A couple of months ago I reviewed a book by Marguerite Silverman entitled The Vet It Was That Died. I didn’t include any biographical information on the author because at the time, I couldn’t find any. Nor was there anything more about her in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, only the following list of the three books she wrote:

   
   For my overall opinion of the book, you can read the review. Here?s a quote, though, from somewhere early on:

   
   Keep this in mind, as this will be important later. I no longer remember the reason — and this was only yesterday, mind you — but I happened to Google the author’s name, and up came up several websites I hadn’t seen before. Marguerite Silverman is not a common name, but neither is it uncommon, which makes a big difference when trying to locate an author when all you have to work with is her or her name.

   But one or two of these websites mentioned Marguerite Silverman as being — a veterinarian! And yet another site where I found her name was in relation to pets and their well-being.

   I asked British librarian-sleuth John Herrington if I was onto something, and indeed, yes he agreed, sending me this paragraph about her, found here:

   
   For those of us who are acronym-disabled, Google helps out in this manner also:

      MRCVS = Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon
      ACIS = Associate of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries
      UFAW = Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

   Working backward from her age at the time she died, along with the fact that she passed away so late in the year, it means that Miss Silverman, who apparently never married, was born in 1914. Unfortunately the Somerset Local Studied Library had no obituary on record for her. Then in a later email, John reported that: “According to Freebmd, her birth was registered in Southampton in June 1914. (Entry is incorrect as transcriber has read the R for Ruth as an M — magnification of the entry shows it as a poor R.)”

   I’ve still read only the one book of the three that Marguerite Silverman wrote. Knowing that she was a veterinarian herself, and learning of her lifelong love of animals, puts the book into a perspective I hadn’t had before. It also puts tracking down her other two mysteries several notches higher on my scale of things to do. Both are rather scarce, unfortunately.

      —

[UPDATE] 05-07-07. Although neither John nor I realized it, Al Hubin already had the information on Miss Silverman’s birth and death dates. See his Addenda #9 for the Revised CFIV.

HUNTER STINSON – Fingerprints

Henry Holt & Co.; First Edition, March 1925.

   After a short investigation on my part, I believe that I can safely say that this is the only edition that was published of this book, nor were there any other books that appear under this author’s name. (The asking price for the only copy found on the Internet at the time I am writing this is $50, but that is certainly explainable by the fact that that particular copy is inscribed by the author; otherwise it is in about the same condition as mine.)       FOOTNOTE.

   Long time readers of the pulp magazines may, however, suspect that they know the author by a slightly different name, and they would be correct, if they happen to be thinking of H. H. Stinson. An incomplete list of his short fiction at Bill Contento’s Fiction Mag website begins with a western story published in Top Notch in 1928 and ends with a mystery yarn in Black Mask in 1948. In the latter magazine he had a series character by the name of Kenny O’Hara.

   To discover more, I put out a call for help, first from Victor Berch, whose name has been mentioned on these pages before, then from the various members of the Pulp Mags yahoo list:

[From Victor:] I think I found your man. He’s Herbert H. Stinson. In the 1930 Census he’s listed as a police reporter. In the 1920 Census, he’s listed as a journalist. Have his birth and death dates: Born 27 Apr 1896, Died 09 Oct 1969. Mother’s maiden name was Hunter, so that would fit right in. Wrote some plays as well out in California.

[From John Locke:] He’s mentioned in The Black Mask Boys [edited by William F. Nolan]:

   The following year [1933] proved to be Shaw’s finest as he brought five powerful new writers into the Mask: Thomas Walsh, Roger Torrey, H. H. Stinson, W. T. Ballard, and (at the close of 1933) Raymond Chandler.

   H.H. Stinson’s series hero was quick-fisted Ken O’Hara, of the Los Angeles Tribune. Again, a very tough cookie.

   From the AFG Bulletin, July 1, 1936:

      Joseph T. Shaw, Black Mask:

   Your request to select a “model” story in the July Black Mask, or in almost any issue, for that matter, cannot be fairly done without a word of explanation. You see, we follow the principle of “no dud in any issue;” therefore it is rarely that any one story stands out markedly from any other or all of the balance, although we hope that the magazine itself, as a whole, does.

   So far as the writers permit, we select for an issue the best of as many types as are available; in consequence, readers naturally have preference for one over another in accordance with their individual tastes, and all may be equally good as to workmanship quality. There is a story in the July issue, however, which can be pointed to for a specific reason. It is “Nothing Personal,” by H. H. Stinson.

   If a new writer should ask me to suggest what might be interesting to our readers, I would probably mention anything but what Mr. Stinson has in his story, in the way of characters, by name or position – that is, a reporter, an editor, a tough police official, and so on. They have been used so many, many times.

   Yet Mr. Stinson has done something with these familiar identities, with the ordinary action, which, to many readers, will make this an outstanding, a “model” story, in any company. The one word to describe it is “treatment.” He has brought every one of his characters vitally alive. The fact that they are this, that or the other is less important than that they are “real” personages; not once do they speak, act or react out of character – with a more or less commonplace setup, his handling of story detail, of constant menace, of action, is masterly. One careful reader refers to one of his scenes as the most vivid, the best of its type since Hammett told about Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key.

   The fact that Mr. Stinson is himself a newspaper man, a police reporter on one of the big Los Angeles papers, may have contributed to the sense of reality which he has infused into the story. But it isn’t every newspaperman who can make a story live and throb like this one. If it were, editors would have an easier time.

   A “model” story. No – except for treatment. A marvelously entertaining and vital one? Yes – decidedly yes.

[From Ed Hulse:] Besides O’Hara in Black Mask, Stinson in the post-WWII years wrote a series about a dick named Pete Rousseau for Dime Detective.

   He stopped writing for both Mask and Detective in 1948. He wrote for other detective pulps, too; Cook-Miller credits him with 60-odd stories altogether.

[From Will Murray:] I just went through my copy of the manuscript of the Joe Shaw bio written by his son, Milton. I find no mention of HHS.

   However, Shaw did pick one Stinson story for possible inclusion in his Hard-Boiled Omnibus, “Give a Man Rope.” His editor thought it weak in comparison to other selections and it was dropped along with several others.

   So we know what Shaw thought was his best BM story.

    Me again. I’m back, and I’m assuming that after all of this talking, as interesting as I hope you found it, you’d like to hear about the book itself. Truth be told, it’s not very good, but for most of an evening or two, the entertainment value is still high enough that I did. Read it in an evening or two, that is.

    As the story begins, the primary protagonist has discovered that as of that very same morning, he is a pauper. The estate he believed that had been left to him by his overly generous father, he learned, had been badly (and sadly) overtaken by various notes, mortgages, liens and debts. Which therefore means, as of that very same evening, his marriage to Maryse Douglas is off.

   Not by any wishes of the young lady herself, far from it, but by Owen Kenrick, her guardian until she comes of age. Here is how the author describes the young lady, on page 5:

   The next morning Christopher is consoled by a gent by the name of Bosworth, who lives in the apartment upstairs from him. From page 13:

   This is not the sort of dialogue that would make any kind of headway in the pages of either Black Mask or Dime Detective, nor would the mystery itself. When Kenrick is found dead, young Christopher is, of course, the obvious suspect. The only others in the running are the butler or Miss Douglas herself, and when Christopher’s fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, that just about clinches the case right then and here.

    Except for one undeniable fact, and that is that Christopher did not do it, and in the remaining 200 pages, it is up to him, Maryse, and Bosworth (who has secrets of his own) to prove it.

   Also on Blake’s trail are a gang of jewel thieves (jewelry being a primary item of trade for the dead man) who kidnap Maryse as part of their nefarious doings, but she escapes and makes her way back to the city just as Blake and Bosworth discover the hideout where she had been kept a captive, and mystery upon mystery ensues. By page 209 Maryse has been captured again, by yet a third party to the drama, and rest of the book is devoted to her rescue, nothing more, and quite a lot less.

    A lot happens in this book, as you can tell, but when it comes down to it, as I’ve already implied, nothing really happens, if you know what I mean. And what about the phony fingerprints? You might ask, and rightly so. In 1925, they were still a novelty to mystery readers, and so in 1925 they must have been amazed as to what could be done with them, by both the investigators and (in this case) the villains. I checked online with Google, and guess what, what the chaps on the wrong side of the law did back then could really be done. Of course Mr. Stinson makes it sound easy, but in terms of the technology of 1925, I’m still not quite convinced it would have been as easy as he made it sound.

FOOTNOTE: I seem to have spoken somewhat ahead of myself. After some further investigation I have discovered that the novel was previously published as a three-part serial in the mystery fiction magazine Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, concluding in the February 1925 issue. Mostly, I think but am not sure, the stories that appeared in RDT&MS were either of the mansion house variety or out-and-out thrillers, and thusly not hard-boiled fare at all.

    Or am I making a judgment on a sample of size only one? Other authors who appeared in the magazine in 1925 include Seabury Quinn, Arthur J. Burks, Raoul Whitfield, Otis Adelbert Kline and Vincent Starrett. You tell me.

   I don’t know about you, but for me writing is the hardest thing in the world. I have nothing but admiration for the storytellers whose works and words we mystery readers follow so avidly. They make it look so easy – and every once in a while, I imagine that it is.

   Because maybe they’re human like you and me, and they spend their days struggling to put the words on the computer screen in the right order, and not only that, but the right words in the right place and at the right time, and if the wrong word is used, it just throws everything out of whack, like a single grain of sand in a well-tuned BMW engine.

   I’ve been writing reviews of mystery fiction since the early 1970s, when I was the “Courant Coroner” for the local Hartford paper, and every once in a while I’ve run out of words, and I’ve had to quit for a while. This latest consecutive streak of books reviewed has been going on for nearly seven years now – and do you know what?

   It’s still a struggle to put the right words down and in the right order and with the right punctuation. Case in point. I was reasonably happy with my comments on the John Whitlatch book I recently reviewed – until I read them the next morning.

   You probably haven’t noticed – and I sincerely hope not – but I’m constantly tweaking and changing little things here and there on this blog until either (a) I get it right or (b) I concede defeat – in a good sense, that is. I can only hope.

   But every once in a while, I look at something I wrote and say to myself, for example, what is really he trying to say here? Or could he possibly be more convoluted than this to get his ideas out? And look at what he says here. If changes are going to be made, they’re going to have to be big ones this time. Case in point. After considerable inner struggle and debate, I’ve revised the Whitlatch review and I’ve posted the result and I don’t think I will read it again for a week. (My fingers are crossed when I say that, though.)

   My opinion is the same, and some of the words are the same, but some of them aren’t and the punctuation is different too.

   Next up, a review of Death Turns the Tables, by John Dickson Carr. It’s turned out to be a tough book to comment on, and I’ve been putting it off for a couple of weeks now. I’d better get to it, before I forget the story altogether. (This has happened before.)

   I wonder what I’m going to say about it.

   Here’s something that caught my eye a few days ago. A book just out from mystery writer Allison Brennan is entitled Fear No Evil. As it turns out, it’s part of a one-two-three punch in a series of crime novels connected by title and characters:

      Speak No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Jan 30 2007) Homicide detective Carina Kincaid.

      See No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Feb 27 2007) Private eye Connor Kincaid.

      Fear No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Mar 27, 2007) Forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid.

   What caught my eye was none of above, however. Not the titles, not the characters, not the quick time frame in which the books were published.

   It was this:

   A book by Alice Brennan with the same title as the third in Allison Brennan’s series of books, Fear No Evil, was published by Lancer in 1970. As I’m sure you can tell from the cover, Alice Brennan’s book is a gothic romance. Allison Brennan’s book, to put it in a category, might be called a psychological thriller — but then again, perhaps that’s what those old gothics have somewhat evolved into — books that are called either romantic suspense or psychological thrillers.

   Here’s Allison Brennan’s reaction when I emailed her about my find:

   Looking up Alice Brennan in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, here’s her complete entry. It’s easy to tell that most of her books, if not all of them, fall in the “gothic” category:

BRENNAN, ALICE (1913-1973) Born in St. Louis; has been dancer, hat-check girl, secretary; living in Avoca, Michigan, in 1960s.

   And here’s something else you can do with CFIV. You can look up titles:

      # Fear No Evil • Leigh Brackett • (n.) (Corgi, 1960, pb) See: The Tiger Among Us (Doubleday 1957).

      # Fear No Evil • Alice Brennan • (n.) (Lancer, 1967, pb)

      # Fear No Evil • John Gordon Davis • (n.) (Collins, 1982, hc)

   I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been able to come up with a cover for Leigh Brackett’s book, not even of the original US title. Here’s a short synopsis, however: “The Tiger Among Us (1957) was a story of a citizen-turned-vigilante, who seeks to revenge himself on a gang of juvenile delinquents; it was filmed as 13 West Street starring Alan Ladd.”

   A quick summary of the Davis book: “This is an epic story of the most dramatic theft of our time, of two extraordinary men, Davey and Charlie, circus hands, who try to return their animals to freedom.”

   And just for completeness, a description of Alice Brennan’s book, taken from the back cover: “When Margaret Blyeth came back to the lake country of her childhood seeking proof that she was not responsible for the death of a man who had claimed to love her, she quickly came under the spell of Mom Pet .. and just as quickly found herself enmeshed in a web of terror!”

   From Allison Brennan’s website: “In cyperspace, no one can hear you scream… Five years ago FBI agent Kate Donovan took on a sadistic killer and lost. Now running from her own government in order to prove her innocence in another girl’s gruesome murder, Kate teams with forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid to find the killer’s chamber of horrors before Dillon’s sister Lucy is slaughtered live on the Internet.”

   Four books, one title, four totally different stories.

FOOTNOTE. The date stated for this book in CFIV, 1967, has been discovered to be an error. Another error exists in Graham Holroyd’s Paperback Prices and Checklist, which incorrectly lists Lancer number 74660 as Litany of Evil, which came earlier [74-580].

   Chester H. Opal was a one-shot author, at least as far as the world of crime and mystery fiction is concerned. The single entry for him in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin is:

LORRAINE, JOHN; pseudonym of Chester H. Opal
      * Men of Career (Crown, 1960, hc)

   According to what Al has learned, Mr. Opal was born February 9, 1918, and died on February 27, 2006. Neither date was known before. The subtitle of Men of Career is: A Novel About the Foreign Service, which makes the following Internet discovery come as no surprise:

   Deposited with Georgetown University’s Foreign Affairs Oral History Program is an interview with Chester H. Opal (USIA), or the United States Information Agency.

   Further investigation reveals that in his folder is a transcript of an interview he had with G. Lewis Schmidt, in which he discussed Poland (1946-49); Italy (1949-50); Planning Staff (1950-52); Vienna, Austria (1952-53); Mexico (1954-56); Naval War College (1956); Saigon, Vietnam (1957-60); Deputy Director of Television Service (1961-62); Schmidt Task Force on Europe (1962-63); Assistant Director for Europe (1963); Beirut, Lebanon (1964-66).

   Playwright Robert Lord, born in New Zealand on July 18, 1945, also has but one credit to his name in Crime Fiction IV, as follows:

LORD, ROBERT (Needham)
      * Country Cops (Broadway, 1988, pb) 2-act play.

   Based on information from Contemporary Authors, Mr. Lord lived in the US between the years 1974 to 1990, when he returned in New Zealand, where he died of cancer in January 1992.

   Further biographical information can easily be found on the Internet. A complete list of his plays can be found at http://www.playmarket.org.nz/, for example.

   Also learned from that website is that Mr Lord, “wrote numerous television programs as well as the screenplay for the New Zealand feature Pictures. At the time of his death, he was working on the screenplay The Big Ditch.”

   Described as a black comedy farce, Country Cops was first produced at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont. Synopsis:  “Set in a police station in small-town New Zealand. Jasper Sharp is sent from the city to solve a murder.”

    Ian Covell, from a post he made to the FictionMags Yahoo group:

   The corrections and additions pointed out by Ian in the remainder of his post have already been incorporated into the bibliography. They include:

INCARNATE, the paperback from Manor, was published in 1977. (Previously “no date.”)

KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE. Correct spelling of Runyan to Runyon.

I, WEAPON. The hardcover was published in July 1974, not 1971, which necessitated a change in the chronological order in the SF section. The paperback from Popular Library appeared in December 1977.

   Short Stories:

“In Case of Danger” F&SF, December 1975 — the actual title is longer and funnier, “In Case of Danger, Prsp the Ntxivbw”

      and add the following:

“Happiness Squad” – Fantastic, March 1967
“The Youth Addicts” – Worlds of IF, May 1967

   Charles also had a letter appear in F&SF, September 1975. [This does not appear in the bibliography, but it is certainly worth a mention here.]

   Ian also cited one British paperback reprint of one of Charles’ books, but since this means that other UK editions are omitted, I’ve decided not to include it for now, based on an “all or none” philosophy.

   Also from Ian: “I have a penned note of something called Hang Up from Gold Medal, circa 1969, but it really is just penciled in, not confirmed; may be an early title of No Place to Hide or even Power Kill.”

   And from Allen J. Hubin: “I’ve got the three Mark West titles listed in Addenda #14, each with a dash.” The dash, of course, indicating marginal crime content; the Addenda referring to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

          —

   Thanks to Ian Covell in a followup email, and a judicious search of the Internet, I now have equal-sized cover scans for all of Charles Runyon’s novels. (One is a third printing, but other than that, it’s complete.)

   I’ve also cleaned up a couple of glitches that I created this morning. See the bibliography as it appears now on the primary Mystery*File website.

[UPDATE] 05-04-07. An email from Charles Runyon:

  Dear Ian, et al:

   Thanks for the kind words and the help in researching my past. You dug up some interesting material, not the least of which was that enigmatic Hang-Up which was supposedly published by Gold Medal in 1969. According to my wife’s Little Black Book, that was my original title for No Place to Hide.

   I sold a story entitled “The Day it All Hung Out” to Escapade Magazine in October 69. An amusing little tour de force, which I remember reading when it came out. I haven’t yet been able to find any copies of it in my files, but I’m keeping my eyes open.

   I sold a few other stories to the men’s magazines, such as Adam Yearbook, “There Must be More than This” and Knight, “The Appointment” but “The Day…” was the best according to my memory — not excluding “The Naked Bums,” which was the title Men put on their serialization of The Death Cycle. (If you’re looking for the Ultimate in Egregious Reprints, that’s gotta be IT.)

   I think the discrepancy in the number of books published arose from the fact that I counted foreign language editions at the beginning. Or maybe I was just exaggerating.

   Regards to you, Ian, and everybody else, Chas.

   Recently brought to the attention of mystery readers was the hitherto unnoted death of crime fiction author Michael Kenyon. Born in Yorkshire England in 1935, he lived in the US off and on after his university days for many years before eventually becoming an American citizen in 1997. He died in Southampton NY in 2005.

   Mr. Kenyon has a long list of credits in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, most of them featuring in the starring role either Ireland’s Superintendent O’Malley or Inspector Henry Peckover of Scotland Yard. One book, The Elgar Variation (US title) seems to be somewhat of a transition point between the two series, with both characters sharing the top billing (see below).

KENYON, MICHAEL (1931-2005); occasional US pseudonym Daniel Forbes.

    * May You Die in Ireland (n.) Collins 1965; Morrow, 1965. Fawcett Crest R1211, pb, 1968. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]

   * The Whole Hog (n.) Collins 1967; Morrow 1967, as The Trouble with Series Three. [Illinois; Academia]
    * Out of Season (n.) Collins 1968 [Channel Islands]. No US publication.
   * The 100,000 Welcomes (n.) Collins 1970; Coward, 1970. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]
    * The Shooting of Dan McGrew (n.) Collins 1972; McKay, 1975. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]

   * A Sorry State (n.) Collins 1974; McKay, 1974. [Supt. O’Malley; Philippines]
    * Mr. Big (n.) Collins 1975; Coward, 1975, as by Daniel Forbes. [England]
    * The Rapist (n.) Collins 1977; Coward, 1977, as by Daniel Forbes. Dell 17294, pb, 1982. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]
    * Deep Pocket (n.) Collins 1978; Coward, 1978, as The Molehill File. [Insp. Henry Peckover; England]
    * Zigzag (n.) Collins 1981; Coward 1981, as The Elgar Variation. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Supt. O’Malley; England]
    * The God Squad Bod (n.) Collins 1982; Doubleday 1982, as The Man at the Wheel. Avon 70381, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; London]
    *A Free Range Wife (n.) Collins 1983; Doubleday, 1983. Avon 70382, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; France]
    *A Healthy Way to Die (n.) Hodder 1986; Doubleday, 1986. Avon 70380, pb, 1987. [Insp. Henry Peckover; England]
    * Peckover Holds the Baby (n.) Severn 1988; Doubleday, 1988. Avon 70636, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Belize]
    * Kill the Butler! (n.) Macmillan 1991; St. Martin’s, 1993. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Long Island, NY]
    * Peckover Joins the Choir (n.) Macmillan 1992; St. Martin’s, 1994. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Belgium]
    * Peckover and the Bog Man (n.) Macmillan 1994; St. Martin’s, 1995. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Scotland]

   Compiled by using resources available on the Internet, the following collection of short synopses does not include all of the books above, but it does provide a fairly substantial glimpse into the kind of mystery fiction Mr. Kenyon wrote:

   May You Die in Ireland. The letter bearing the news that William Foley, easy-going math professor at a Midwestern university, had become the owner of a castle in Ireland was certainly cause for celebration. But the legacy that made him king of a castle also turned him into a human carrier pigeon, the unwitting bearer of a deadly secret, and a living time bomb.

   The Whole Hog aka The Trouble with Series Three. Arthur Appleyard experiments with pigs and their feeds.. one day he finds series three batch, including Marlon and Humphrey, have been given a magical ingredients of critical importance to the space race and the cold war!

   Out of Season. Mystery set in Jersey as a German man returns to the island where his father was once stationed, to be met by hostility and bizarre events.

   The Shooting of Dan McGrew. In this hilarious Irish crime story, O’Malley investigates the disappearance of two prospectors working a mine site together.

   The Rapist. Dungoole in County Cork begins to unravel when a visiting American feminist is raped, and later murder occurs.

   Deep Pocket aka The Molehill File. Detective-Inspector Henry Peckover, “a passable published poet,” links the “murder of a May fair tart to a web of political, financial and sexual hanky-panky that encompasses a titled M.P., a police chief superintendent who turns drag queen by night, Middlesex pols and proles, bird hunters of all varieties and an Arab sheik bent on making the green and pheasant land an adjunct of Riyadh.” (Time Magazine, July 17, 1978)

   Zigzag aka The Elgar Variation. A simple escort-the-prisoner run goes awry when the man escapes just as Chief Inspector Peckover is about to take over.

   God Squad Bod aka The Man at the Wheel. Scotland Yard’s newly formed God Squad is following Paster J. C. Jones very closely. A Henry Peckover novel.

    A Free-Range Wife. Peckover finds himself in France at the Chateau de Mordan, where more is on the menu than escargots and chips: a modern-day Jack the Ripper.

   A Healthy Way to Die. An elite spa features beautiful bodies and murder for Inspector Henry Peckover of Scotland Yard.

   Peckover Holds the Baby. Peckover is sent to Belize to track down a cocaine king and lands feet first in a messy brew of murder, drug running and kidnapping.

   Kill the Butler. It’s madcap mayhem when Inspector Henry Peckover goes undercover as a butler on a Long Island estate to find a millionaire’s murderer.

   Peckover Joins the Choir. Chief Inspector Henry Peckover and Detective Constable Jason Twitty go undercover as choir singers to investigate a series of continental art thefts.

   Peckover and the Bog Man. When Sir Gilbert Potter, whose blustering grows offensive at a dinner party, is murdered by a knife through his voicebox, Henry Peckover and his assistant Jason Twitty must investigate.

   While Barzun & Tayor in A Catalogue of Crime were not impressed with the two of Kenyon’s works they read – May You Die in Ireland “A bad first try,” and The Molehill File “rather turgid plotting and prose” – one suspects that humor combined with mystery were not what they were looking for. Craig Rice’s books are panned by them, for example, as being filled with “ill-advised humor.”

   Other commentators have invariably made referenceto the humor in Kenyon’s mystery fiction and have been more favorably impressed. Reading what else they have had to say, along with the synopses above, the impression that’s gathered is that under the veneer of light-hearted gaiety in Mr. Kenyon’s work is a solid core of seriousness and — in the good old Irish tradition — a healthy dose of tragedy.

   I heard today from Charles Runyon, who’s been battling the flu. Going through his records, he’s come up with the following changes to his bibliography, posted here a couple of days ago.

   The book entitled Something Wicked (Lancer, pb, 1973) is included in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, but tracking down a copy has proven to be a very difficult task. Both Victor Berch and I had come to the conclusion that it has never been published. The next comment from Charles confirmed my growing suspicion:

    So that it may be read more easily, I’ve moved the article entitled “The Curse of Dorian-7” to the primary Mystery*File website.

    All of these changes are now in place. Thanks again to Charles Runyon and Ed Gorman for helping put together all of the pieces on this project, as they have. And to Charles, it’s great to have you back!

   Genevieve Holden, the author of seven mystery novels between 1953 and 1976, died Sunday, April 22nd, in Atlanta GA at the age of 87. As a mystery writer born and raised in Mississippi, she is one of the many authors honored by being included in the University of Mississippi’s online archive exhibit entitled Murder With Southern Hospitality: An Exhibition of Mississippi Mysteries.

   Excerpted from the page devoted to her is the following biographical summary:

    “Genevieve Holden is the penname of Genevieve Long Pou, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1919. She attended the University of Mississippi for two years before transferring to the University of Georgia. After college, Pou worked on the Birmingham Post and the Idaho Statesman before writing her first mystery in 1953.

    “Set in the South, Pou’s books epitomize the subgenre termed ‘Gothic,’ known more widely these days as ‘Romantic Suspense.’ Written primarily for a female audience, books of this nature feature heroines in dangerous situations who tend to find themselves attracted to handsome yet potentially menacing men.”

   Expanded from her entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here is her complete bibliography. Each of her books was published first in hardcover by Doubleday, all of them under their famed ‘Crime Club’ imprint.

HOLDEN, GENEVIEVE; pseudonym of Genevieve Long Pou, (1919-2007)

      * Killer Loose! (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1953. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, June 1953. Bestseller Mystery B172, digest pb, abridged. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Sound an Alarm (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1954. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, May 1954. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * The Velvet Target (n.) Doubleday 1956. Ace G-554, pb, 1965. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Something’s Happened to Kate (n.) Doubleday 1958. Ace G-558, pb, 1965. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Deadlier Than the Male (n.) Doubleday 1961. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, August 1961. [New Orleans, LA]

      * Don’t Go in Alone (n.) Doubleday 1965 [Atlanta, GA]

      * Down a Dark Alley (n.) Doubleday 1976 [Atlanta, GA]

   Reiterating what was said by the librarians at U-Miss about the nature of her books, the two reprinted by Ace were published as part of their ‘gothics’ line of paperbacks. The cover shown is quite typical; no would-be reader, almost invariably female, would look at the cover and not know what to expect if it were to be picked up and read.

   Covers sometimes lie, however. Belying my own words, Barzun and Taylor include one of her books in A Catalogue of Crime, saying about Deadlier Than the Male:

   Using Ellen Nehr’s Doubleday Crime Club Companion 1928-1991 as a guide, here are some comments on Mrs. Pou’s other novels, based on the blurbs on the inside front dust jacket flaps:

   Killer Loose! The leading character is Janet Milton, who with her young nephew Tolly, goes on the run from a psychopathic killer, apparently dressed in the uniform of a sheriff’s deputy. Lt. Al White is not mentioned.

   Sound an Alarm. In true ‘gothic’ fashion, Linda Stanley is hired as a governess for a grandchild and young heir. The house is a mansion with “cavernous halls with a sense of portending evil.” Lt. Al White again is not mentioned in the blurb.

   The Velvet Target. Eve Halsey is suspicious of her new uncle, believing that her wealthy aunt had made a bad choice in marrying him. Lt. White agrees, and he begins a race against time to rescue Eve when the honeymooners take her along.

   Something’s Happened to Kate. Menacing danger is in store for Kate Woodley after she meets handsome Jim Garrett – and disappears. Lt. Al White not mentioned in the blurb.

   Deadlier Than the Male. It is difficult to say for sure, but contrary to Barzun & Taylor, this seems to be the first book in which a PI is involved, Hank Farrell in this case.

   Don’t Go In Alone. Police detective Captain Mark Latham has a case of three missing Atlanta women on his hands, all of whom went into vacant homes on the real estate market and disappeared.

   Down a Dark Alley. Captain Mark Lathan (sic) returns [a series character previously unknown to Al Hubin] to solve the shocking murder of member of a motorcycle gang. Dinah Prentiss’s Victorian aunt is the primary suspect.

   Without knowing more about her books than this, do you also get the impression that there was a lot more toughness to Ms. Holden’s mysteries than you might have assumed at first?

JOHN WHITLATCH – Stunt Man’s Holiday

Pocket 77660; paperback original; 1st printing, May 1973.

    I don’t know very much about John Whitlatch, and I don’t know anyone who does. In many, many ways he was the last of the true pulp fiction writers, even though his first book was published in 1969. Between then and 1976 he wrote 11 novels in a wide range of categories for Pocket, ten of them in one four years period.

   All of them paperback originals – crime, adventure, westerns, war, motorcycle gangs, the whole gamut. The titles were not all that remarkable, but the covers – the covers were lurid and eye-catching, and the books were reprinted over and over again. One presumes that they sold well.

    Only three of them were listed in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, but in Addenda #10 a complete revision of his entry now includes all of the books he wrote, as follows:

WHITLATCH, JOHN. No biographical information is known about this author of eleven popular pulp fiction paperbacks in the 1960s and 70s. While specific genres, settings and time periods vary widely, there is a criminous element in each of them. With Tom Power, one of the survivors of the event, John Whitlatch later co-authored Shoot-Out At Dawn (Phoenix Books, pb, 1981), an account of what took place at a remote Southern Arizona cabin in 1918. SC: John Gannon = JG; Captain Jamey Morgan = JM.

Gannon’s Vendetta. Pocket 75383, pbo, 1969. JG “Do not forget, gentlemen – violence is the only thing they understand. If in doubt, kill.”

Morgan’s Rebellion. Pocket 75384, pbo, 1969. “Prison made a man of Morgan. And the man became a legend.”

Tanner’s Lemming. Pocket 75616, pbo, Sept 1970. “Tanner – the man who single-fistedly quashed a student takeover and tongue-lashed its leaders into silence at a turbulent school-board showdown. Tanner – the man who had never flown a plane, yet took the stick when a pilot died in midair and landed safely. Tanner – the man whose blunt business sense had won him a place in a Senator’s inner circle. Tanner – had he blown a hole in the heart of the man millions of Americans revered? Had he killed Senator Stanton? Could he have been the assassin?”

The Iron Shirt. Pocket 75642, pbo, 1970. [West] “Jonathan Fontaine swore it … in the smoking remains of his homestead, over the charred, mutilated body of his young daughter. He had gone East but now was back in Arizona with a specially equipped rifle. And he had a fresh lead on the Indian – the one who had worn a necklace of human fingers and The Iron Shirt.” [Marginal: primarily a Western.]

The Judas Goat. Pocket 75643, pbo, 1970. “Hand-picked from the entire US World War II army, they were a unique company. Twelve men led by a lieutenant, as able as he was arrogant, and a sharp, seasoned sergeant who was militantly silent about his past. Twelve fighters, among them an ugly man, a black man, on old World War I scout, a southern redneck, and a mountain climber. They were a strange assortment, but tough and tenacious – and they didn’t care too much about living. To the General they were the army’s answer to the marines. To the Colonel they were a crack team … the best he could assemble. To the Lieutenant they were ‘animals.’ And by the time their brutal training had ended they were Killers!”

Lafitte’s Legacy. Pocket 75670, pbo, Sept 1971. [Louisiana] “The last of the Lafittes had come back from Arizona to visit his dying grandfather. But enemies lay in wait, blcoking his way with fallen trees, terrorizing his wife with poisonous snakes, signalling their malice with voodoo dolls. Someone wanted the old treasure map that was his legacy. But his adversaries had not reckoned with the pirate blood that was also part of Lafitte’s legacy. He would fight with all the guile and guts, tenacity and ingenuity that had made his legendary ancestor the terror of the bayou.”

Frank T.’s Plan. Pocket 77587, pbo, Oct 1972. “To avenge his daughter’s death, an old man pits himself against the most violent forces of evil.”

Stunt Man’s Holiday. Pocket 77660, pbo, May 1973. [Arizona] “He made his living getting shot in the movies. But this time the bullets were real.”

Cory’s Losers. Pocket 77661, pbo, May 1973. “The little western town was full of crooked operators – and Cory wanted revenge on every one of them.”

Morgan’s Assassin. Pocket 77659, pbo, Aug 1973. “A squad of mean, smart killers was out to bring the nation to its knees. Only one man was tough enough to stop them –El Arquito!”

Gannon’s Line. Pocket 80743, pbo, Oct 1976. [Mexico] JG “Blazing adventure and a perilous game of survival south of the Rio Grande!”

    Victor Berch has checked the copyright records for the earlier books, and from the evidence found he says, “John Whitlach seems to be a real name. There was no indication in the records that this was a pseudonym.” Also interesting is the fact that, he goes on to say, “Nor are there any renewal records for any of his 1969 books.”

   Stunt Man’s Holiday is a crime novel, and in a more than minor way, it’s even a “fair play” detective story. Max Besh is the stunt man that the title advertises, not to mention a full-blooded Apache who needs all of his heritage, as it turns out, to follow a gang of bank robbers on a long, exhausting chase through the Arizona desert after they kidnap the girl he’s traveling with, along with the wife of a Don Rickles look- (and act-) alike Jewish comedian named Les Rick.

    And that’s the entire plot right there, summed up in only one sentence, even allowing for the fact that it’s a long one, which I grant you. Les Rick starts out being deliberately unlikable, but he gradually shows his worth (if not his innate cowboy ability) by accompanying Max the entire distance, by which I mean the entire book. Here’s an example of Max’s tracking skills, taken from page 132, where Rick asks if they’re getting closer:

   The writing is competent enough, but as the excerpt shows, it may also be straightforward to a fault. And in all honesty, if you haven’t gathered where I’m headed already, as opposed to the opening scenes that take place in Las Vegas, the rest of the tale is rather skimpy in plot. Take the long trek in the desert, for example, in which (in retrospect) nothing really happens, except to allow the reader to watch as Besh and Rick, natural-born opposites, react against the other and get to know (if not understand) each other more.

   Nonetheless, what Whitlatch is rather adept and clever at, in this book at least, is in making the reader think something is happening – a hint here, building an anticipation there, adding to the puzzle now and again – when perhaps the something that is happening is a whole lot less. The ending, which is rather violent – all of a sudden, you see, things really do start to happen – is what the reader has been eagerly waiting for, he suddenly realizes, and he is finally rewarded. (Not many women will read John Whitlatch’s books, I suspect, but as always, I may be wrong.)

   What was unexpected, on the other hand, is that – as I mentioned earlier – this is a detective story of sorts. Not everything is what it seems, and since it is fairly obvious that it is not, I do not believe I am revealing anything I should not be. There are clues as to what is going on, in other words, if one reads slowly enough. But because they are not emphasized, it is easy to lose track of them as the story heads off in another direction, which it does.

   Or to be more specific, the crux of whole affair depends upon what was discovered way back on page 86. If you’re paying attention, and make yourself notes of what’s happening when it happens, you’ll have it figured out at the same time that Besh does, guaranteed – but he’s not talking. And Rick– as early into his education of the way of the west as it is when it happens – don’t count on him. He’s simply not swift enough.

   All in all, though? Not entirely what I expected. Whether that’s good or bad, I leave for you to decide.

PostScript: For a Gallery of all the Whitlatch covers, check out this page on the primary Mystery*File website.