in fictional form, the right-hand man for Consolidated Studio’s production chief, Sol Spurck. Having no specific title, according to the last of the five stories in this book, Lennox’s assignment was “to iron out whatever bottlenecks developed in the production schedule.” Murder is often one of those bottlenecks, as well as any other kind of behavior that might affect the studio’s star and starlets — including blackmail, crooked horse racing, gambling debts or the like. (Hollywood, crime and cover-ups somehow seem to go together naturally, at least in days gone by, if not today.)

   Whenever a pulp writer got a hot series going, there was often of crew of regulars that began to appear in the same stories the main character did, and Ballard was no different. (He may even have been one of the forerunners of the idea.) Given only self-contained glimpses here and there, and spread over the run, you won’t get the full flavor of this in the same way that a long-time regular reader of Black Mask might have been able to, but Nancy Hobbs, for example, who writes about movies, has short but very striking roles in the first two of them. Later on, it comes as no surprise to learn, she appears in his adventures as a long term girl friend and lover, although marriage does not seem to be in the cards for either of them.

   The earlier stories are told in the more terse hard-boiled style popularized by Dashiell Hammett, but by the end of the run some personal background had been built up around Lennox, making him a bit more human — but without losing any of the sheer sensationalism of the pulps. Lennox’s final Black Mask appearance, for example, is a case in which a killer sends his victim through the buzzsaw at a still very much functioning lumber mill.

   Although the tales contained in the book are, in all honesty, not among the finest the pages of vintage pulp magazine fiction can offer, they’re certainly right up there in the second level from the top. And if you’re like me, when you’ve finished reading the five in the book, you’re going to wish that somebody would publish them all of the Lennox stories, and then the “Red Drake” ones, then all of the Ace G-Man Stories, and on and on and on.

   Stories contained in this volume, all from Black Mask:

Postscript: Looking back at this review several days later, all I can think of is that I didn’t provide you with an excerpt from any of the stories. This one’s from early in the very last one, “Lights, Action — Killer!” I don’t think it needs any more introduction from me, other than to say that Lennox is talking to Sol Spurck about the latter’s latest movie, which is in trouble, as usual:

UPDATE [06-23-07]. Here, for the sake of completeness, is a complete list of Lennox short fiction:

“A Little Different” (September 1933, Black Mask)
“A Million Dollar Tramp” (October 1933, Black Mask)
“Positively the Best Liar” (November 1933, Black Mask)
“Trouble-Hunted” (January 1934, Black Mask)
“Tears Don’t Help” (April 1934, Black Mask)
“That’s Hollywood” (May 1934, Black Mask)
“Whatta Guy” (July 1934, Black Mask)
“Crime’s Web” (September 1934, Black Mask)
“Snatching is Dynamite” (October 1934, Black Mask)

“In Dead Man’s Alley” (November 1934, Black Mask)
“Murder Isn’t Legal” (December 1934, Black Mask)
“Gambler’s Don’t Win” (April 1935, Black Mask)
“Numbers With Lead” (January 1936, Black Mask)
“Blackmailers Die Hard” (May 1936, Black Mask)
“Whipsawed” (December 1936, Black Mask)
“There’s No Excuse for Murder” (September 1936, Black Mask)
“This is Murder” (March 1937, Black Mask)
“Fortune Deals Death” (July 1937, Black Mask)
“Mobster Guns” (November 1938, Black Mask)
“No Parole from Death” (February 1939, Black Mask)
“Scars of Murder” (November 1939, Black Mask)
“Pictures for Murder” (September 1940, Black Mask)
“The Lady with the Light Blue Hair” (January 1941, Black Mask)
“Not in the Script” (July 1941, Black Mask)
“Murder is a Sweet Idea” (November 1941, Black Mask)
“The Colt and the Killer” (February 1942, Black Mask)
“Lights, Action — Killer!” (May 1942, Black Mask)

   Now don’t you wish that someone would publish them all?

   I don’t know about you, but whenever I come home from a book-hunting expedition and start going through my finds and come across an author I’ve never heard of before, I immediately go to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV to see what other mystery fiction he might have done.

   Case in point. George Adams, whose entry in CFIV looks like this:

   ADAMS, GEORGE (1936- )
       * Swindle (Pocket Books, 1989, pb) [Charlie Byrne; New York City, NY]
       * Insider’s Price (Pocket Books, 1993, pb) [Charlie Byrne; New York City, NY]

   The book I bought while on the road was his first one, Swindle, and thanks to the Internet, it wasn’t too difficult to find his other one. Nor was it too expensive. I don’t think the demand is very high, but let’s see if I can’t do something about that. Maybe I’ll succeed, and maybe I won’t, but it’s worth a try.

Swindle. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1989.

From the back cover:

         THE CAMERA NEVER LIES …

   Charlie is a high-fashion photographer, part-time bicycle racer and a full-time lover. Manhattan is his playground. But when his sexy stylist loses $50,000 to a phony investment scheme. Charlie makes his first mistake. With the help of an out-of-work actor and a very busy hustler he sets out to scam the scammer – and get the money back. Instead, he finds a money-mad netherworld of insider trading, wiseguys, murder and sex, and there’s no telling the good guys from the bad … A gorgeous woman and a Wall Street wizard are the heavy hitters in a ruthless game to separate New York’s most beautiful people from their money. Charlie Byrne has wandered right into the middle of a nightmare that could only happen in New York – and getting out will be as simple as staying alive.

About the author:

   Like his hero, Charlie Byrne, George Adams is a well-known New York advertising photographer who can be found racing his bike in Central Park on Sundays. Unlike Charlie, he almost always finishes the New York Times crossword puzzle. Adams’ work appears on the front cover of this book.

Review excerpt: [Chicago Sun-Times] “A page turner with lots of twists and turns, flesh-and-blood characterizations, and swift and rhythmic prose. It’s hard to believe Swindle is a first novel.”

Insider’s Price. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1993.

From the back cover:

         THE ART OF THE STEAL

   High-fashion photographer Charlie Byrne heads from his humble midtown digs to the Upper East Side when old acquaintance JoJo Cyzeski – now Josephine – hires him to shoot a priceless Aubusson tapestry. The tapestry, and the fabulous co-op, belong to Marc Ransom, megabucks New York real estate developer and legendary ladykiller. But a darker side to the glittering world develops when the shoot is short-circuiited by a blackout and an apparent suicide in the adjoining courtyard. That’s when Charlie meets the gorgeous sister of the dead woman, who leads him into the gilded precincts of real estate royalty, where doing business can be murder….

   From a terrifying Times Square fleabag hotel to a penthouse bought with drop-dead deals, from the homeless woman camped in his doorway to the bevy of beauties in Ransom’s collection, Charlie follows clues to the suspect suicide and lands on the bottom line of the New York real estate game – where monopoly is played for keeps.

From inside the front cover:

       IF THE STAIRWELL WAS A GOOD PLACE TO GET MUGGED, THE ELEVATOR WAS EVEN BETTER …

   I leaned on the button continuously. “Come on,” I pleaded.

   A woman’s scream pierced the ambient sound of TV’s and ghetto blasters. “He’s an old man, leave him alone!” Smack! Then a baby was bawling.

   Tito and I swapped looks. We bolted down the corridor. A spindly black girl, a bawling child on her hip, sobbed into her hand. Four goons were working someone over.

   Tito leveled the Nikon to his eye and fired. They froze like statues. The flash etched them on my retina. One was Angel. The bandaged one was James. The other two were strangers. An old man was lying on the floor.

   “Yo, James, lookee ’ere.” Angel grinned, his vision clearing.

   One of them flicked open a switchblade. The four of them advanced.

   Tito and I began backpedaling. I sighted my camera and let them have a blast of strobe. The flashes took forty seconds to recharge, an eternity. We’d shot our load …

   “Get ’em,” Angel barked …

MICHAEL SHAYNE: PRIVATE DETECTIVE. 20th Century Fox, 1940. Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Walter Abel, Elizabeth Patterson, Donald MacBride, Douglas Dumbrille. Based on the novel Dividend on Death, by Brett Halliday. Director: Eugene Ford.

   Some random thoughts that may shape themselves into a review, and maybe not. What you see is what you get. The recently released DVD set of the first few Shayne movies calls them noir. Not so. It’s a good selling point, but when it gets to the point that every black and white movie made in the 1940s with a crime or mystery in it is called noir, the word simply no longer has any meaning.

   The first true noir film may have been The Maltese Falcon; I really haven’t thought about it too much, but it certainly could have been one of the first. I suppose it all depends on your own personal definition of noir.

   MSPD came out a few months before TMF, and it may have been a step in the right direction, but it’s way too light-hearted, and Lloyd Nolan is a little too goofy in the leading role, for the film, based on author Brett Halliday’s Dividend on Death, to be anything close to noir, using anyone’s definition. TMF is played straight, giving audiences the feeling for what a tough mystery film (as opposed to gangster movie) could really be like.

   At least, as I thought for a while, Michael Shayne doesn’t have a stooge for a sidekick in this movie — another step in the right direction — but on the other hand, Chief Painter (Donald MacBride) has a cop as his right hand man who is as dumb as they come, and Shayne does have Aunt Olivia (Elizabeth Patterson), who’s a dedicated fan of Ellery Queen, murder mysteries and The Baffle Book, to give him strong support when it counts.

   Nolan I called goofy, but he’s still immensely enjoyable in the role, as long as you don’t think of him as Brett Halliday’s Michael Shayne. Seeing the repo men moving the furniture out of his office at the beginning of the film, when cases have apparently been tough to come by for him, certainly sets a certain tone. And watching him cover himself with a blanket when Phyllis Brighton (Marjorie Weaver), whom he’s been hired to bodyguard by her rich father, catches him with his pants down, is mildly funny but hardly, I suspect, how the real Michael Shayne might have reacted in the same situation.

   Not that the real Michael Shayne was really truly tough-as-nails hardboiled or one of theose super-sexed PI’s who came along later, but Lloyd Nolan, he wasn’t either.

   Perhaps as the series goes along, given the TMF influence, the humor lessens and the mystery is played straight, but even if it doesn’t, I’m not going to be concerned about it.

   The story has to do with a gambling casino, horse-racing, a murder, a ditched dame, a possible suicide note, the switching of the barrels of two guns, a bottle of ketchup and a piece of jewelry that comes unpinned at the wrong time, perhaps even a couple of times. It really is a complicated case, I grant you that, which is one of the things I had in mind when I called this a possible transition into true noir from detective films that felt they also had to make the audience laugh.

   It’s remarkable, looking back now, how all of the plot is made to fit into a tight 77 minutes, which I have a hunch is a little longer than the average murder mystery movie at the time. I’ve watched it twice now, and there’s not a minute that’s really wasted. It was well worth the time, and if I may say so, probably yours as well.