BRETT McKINLEY – Just Plain Scum. Cleveland Publishing Co., Australia, digest-sized paperback original, no date stated.

   Okay, I just couldn’t resist a title like that. Even on a saddle stitched booklet of fewer than a hundred pages wrapped in an indifferent cover. Ultimately, I had to read it, and…

   Well for what it is, Just Plan Scum ain’t bad. It ain’t good, mind you, but it recalled to me the Doc Savage books I enjoyed in Junior High, with characters as colorful and flat as the pages in a comic book, and a fast-moving, unlikely story told in plain, functional prose.

   Scum starts well, with

   I like that. It promises imminent action and a bit of humor, and it could go anywhere from there.

   Where it goes is to a band of free-booting veterans of the Civil War—Yanks and Rebs alike — known as The Company, guided by the loose but firm reins of Johnny Lee, a pulp hero in the best tradition: invincible, right-minded and colorfully costumed. He’s also surrounded by a few faithful lieutenants, each with a special trait that recalls the myrmidons of Doc Savage or the Shadow.

   The story that follows serves them well: raiding Apaches, lovely women, brave soldiers, a double-dealing Officer, and action action action action. It left a cloying aftertaste, and the vague suspicion that too much of this would give me brain decay, but that was quickly rinsed by reading a real book.

   And as I put Just Plain Scum on the shelf somewhere between Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye and Hud, it was with a sense of deep down pleasure that my library is big enough for all three.

R. DJÈLÍ CLARK “A Dead Djinn in Cairo.” Novella. Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi #1. First published online by Tor.com. Also available in Kindle format, May 2016.

   In an alternate history version of Egypt, circa 1912, Fatma el-Sha’arawi, a special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities has a problem to solve: who, or what, killed the djinn, twice as tall as a human with aquamarine scales, whom the authorities have found lifeless and drained of blood in his apartment.

   The first thought is that he has been killed by the ghuls that have been infesting the city, but if that were the case, they would never have left his body behind. A closer look suggests that he committed suicide, but since djinns are nearly immortal, the question as to why has no answer.

   Fatima’s world is now a strange steampunk conglomerate of exotic Cairo and demons from another plane of existence. It seems that forty years ago, a mystic by the name of al-Jahiz bore a hole to the Kaf, another-realm of magic, allowing not only the djinns and ghuls to cross over, but angels (of some variety) as well, perhaps better described by the following paragraph:

   There are flying machines, mechanical beings, and a clockwork threat to Fatima’s entire world, but with a kickass female priestess’s assistant named Siti, worldwide catastrophe is narrowly averted at nearly the last instant.

   I apologize for giving the ending away, in a very general sense, but it’s the telling that’s the more important here. This is a world of enchantment that Fatima lives in, one that is fascinating to visit but you really wouldn’t want to visit there:

   There is a definition of the word “enchantment” that describes what’s happening here, isn’t there?

JAMES MITCHELL – Smear Job. David Callan #4. G. P. Putnams Sons, hardcover, 1977. Berkley, US, paperback, 1978. Previously published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton, hardcover, 1975. Corgi, UK, paperback, 1977. Ostara Publishing, UK, softcover, 2016. Note: Although there were only four books in the series, they were the basis for four British TV series starring Edward Woodward between 1967 and 1972, plus a film in 1974 and a TV movie in 1981.

   No matter how reluctantly he serves, Callan is British Intelligence’s most effective agen, but not even he can see the connection between the paperback edition of Das Kapital he is ordered to steal in Italy and a German girl strung out on LSD and sex in Ls Vegas.

   The answer is an inverted sort of public relations ploy, one that’s expected to be very useful in making an official in another country’s government see things a little differently.

   While all the details tend to make the suspense grow but slowly, a sub-plot involving a poeer-hungry US congressman and his partly alienated daughter does much to liven things up. Equally involved are the manipulations of individuals and governments that can’t help but leave behind the usual sour taste required by this sort of spy fiction.

   Foxes and Fossils is a group brand new to me, but their version of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” is one I’ve already listened to several times over:

   The highlight of my recent reading has been Way of the Lancer (Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1932) by Richard Boleslavsky and Helen Woodward, an autobiographical novel of Boleslavsky’s experiences (and, I suspect, those of man others that he incorporated and told as his own) for — and against — Russia in the first World War.

   It’s an intriguing account, Boleslavsky was not a Russian but a Pole; his nation had been dominated by Russia since about 1750, and when the Great War got serious, Russia promised Freedom to Poland if her sons would fight for Russia. Austria promised roughly the same thing, so regiments of Poles fought for both sides, against enemies who were often their brothers.

   Boleslavsky describes an interesting vignette off weary, “victorious” Poles escorting even wearier defeated Austrians to POW camps and finding relatives in their midst, tiredly catching up on the news as they slog through the mud to no place in particular.

   Boleslavsky, incidentally, was a Polish soldier, but not a Lancer. He passed the war as a film-make, attached to the Lancers, doing semi-documentary propaganda films. After the War, he gravitated to Hollywood, where he directed some truly remarkable movies, like The Garden of Allah, with Dietrich and Boyer, and the cynical, moving 1936 version of Three Godfathers, and others.

   His Hollywood debut was Rasputin and the Empress (a portrait of the breakdown of Imperial Russia that must have seemed very real to him), the only film to star all three Barrymores. It’s an interesting show, but not a great one. John seems ticked off that he didn’t get to play Rasputin, and sulks through the whole movie with marked disinterest until the scene where he gets to kill Lionel, which is really quite memorable.

   Boleslavsky also directed one of the two Three Stooges movies you should make an effort to see: Fugitive Lovers (MGM, 1933), a dandy little thing about Robert Montgomery as an Escaped Con being pursued with cold precision by C. Henry Gordon, catching a bus with aspiring chorus girl Madge Evans, who is herself being pursued by dumb, possessive, aspiring gangster Nat Pendleton. Also onn board are Ted Healy and his stooges,whose time onscreen is mercifully brief.

   Boleslavsky fills the film with sudden cuts and jarring camera angles that seem avant-garde even today, and make Citizen Kane look antiquated before its time. And he maintains the pace and drama quite nicely throughout, right up to a howling blizzard that had my teeth chattering despite the fact that it was done entirely inside a studio. You should look for this one.

PAUL BISHOP “Bandit Territory.” PI Blue MacKenzie. Novelette. First published in Paul Bishop Presents… Bandit Territory: Ten Tales of Murder & Mayhem, edited by Paul Bishop (Wolfpack Publishing, paperback, 2019).

   What I cannot tell you, first of all, is whether or not this is Blue MacKenzie’s first appearance in print, or if it so happens that it is, whether there are or will be future cases for him to tackle.

   Blue may be the first fictional PI to also be a bodybuilder, as well as a Vietnam veteran and a former CIA agent. Now at a formidable 275 pounds of pure muscle, he certainly isn’t the kind of guy I’d care to have been hired to track me down.

   In “Bandit Territory,” the lead story in the anthology edited by Bishop with the same name, he’s been hired by a music producer to find his number one client, a singer by the name of Charity Ross. Her latest CD is almost ready to released, but she’s disappeared and is now completely out of sight.

   The trail leads Blue to a defunct bodybuilding outfit being investigated for fraud by the FDA. While the connection is not clear, the owner has disappeared the same night as Charity. No coincidence that.

   Paul Bishop, the author and a 25 year veteran of the LAPD, has also written a number of full length crime novels, and his smooth, easy style of telling a tale, even short ones, goes down well, with an every so often knack of coming up with an especially pungent observation or clever choice of phrasing. If there are other stories about Blue MacKenzie, I’d definitely like to know about them.

WAGON WHEELS. Paramount Pictures, 1934. Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Monte Blue, Raymond Hatton, Jan Dugganq, Leila Bennett, Olin Howland Based on the novel Fighting Caravans by Zane Grey, serialized in Country Gentleman between November 1928 and March 1929. Director: Charles Barton.

   This is a remake of the 1931 film Fighting Caravans starring Gary Cooper, with stock footage taken from the earlier film, or so I’m told. And at a running time of less than 60 minutes, some of it is taken up by the time it takes to sing several songs, “Wagon Wheels” being one of them, there’s not much space left to tell a story.

   Which is that of a wagon train of settlers heading for Oregon Territory to begin new lives, if they can make it. Indians, snow-covered mountain, wide rivers and more all lie ahead of them, complicated by the nefarious plot against them by a fur dealer who would like to delay the settling of the new land for several more years.

   Randolph Scott is the head scout for the party, while Gail Patrick is the love interest, a widow with a small boy (five year old Billy Lee, who in several ways nearly steals the show). Scott repeatedly tries to warn her off from going, but she manages to thwart all his efforts to do so.

   There’s not much more to this movie than this, but Randolph Scott was Randolph Scott, even some 85 years ago at the age of 36.

MIKE LUPICA – Jump. DiMaggio #1, Villard, hardcover, 1995. Kensington, paperback, 1996. Pinnacle, paperback, 2002.

   I like Lupica’s crime novels, and his sportswriting as well. He’s not bad on ESPN, either. He’s written three novels inn the [investigative TV journalist] Peter Finley series, and this has the feel of a series as well.

   DiMaggio has an illustrious last bane (if he has a first nae I missed it) and had a much less lustrous career in baseball than his namesake. now he’s a lawyer, and specializes in investigations involving sports figures — at which trade he’s de Man.

   He’s got a dandy coming up. The young, black successor to Michael Jordan has just been accused, along wth a white teammate, of raping a white woman. The accuser waited a year to come forward, and the team’s owners want Dimaggio to find out the truth, preferably that she’s lying.

   As he starts sorting through everyone’s dirty laundry, he finds that no one is clean and pure, and that to some there are secrets worth killing for.

   Lupica is a smooth, facile writer. A pro. He has the good sense to write what he knows, sports, and his knowledge and insight deepen the book considerably. The story is told from multiple viewpoints — DiMaggio, the accused, the accuser, a sleazy tabloid journalist — and told very effectively.

   The book paints a telling portrait of big-time athletics and athletes, and is far from one-sided in its depictions. It’s an easy read but a good one, and I hope he does more DiMaggios.

Editorial Update:   It is not easy to say for sure, but I do not believe that Mike Lupica wrote another DiMaggio novel. He’s written several dozen books, almost all involving sports, including a series of YA mysteries, but Jump appears to have been a one-and-done for DiMaggio as a series character.

   The first post on this blog was 13 years ago today. That seems like a long time ago, and yet it seems like yesterday.

   Here’s the link: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=6

   Since WordPress itself has changed over the years, I decided to do some very minor re-formatting, otherwise all is the same as it was 13 years ago.

   Since than there have been 7,281 posts, 39,704 comments approved, and 8,956,901 spam comments foiled.

   Thanks to all who’ve stopped by, left comments, and even many of you who have contributed. I couldn’t have done this without you!

THE ROCKFORD FILES “Caledonia – It’s Worth a Fortune!” NBC, 06 December 1974 (Season 1, Episode 11). James Garner (Jim Rockford), Shelley Fabares, Ramon Bieri, Richard Schaal, Sid Haig. Teleplay: Juanita Bartlett, based on a story by John Thomas James (Roy Huggins). Director: Stuart Margolin.

   Rockford is hired by Shelley Fabares as the wife of a critically ill penitentiary prisoner who whispers to her the location of a hidden fortune in collectible stamps, but she needs help in actually digging them up. For a percentage of the find, Rockford readily agrees.

   But also on their trail are the convicted man’s former partner, who is also the man the woman was having an affair with, as well as two hoodlums who turn out to have been in the same cell block as the imprisoned man. The big stumling block as far as Rockford and his client are concerned is that they only know the town to start their hunt in (Caledonia). The ex-partner has the only set of directions.

   And why is local sheriff so intent in running them all out of town?

   If this all sounds very complicated, it is, but there’s still plenty of time to be spent on watching cars drive up an down the local highways, including at least one reckless chase or two.

   The overall tone is light and breezy, though, with good rapport between James Garner and his lady co-star, making it very easy for the viewer (me) to safely sit back and enjoy watching this first season episode with no effort at all.