MIKE HAMMER: SONG BIRD. 2003. Movie compiled from two episodes of Mike Hammer, Private Eye, May 10 & 17, 1998. Stacy Keach, Shannon Whirrey, with Jack Sheldon, Moira Walley, Frank Stallone. Based on characters created by Mickey Spillane. Director: Jonathan Winfrey.

   As far as I’m concerned, Stacy Keach is Mike Hammer on TV. Not Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, I didn’t say that. But as a savvy, trenchcoat-wearing private eye handy both with a gun (Betsy) and a quip – “Lila B. went through piano players like Janis Joplin did bottles of whiskey” – who just happens to be named Mike Hammer on the small screen, there simply is or was no better.

   The TV series that this film was taken from was the third or fourth time he’d taken the role, if I have the chronology correct. I’m taking this information from http://www.stacykeach.com/hammer-series.htm, but I’ll take the responsibility if I happen to be restating it incorrectly.

1. MICKEY SPILLANE’S MURDER ME, MURDER YOU. (1983, CBS, TV movie)

2. MICKEY SPILLANE’S MIKE HAMMER. (1984-1985, CBS, series). 22 60-minute episodes.

3. THE NEW MIKE HAMMER. (1986-1987, CBS, series). 22 60-minute episodes.

4. MIKE HAMMER, PRIVATE EYE. (1997, syndicated series). 26 60-minute episodes.

    By the time the syndicated series came along, episodes of which I don’t remember ever seeing before, he seems to have mellowed into the part, fitting into the role as if it were an old shoe, an old dog who no longer needs to learn new tricks. In this series Velda was played by Shannon Whirrey, who gets second billing on the DVD case. Whirry began her career playing what are generically called erotic B-movies. Playing Velda was a step up into better roles.

    “Song Bird” is a heartfelt homage to jazz, smoky jazz clubs, jittery, jiving jazz musicians and jazz singers that doesn’t make a lot of sense as a murder mystery, but I’ve watched it twice in the last couple of months, and I’m bound to be watching it a few times more.

    Jack Sheldon in the real world is a wise-cracking jazz singer and trumpet player who in “Song Bird” plays a wise-cracking jazz singer and trumpet player named Des Long who has a jazz band and who’s a good friend of Mike Hammer. Moira Walley’s name is not even on the DVD case. She’s the thin, blonde, and slightly flighty jazz singer Lila B. who drops in for a few sets with Des’s band every so often, as the mood strikes her, and who’s in love with Johnny Dive (Frank Stallone) a gangster who’s gotten in bad with the boss of the mob he’s a member of, and who is not likely to survive very much longer as a result.

    Forget the story. I can’t even find a decent photo of Moira Walley to show you, but she’s as perfect in the role of Lila B. as Jack Sheldon is playing Jack Sheldon. Or Stacy Keach playing Mike Hammer. The rest of the cast may not even need to be there, except that there is a story, one which I’ve already suggested that you forget.

    And forget the lousy reviews that Moira Walley received. Off-key warbling? No way. The role she plays may be off-key, intentionally, but hardly the warbling. A weak vocalist who reaches for every note and only looks flustered and out of it when she’s required to say lines? The guy must have been watching another movie altogether. Forget him too.

    Watch this one for the music, and don’t forget to listen. They’re all having a great time, gats, gorgeous girls and gams (and more), gangsters and jazzheads, and so did I.

MANNING COLES – No Entry

Carroll & Graf, paperback reprint; 1st pr., November 1985. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1958; Doubleday (Crime Club), June 1958. Hardcover reprint: Mystery Guild [book club], July 1958. Contained in Five Spy Novels, Howard Haycraft, ed., Doubleday, Oct 1962. Other paperback edition: Ace D-389, no date stated [1959].

   I imagine that if you know anything about Manning Coles the author, you may already know that there never was a Manning Coles. The semi-jovial spy thrillers that appeared under his name were actually written by two friends and neighbors in England, Cyril Henry Coles (1899-1965) and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning (1891-1959), all but a few of them starring the steadfast British agent, Tommy Hambledon.

   Some of this information came from Tom and Enid Schantz’s introduction to the four ghost novels that Manning Coles also wrote (appearing under the byline Francis Gaite in England) and which the Schantzes have reprinted as part of their highly recommended Rue Morgue line of books. But according to Tom and Enid, Cyril Henry Coles wrote the last three Hambledon books after his collaborator died, but Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV lists only the last two as having been written by Coles and without Manning:

      Search for a Sultan [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1961, hc; Doubleday, 1961.
      The House at Pluck’s Gutter [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1963, hc; Pyramid, 1968.

   Question: Was the previous book [Crime in Concrete (Hodder, 1960, hc). U.S. title: Concrete Crime. Doubleday, 1960] written by C. H. Coles alone or with another collaborator?

   No matter how it works out, this places No Entry as either the last or next-to-last in Manning’s tenure, and unfortunately it’s not one of the better one in the series. If you don’t start with the first two, Drink to Yesterday (Doubleday, 1940) and A Toast to Tomorrow (Doubleday, 1941), preferably in that order, then any of the other immediate post-war books will do. In No Entry, however, decidedly a Cold War novel, the two authors seem to have run out of steam.

   It’s not entirely a book not worth your time, but the minute the young naive son of a British diplomat unwittingly crosses the border from West Germany to East, and Hambledon arrives to see what he can do about the situation, you know that he’s going to find a way across the nearly impenetrable border, and make his way back out again.

   None the less, Coles – from now on “Coles” will refer to Coles the pair – has a beautifully laid-back way with dialogue that I can’t describe better than that, but which tickles my fancy every time I read one of their books. Take, for example, the following passage occurring early on, on page 20, after Hambledon finds a body in his hotel room. (Nothing like starting a story with a quick bracer to the spine like this.)

   Here’s another relatively long quote that will tell you some more about the complications that occur in the story as it goes along. From page 66, as the man driving Hambledon around the area next to the border says:

   When Hambledon finally does cross the border, it is in a old automobile constructed of various makes and models, and he adds some gunk to the engine to make it misfire uncontrollably, belching black smoke and threatening almost to explode if one were to look at in a threatening manner. Which is a huge amount of fun to read until you (the reader) realize that there really is no point to such a matter of calling so much attention to oneself, if you are in enemy territory under false pretenses and with high hopes of retreating back across the border with another person with you.

    Does such behavior make you less suspicious? Does it draw attention away from you and more toward the automobile? What sort of agent would behave in such a fashion, he must not be an agent, perhaps? I’m the one supplying the possibilities. Coles does not. The uproar goes on, stops, and with or without it, the story seems to continue as it would have, either way.

   And while things do not go smoothly, naturally, crossing the border back again still seems all too easy. (I am discussing matters of plot importance that I would not generally do, but as it is clear from the beginning, as I pointed out before, that this is what the story is going to be, in essence, and what is going to happen, I do not believe that I am being unwise in doing so.)

   Coles seems to be very familiar with the area in which the story takes place, which adds immensely to the pleasure provided by say, the first two-thirds of the book. The final third is where the letdown occurs, and even so, it doesn’t make this a bad book, only one that’s disappointing in a way that suggests that it might have been better.

PostScript: I’ve never really had a solid picture in my mind of what Tommy Hambledon looks like. If I think of the various “Tommy”s that I know, none of them, I do not believe, resemble Mr. Hambledon. As I was reading, therefore, I made notes of any mention of his physical appearance that Coles provided, and perhaps it was deliberate, but there were not many:

      Page 19. “broad shoulders”
      Page 91. “blue eyes”
      Page 129. “he was not a tall man”
      Page 165. “… slipped like a prowling cat”

   And that’s it. I haven’t tried to look elsewhere, online or in any of the other Manning Coles books I have. I’ll allow you to tell me more, if you can?

EVELYN BERCKMAN – Journey’s End.

Avon, paperback reprint; 1st pr., July 1978. Hardcover edition: Doubleday & Co., 1977; first published in UK as Be All and End All, Hamish Hamilton, 1976.

   From Twelfth Night:

   Or possibly (more likely, given the apostrophe) Othello:

   As for the British title, consider Macbeth, as the leading character is contemplating the killing of Duncan:

   What is also remarkable, in a prescient melancholy sort of way, is that this is Evelyn Berckman’s final novel, written when she was in her late 70s, two or three years before her death in 1978. She did not start writing mystery novels until she was 54 (with The Evil of Time, 1954), but once begun, she averaged a book a year, plus or minus a small fraction.

   Having not read any but this one, I can hardly characterize her work in any definitive fashion, but in paperback, at least, her books were often packaged as Gothic Romances, or if not, as Romantic Suspense, with the usual damsel in some sort of distress on the cover.

   Since her work was always published in hardcover first, I have a strong hunch that her books had more behind them than that, however, and if you were to go by this book alone, with its strong, in-depth characterizations, the hunch is even stronger. In and of itself, Journey’s End is a melancholy book, filled with melancholy people, with a melancholy ending. Generating most of the plot are a husband and wife who are hired as consultants to evaluate the remnants of an old French woman’s estate.

   Their marriage is unhappy, however, and perhaps it has never been consummated. The husband is gay, and before his wife arrives, he finds himself head-over-heels madly in love (and in an affair) with a young lad who had been working for the dead woman. That the young lad is also unscrupulous almost goes without saying. If this suggests that the characters seem difficult to sympathize with, it is not so. They are fussily drawn, but that does not make one feel uncharitable toward them, and – somewhat to my own surprise – quite the opposite.

   In the midst of the old furniture (all valuable) is a library with hundreds of old documents, dating back to the 1600s. This is a work of criminous fiction, but is there a crime involved? It is difficult to say. On page 123, though, I can tell you this: I sat back and said Wow. (Perhaps I should not tell you anything more definitive than this, and I do not believe I will, but there are some hints hidden in this review.)

   Other than this deliberately non-descriptive description, this is a nearly unclassifiable tale, and it’s one that I believe will stick around upside my head for a while.

   Here’s a complete bibliography for Evelyn Berckman’s mystery fiction, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. US editions only, unless the British titles differ, and in chronological order:

      BERCKMAN, EVELYN (Domenica) (1900-1978)

* The Evil of Time (n.) Dodd 1954 [Germany]
* The Beckoning Dream (n.) Dodd 1955. Published as Worse Than Murder: Dell, pb, 1957.
* The Strange Bedfellow (n.) Dodd 1956. Published as Jewel of Death: Pyramid, pb, 1968. [Germany]

* The Blind Villain (n.) Dodd 1957. Published as House of Terror: Dell, pb, 1960. [Philadelphia, PA]
* The Hovering Darkness (n.) Dodd 1957 [Ship]
* No Known Grave (n.) Dodd 1958
* Lament for Four Brides (n.) Dodd 1959 [France]
* Do You Know This Voice? (n.) Dodd 1960
* Blind Girl’s Buff (n.) Dodd 1962 [England]
* A Thing That Happens to You (n.) Dodd 1964. Published as Keys from a Window: Eyre, UK, 1965.
* A Simple Case of Ill-Will (n.) Dodd 1965 [London]
* Stalemate (n.) Doubleday 1966 [England]
* The Heir of Starvelings (n.) Doubleday 1967 [England]
* -A Case in Nullity (n.) Doubleday 1968. Published as A Hidden Malice: Belmont, pb, 1978. [England]
* The Long Arm of the Prince (n.) Hale 1968 [England; 1600s]
* She Asked for It (n.) Doubleday 1969 [Los Angeles, CA]
* The Voice of Air (n.) Doubleday 1970 [France]
* A Finger to Her Lips (n.) Doubleday 1971 [Germany; 1700s]
* The Fourth Man on the Rope (n.) Doubleday 1972 [England]
* The Stake in the Game (n.) Doubleday 1973
* The Victorian Album (n.) Doubleday 1973 [London]
* Wait, Just You Wait (n.) Doubleday 1974. Previously appeared as Wait: H. Hamilton, UK, 1973. [England]
* The Nightmare Chase (n.) Doubleday 1975. Published in the UK as Indecent Exposure: H. Hamilton, 1975 [England]
* The Crown Estate (n.) Doubleday 1976. Published in the UK as The Blessed Plot: H. Hamilton 1976. [England; 1200s and present]
* Journey’s End (n.) Doubleday 1977. Previously appeared as Be All and End All: H. Hamilton, UK, hc, 1976. [France]

JOHN J. LAMB – The Mournful Teddy

Berkley 21112; paperback original. First printing: August 2006.

   Speaking of cozies, as I was just a book or so ago, take one look at the cover and the title of this book and what would you think? I’ll get back to that in a minute.

   This is the second mystery written by John J. Lamb, a retired homicide detective from San Diego County who pulled up stakes and moved back east to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where he now lives and attends teddy bear shows with his wife, among other activities. His first book, Echoes of the Lost Order (Five Star, hardcover, 2005) sounds as though it might be the first of a totally different series, one that takes place in Talmine, a small Virginia Tidewater town, where a murder is solved by the town’s chief of police, Steve MacKinnon, and his wife, Victoria, a former police crime analyst.

   Looking back at that paragraph, I see that I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The Mournful Teddy is already the first in a series, even though it’s the only one that’s been published so far. Coming up in May 2007 is The False-Hearted Teddy, and according to his website, the author is now hard at work on The Crafty Teddy.

   And I’m still ahead of myself, or I’ve swung off sideways, and I really have to get back on track. The protagonists in all three of these “Bear Collector’s Mysteries” are retired San Francisco P. D. homicide inspector Brad Lyon and his wife, Ashleigh, a teddy bear collector (and creator), now living along the Shenandoah River in rural Virginia. One senses a pattern at work here.

   Which is hardly bad news, and the even better news is that The Mournful Teddy became Number One on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association’s best-seller list for August 2006. Who among mystery readers can resist a work of detective fiction that involves teddy bears? (When beanie babies were hot hobby items, was there a mystery that involved beanie babies? If not, someone missed a good opportunity, as beanie babies hardly have the mass appeal they had at one time, do they?)

   But teddy bears? They never go out of fashion, and I think this series of mysteries that Mr. Lamb has concocted and devised could go on for quite a while. It begins with Lyon finding a body in the Shenandoah outside his home, a male body that the local sheriff and ambulance crew seem to recognize without even turning him over. They also quickly invite Lyon to mind his own business, which of course rankles the retired homicide detective.

   Also worked into the tale, as of course you were wondering, is a valuable teddy bear with connections to the Titanic. Make that extremely valuable.

   After a slow opening, the story gradually picks up speed, and the antagonistic behavior of the local law enforcement officers gives it an even bigger boost. As an investigator, which he has been for a long time, Lyon is a good interviewer, and he is especially good with hostile witnesses. But even with so many facets to the mystery, it is one that is surprisingly easy to solve, with at least one of the bad guys caving in all too easily and not really (as it turns out) perhaps not that bad at all. Some of them certainly are, however – do not get me wrong – and they are not necessarily all guys, either, in case you were trying to read something into my words that I didn’t mean for you to pick up on.

   Overall? Everyone reading this will either (a) read the book or (b) not, no matter what my recommendation might be, so I won’t say anything further, nor do I think I need to.

   But here’s a quote from page 88 that I thought was amusing, and since it’s about mysteries, I thought perhaps you might also:

   Ouch. Nothing like that in this one, but still. Ouch.

   Although I’ve yet to hold a copy in my hands myself, Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller have theirs, and so it’s safe to say that it’s ready for purchase. Ordering information at the bottom of this page.

   Originally published in hardcover by Arbor House in 1986, 1001 Midnights by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, one of the finest reference texts ever published in the field of mystery fiction, quickly went out of print, but it has been in high demand in the used book market ever since.

   Here’s the blurb on the dust jacket of the original edition, including the list of names on the back cover:

   1001 Midnights is the essential reference – and reading – book for all aficionados of mystery, detective, and suspense fiction. It is comprised of 1001 plot summaries, author biographies, and critical evaluations of classic and important crime and espionage novels, as well as short story collections seminal to the genre. It is an indispensable volume of information and criticism.

   Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, well known for their mystery novels and anthologies, bring their inside, practitioners’ knowledge of the form as well as their enthusiasm as fans to these trenchant and engaging summaries, biographies, and critical judgments. Other experts in the field, most notably Francis M. Nevins, also contribute entries on authors in their areas of expertise.

   All the major writers are represented, from Edgar Allan Poe to Elmore Leonard. Their careers and works are described, analyzed, and assessed – sometimes to surprising, irreverent, and unorthodox conclusions. Some highly touted practitioners of the mystery genre have their critical reputations debunked, while others currently out of favor are extolled.

   But in addition to the famous names there are numerous obscure writers, and 1001 Midnights is unique and rich as a result of their inclusion. Jim Thompson, Leigh Brackett, Thomas B. Dewey, William Campbell Gault, Helen Reilly, and dozens of others are all resurrected from undeserved obscurity and restored to their rightful place in the crime literature pantheon. In the process, the reader is apprised of great writers he or she may not have heard of but who are well worth seeking out.

   Whether you prefer hardboiled or classic, Golden Age or contemporary, pure detection or action/adventure, espionage or private eye, 1001 Midnights will afford hundreds of hours of reading pleasure. It is a book to refer to again and again for its practical information, facts, and bibliographies; its memory-jogging plot summaries; its enlightening critical insights; and its gold mine of newly unearthed crime literature treasures. 1001 Midnights is essential to the library of every mystery buff.

   Some of the mystery and suspense writers whose careers and works are included in 1001 Midnights:

   And many many others, as they always say.

   Published by George Vanderburgh and his Battered Silicon Dispatch Box press, the book is a softcover, folio size, 8-1/2 x 11, with 471 pages. The list price is $45.00. ISBN: 978-1-55246-750-3

   The book does not appear on George’s website, but his contact information is there. Otherwise your local specialty mystery bookshop should be able to order it for you.

   Highly recommended!

ERIC WRIGHT – The Man Who Changed His Name.

Signet 14930; reprint paperback, August 1987. Hardcover: Charles Scribner’s Sons, August 1986. Canadian editions, both published as A Single Death: Hardcover: Collins, 1987; paperback: Totem, 1987.

   [Written shortly after my comments on Eric Wright’s first mystery novel, The Night the Gods Smiled.]  If I’d been able to locate copies of the intervening two Charlie Salter mysteries, neither of which I may not actually have, I’d have read one or the other first before tackling this one, the fourth of the series in chronological order. Not that there seems to have been any need to, but I certainly am annoyed at myself for not having access to the two missing books, as I really don’t believe I purchased them when they first came out. I have no record of them, in any case and for what it’s worth, as my collection is completely catalogued only through 1982 or ’83. Both of the two I know I have at present I picked up used, and not so very long ago. Alas, the folly of one’s younger days.

   For as much as I enjoyed The Night the Gods Smiled, I enjoyed this one even more, starting immediately from page one onward, beginning with Salter’s first wife calling on him for assistance — in his professional capacity — but after 25 years not seeing each other, it also causes something of a shaking-up to Salter’s semi-insecurity in his present marriage.

   Not that the marriage isn’t solid, but Salter is always aware of the differences between his family and Annie’s, especially with Christmas time coming, and both sets of parents coming to visit the Salters at the same time for the first time.

   Gerry, Salter’s ex-wife was a free spirit whose life style was 180 degrees incompatible with that of a newly minted young policeman’s. As an author, Eric Wright is excellent (unsurpassed, in fact) in comparing and contrasting differences the way two people act and (try to) live together. It also comes as no surprise to read on and to discover that this is what the case of murder in The Man Who Changed His Name is about, the one that Gerry calls on Charlie for assistance with: that of a lonely woman whose death Gerry, as a middle-aged feminist, feels the police are not taking seriously enough. Separated from her husband many miles away, Nancy Cowell, a social worker, was new to the dating scene, and the police, with no other leads to go one, feel that one of the men she have met while bar-hopping is responsible.

   After his wife left him, however, her husband, whose family once changed their name to Cowell, is now known again as Kowalczyk, of Ukrainian lineage, and of course, it has to do something with the story, and so does adultery and jealousy and ethnic relations. (See specifically page 158 for a short but pertinent quote concerning the latter.)

   By this far into the series, Salter seems to have found more confidence in himself as an police investigator, and the murder and the trail he follows to solve it is both irresistible and fascinating. Hard-boiled fans may not find too much to get their teeth into, but on the opposite side of the coin, those of you who prefer cozies will find there is far more meat here than you may be accustomed to in your usual diet. What everyone will find, if I’m able to persuade you to pick up a copy, is an abundance of intelligent police work, fashioned and shaped together with a more than an occasional insight into human nature — insight that is brilliant, quietly unerring, and (dare I say) often jarring.

   This is an excellent piece of work, from beginning to end. Highly recommended, as if you hadn’t already gathered that yourself.

   My time for the Mystery*File blog will be restricted over the next few weeks, if not for most of the summer, but have no fear. I’m not going away. I have a large archive of book reviews to choose from, many of which have never been published anywhere else, until now. You’ll be seeing them soon.

   I also have loads of reviews I did starting back in the 1970s, when they were appearing in both The Mystery FANcier and the Hartford Courant, and (without looking too closely at them yet) I see no reason why I shouldn’t start posting them here too.

   You’ll already have noticed the greater frequency of reviews in the past week or so. Most of them have already been written, and the time it takes to get them posted is comparatively minimal. While there’ll always be a steady amount of current mystery fiction that I’ll continue cover, along with the older books and authors, there are any number of mystery-oriented blogs which primarily review and discuss only what’s new and recent. There aren’t as many of them that talk about older books and authors with any degree of regularity, and then within their own selected limits. Maybe I’m simply finding my own niche.

   A recent post was called The Compleat INIGO JONES, which I hope you saw, but if not you can always go back and take a look. It’s a format that I like and I think is workable without taking a lot of effort, especially for authors who wrote only a small handful of books before ending their careers, for whatever reason.

   If I continue, and I think I will, this series of such short profiles will not be restricted to unknown writers of the 1940s. I’ll cover the gamut. There’s no reason why unknown writers of the 2000s can’t be included, too. Can it really be over seven years since everyone was worried about Y2K? That’s plenty of time for a mystery writer to have come along, produced three or four good books, and then have disappeared again without too much notice — and more crucially, without a contract for more.

   I’ll also stay busy working on the online Addenda for Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV and uploading covers to the online Supplement to Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3c a Day.

   So — without making promises I cannot keep — this is what I will be doing this summer, along with cataloguing and organizing my own collection. I know, I say this every year, but this time I mean it.

ERIC WRIGHT – The Night the Gods Smiled. Signet 13409; paperback reprint, February 1985. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, September 1983. Canadian hardcover: Collins, 1983. Canadian paperbacks: Totem (two editions), 1984, 1988.

   Sub-titled “Introducing Inspector Charlie Salter,” this is the first of ten mysteries solved by Eric Wright’s most well-known series character between 1983 and 1993. An eleventh (and presumably last) case for Salter, a Toronto police detective, appeared in 2002. After first appearing in hardcover, all eleven of them were later published in paperback. When the series was dropped by Signet, the rest were picked up by Canada’s own Worldwide Mysteries (also known as Harlequin).

   Wright eventually added a second series character in Mel Pickett, a cop who first played a second fiddle to Salter in A Sensitive Case (1990) and then who tackled one on his own in Buried in Stone (Scribner, 1996), followed by Death of a Hired Man in 2001.

   The first of two adventures of Lucy Trimble Brenner also appeared in 1996. Ms. Brenner is a librarian who inherits a Toronto private detective agency and decides to make the big career move. (I have never seen either of the two books, and I think I had better do something about it.)

   In the year 2000 a fourth series character came along, a part-time community college English teacher named Joe Barley, who also works part-time as a private eye. He has two books under his belt so far, the second coming out in 2003. The latter may end up being Eric Wright’s final mystery, as he was born in 1929, making him now 77 years old, and perhaps he is no longer writing. Or he may yet surprise us. Perhaps there is yet another in the works.

   Eric Wright himself was (and more than likely, in this order) professor, chair of the English department, then Dean of Arts at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto, from where he is now retired. And if his first book (and also more than likely) several of his others deal with academia, one should hardly be surprised. I know I am not, and in fact after reading The Night the Gods Smiled, I highly approve.

   The victim, in fact, was a professor of English at a small college in Toronto, but he was found dead in his hotel room while attending an academic conference in Montreal. The dead man’s occupation, however, gives Charlie the opportunity to interview many of his colleagues, none of whom seem to have liked the man very much, some less than others, and in the process, Charlie learns a lot about academic squabbles indeed.

   There was a glass with lipstick on it in the dead man’s room. Had he picked up a streetwalker? He had also bragged of good fortune earlier in the day (hence the title). I should back up. Charlie is on the outs with the current administration of the Toronto police force. He works under the category of General Duties, and homicide is by no means his regular assignment. But the investigating officer in Montreal is French, and the roots of the crime may lie in English-speaking Toronto, hence Charlie is assigned liaison duty.

   In the background is Charlie’s home life. While they are happily married, there is a class and/or cultural divide between Charlie and his wife (and children) and especially his wife’s family, who are considerably wealthier than Charlie, who gets by on a policeman’s pay, but usually no better than that. That Charlie is (platonically) attracted to the free-spirited Molly, one of the dead man’s students (and so was the professor) is part of who he is and who he is learning himself to be. She is a charmer.

   Here’s a short quote taken from a conversation Charlie has with one of the dead man’s colleagues at the Faculty Club, taken from page 59:

   The paragraph is longer, but I’ve changed my mind and decided to cut it off here, omitting the rest of it. The part that I cut has Usher explaining how courses are set up and who gets to teach what course and the like, all of which is necessary for Charlie to feel himself in the dead man’s shoes, and I hope you get the idea well enough from this greatly truncated version.

   The following quote shows Wright’s ability to describe something entirely ordinary and everyday, but when you look at it more closely, is not. From page 113:

   I have a number of other quotes jotted down to provide to you, but I will resist and behave myself. I also see that I wrote myself a note about the mystery and its solution: “somewhat frazzled at the end but OK.” It’s been a while since I’ve read the book — I’ve had to put off writing this review for several weeks, I’m sorry to say — but I skimmed through the ending again, and I was right. It’s the characters that I remember the most about this book — characters who are described as individuals and (even better) who are allowed to think and behave like human beings that we either know or see around us every day.

   The book won a couple of major awards (see below) and if my opinion matters at all, at this late date, I think the author deserved them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY    [With a couple of exceptions, these are the US editions only. Some books may have appeared earlier in a Canadian or British edition.]

         Charlie Salter:

The Night the Gods Smiled. Scribner, hc, September 1983. (John Creasey Memorial Award, Arthur Ellis Award)
      Signet 13409, pb, February 1985.

Smoke Detector. Scribner, hc, December1984.
      Signet 14123, pb, February 1986.

Death in the Old Country. Scribner, hc, August 1985. (Arthur Ellis Award)
      Signet 14450, pb, 1986.
      Signet 14450, 2nd pr., July 1991.

The Man Who Changed His Name. Scribner, hc, August 1986.
      Signet 14930, pb, August 1987.

A Body Surrounded by Water. Scribner, hc, December 1987.
      Signet 16385, pb, September 1989.

A Question of Murder. Scribner, hc, October 1988.
      Worldwide 26039, pb, 1989/90?

A Sensitive Case. Scribner, hc, 1990. [Note: Mel Pickett also appears.]
      Worldwide 26083, pb, Oct 1991.

Final Cut. Scribner, hc, May 1991.
      Worldwide 26107, pb, Oct 1992.

A Fine Italian Hand. Scribner, hc, 1992.
      Worldwide 26143, pb, 1994.

Death by Degrees. Scribner, hc, 1993.
      Worldwide 26169, pb, 1995.

The Last Hand. St. Martin’s, hc, February 2002 [in which Salter, having reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, does exactly that]
      Worldwide 26569, pb, 2006.

         Mel Pickett:

A Sensitive Case. Scribner, hc, 1990. [Note: A Charlie Salter case in which Pickett also appears.]
      Worldwide 26083, pb, Oct 1991.

Buried in Stone. Scribner, hc, March 1996.
      Scribner, trade pb, January 2001.

Death of a Hired Man. St. Martin’s, hc, March 2001.
      Worldwide 26521, pb, 2005.

         Lucy Trimble Brenner:

Death of a Sunday Writer. Foul Play Press, hc, 1996.

Death on the Rocks. St. Martin’s, hc, June 1999.
      St. Martin’s, trade pb, June 1999.

          Joe Barley:

The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn. Perseverance Press, hc, 2000. (Barry Award)
      Perseverance Press, trade pb, October 2000.

The Hemingway Caper. Castle Street Mysteries (Canada), trade pb, April 2003. No US publication.

          Collection:

Killing Climate: The Collected Mystery Stories Eric Wright. Crippen & Landru, trade pb, August 2003. Collection of 16 stories, one original. A limited hc edition also appeared.

Lodgings for the Night. Crippen & Landru, August 2003. Separate pamphlet accompanying the limited edition of A Killing Climate: The Collected Mystery Stories by Eric Wright, Crippen & Landru, 2003.

   EDITOR: Criminal Shorts: Mysteries by Canadian Crime Writers, ed. Eric Wright & Howard Engel, Macmillan Canada, hc, 1992.

   SOURCES:

      Allen J. Hubin, Crime Fiction IV.
      William J. Contento, Mystery Short Fiction: 1990-2004.

LESLIE FORD – The Woman in Black

Popular Library K63; reprint paperback, December1963. Hardcover: Charles Scribner’s Sons, May 1947. British hardcover: Collins (Crime Club), 1948. US hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 1948 [3-in-1 edition]. Other US paperback editions: Dell #447, mapback, 1950; Popular Library 60-2443, circa 1969. Magazine appearance: The Saturday Evening Post, a seven-part weekly serial from January 18 through March 1, 1947.

   As far as I can recall, this is the first mystery by Leslie Ford that I can recall reading. In doing so, it was with a small amount of bias, shall we say, when I started, having been given negative impressions about her work from others who have read her recently. This negativity was said to lie in Ms. Ford’s attitudes toward racial minorities, but perhaps by 1947, when The Woman in Black was published, this lack of sensitivity had begun to disappear from her work.

   Mrs. Grace Latham’s housekeeper Lilac is apparently black, but it is not so stated. The only way you will realize it is from her speech patterns. Here’s a sample, taken from page 19, the first time we meet her in the story. She’s helping to hide a young married woman who has come to Mrs. Latham for some advice:

   By itself I think this is not only fairly innocuous but a pretty good example of a way with words. What the reader gets in these two lines, with no further description, a pretty good picture in his or her mind of who Lilac is and what she may even look like. Is it harmful? Is it demeaning? I’m predisposed to say no, but if you were to press me, I don’t think that it would be too difficult to convince me that any negative stereotyping, wherever or however it occurs, is ever entirely wholesome.

   In any case, however, any racial attitudes that are displayed in the author’s earlier books, even done unconsciously, do not manifest themselves in this one to any degree more visibly than this. Not that I’m saying that the case is closed, but I also think that the backgrounds and settings of mystery novels, taken as a snapshot in time, do more to illustrate the attitudes and opinions of everyday people — for better or worse — than any number of history textbooks I ever studied from when I was in school.

   Grace Latham, who appeared in many of Ms. Ford’s books, is a widow and apparently a Washington socialite of some stature and renown. She has also made her mark as a sleuth of some distinction, even if only peripherally, as in this one, since the bulk of the real detective work is done by Colonel Primrose’s stalwart assistant, Sergeant Buck, and Captain Lamb of the Washington police department, who also appeared in many of Mrs. Latham’s adventures, but not all.

   After retiring from the military, John Primrose and Phineas T. Buck operated in tandem what Grace calls on page 13 a “subterranean private investigation business,” their clients very often being various governmental agencies. Primrose himself does not make an official appearance in this book. He’s quarantined with the measles throughout its duration. Behind the scene, however, he’s actively behind the investigation into the murder that occurs in this case, making numerous suggestions and keeping Grace out of trouble, or trying to.

   Dead is a woman who may have been blackmailing a wealthy industrialist who may have his eye on the White House, the blackmailer therefore being in two ways the lady in the title of the book. One of the various people surrounding the would-be presidential candidate, all of whom were at the same cocktail party, is very likely to have been the killer. Most of them are known to Grace, if not close friends, which many of them are, which makes solving the murder all the more difficult for her.

   Leslie Ford’s prose is sometimes not easy to read, and sometimes the time and location of where her characters are at any one time seem to be taken too much for granted. The difficulty in reading is also due to a “fretful” way of talking that sometimes seems to bunch itself up too much, making it slow going at times to work one’s way through.

   I think the following paragraph, the one quoted at some length below, may go a long way in illustrating this. Grace is with Sergeant Buck, who is trying to reassure her that Susan Kent (the woman being comforted in the quote up above) is not the killer. Grace, by the way, tells the story herself — all but a short Chapter One, which acts like a prologue, which I generally dislike, and once again, yes, I generally dislike it here as well. But to return to page 96, which I was leading up to, before that last digression:

   Don’t get me wrong, though. Leslie Ford seems to have had an excellent insight into people, why they react the way they do; and into marriages that work, and those that don’t. The mystery element — the whodunit part — is also done in a highly acceptable fashion, all wrapped up in a package that in the end is worth unwrapping. To be completely honest, though, for those willing to stop reading a book that seems unsatisfactory before finishing it, there may easily be doubts along the way.

    As far as my comments about the pseudonymous Inigo Jones are concerned, nothing more has been learned other than was stated in my review of his/her second mystery novel, The Albatross Murders.

   Of course, and by now it surely goes without saying, if anything more is learned, odds are you will read about it here first; or if not, I hope it will be no more than second-hand news.

   In the meantime, Bill Pronzini has sent along cover scans for both of the Inigo Jones books, which I’ve combined with the information on the titles to be found in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and Murder at 3c a Day, by William F. Deeck, and have come up with the following complete crime fiction bibliography for:

INIGO JONES.  Pseudonym.

   * The Clue of the Hungry Corpse (n.) Arcadia House, hc, 1939.   Mystery Novel of the Month #11, digest pb, 1940.   Leading characters: Lt. Blanding and Det. Barry Linden, New York Police Department.   Setting: New York City.

Dust jacket blurb: At 10:07 p.m. Hayden Snell, an eccentric millionaire fond of precious stones almost to the point of madness, is found dead in his overheated study, a Japanese dagger thrust hilt-deep in his heart. Temperature of the room makes it impossible to determine exact time of death, but his telephone receiver was removed at exactly 9:15 p.m.

   Involved in this crime and the complicated network of mystery and adventure that follows are: Katherine Fox, grand-niece of the deceased, the only suspect who cannot provide a satisfactory alibi; Arthur Leader, natural son who hates the entire Snell family; Evander Snell, middle-aged son who mortally fears his sister Miriam; Joseph Rogato, shady private investigator, who tries to have himself arrested for the crime; Weisswasser, Rogato’s mouthpiece and partner in crime; Cokey Flo, Arthur’s mother, who has information implicating Evander Snell in an earlier crime; Monk Saunders, her husband, who holds a powerful threat over Rogato.

   A satisfying detective story particularly recommended to those who appreciate good writing and a complicated puzzle.

Review excerpts: [Will Cuppy, Books.] The author’s writing manner, except for a few backslidings into fancy prose, struck us as a cut above the standardized brittle style now employed by most of the ribald school, and his criminous lingo is inspired. Try the pseudonymous Mr. Jones for amusing wickedness.

[Kay Irwin, New York Times.] There is a little of everything in this story; it is a hodge-podge of excitements, inexpertly handled.
   The unanswerable question is why the architect of such a gingerbread structure chooses to sign himself “Inigo Jones.”

[Saturday Review of Literature.] Couple of clever tricks explained at end, but characters are overdrawn and plot pretty phoney. Not so much.

    * The Albatross Murders (n.) Mystery House, hc, 1941.  The Mystery Novel of the Month #33; digest pb, 1941.   Leading character: Inspector Sebastian Booth.  Setting: New England; Theatre.

Dust jacket blurb: During ten months of the year Shrewsbury was — on the surface — a quiet little New England town; for two months it was something else again.

   For then the summer theatre brought its freight if small-time Broadway talent and amateur aspirants. Their jealousies and conflicts met in a fateful dovetail with conflicts and motives buried deep in Shrewsbury’s past. And so murder struck.

   One died in the sight of five hundred, another died alone. Meanwhile the promise of death murmured everywhere.

   With a fleck of paint off a three-hundred year-old chimney and the aid of twentieth-century science; with the bones of a praying Indian and a bird that flew by night; with an antique silver smelling-salts bottle and a scandal that had its roots in another age and clime — with the aid of these and other things Inspector Sebastian Booth at length solved this dark puzzle of fate’s irony and bloody vengeance.

Review excerpt: [New York Times.]   …Finally Booth comes up with a theory that accounts for everything. The only trouble is that there is very little evidence to support it. It is not a very satisfactory ending, but it is the best that Inigo Jones has to offer.