JOHN SPAIN – The Evil Star. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1944. Detective Novel Classics #44, digest-sized paperback, no date stated [1940s]. Popular Library #239, paperback, 1950.

   John Spain was an alias for a hard-boiled pulp writer named Cleve F. Adams, who wrote mostly tough PI stories, of which this is not one. Instead its the only book appearance pf homicide detective Steve McCord, who gets mixed up with triplets in this one.

   Their names? Faith, Hope and Charity. Yes. Hope seems to be the bad one. Charity is the one McCord falls for, but the ending is why you should read this one. The twist I spotted on page 125 is pointed out by Faith’s lawyer on page 137, but I never saw the second one coming.

  PostScript:   The Golden Age of Mysteries was really Golden if even a rather ordinary book such as this has an ending that will make your head swivel as much as this one does. Plotting a decent puzzle type mystery is something too many of today’s wriyers seem to think is old hat and old-fashioned.

   If what you’ve been reading lately seems to be missing something, ask yourself if the ending knocked your socks off or not. (Sometimes you can even ask yourself if it made sense.) Too many of today’s mystery writers just don’t have it, in comparison to Agatha, Ellery or the master of them all, Mr. John Dickson Carr, and nobody can tell me they do.

   What’s worse, too many of them don’t have it in comparison to John Spain, who — there’s no two ways about it — was hardly one of the biggest names that the world of mystery fiction ever produced.

An ode to Woolworth’s, a store that at one time was a mainstay of small town America, if not the world, but which you have to be of a certain age to remember now.

WILLIAM MURRAY – Now You See Her, Now You Don’t. Shifty Lou Anderson #8. Henry Holt, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.

   This is a series that doesn’t seem to get a huge amount of ink, but nevertheless has made to the eighth book and is still in both hard and soft covers. Murray is a New Yorker staff writer, and has written a number of other fiction and non-fiction books.

   It’s just another season at Hollywood Park and Del Mar for Shifty and his buddy Jay — or at least it starts out that way. Then he meets a girl, a very pretty and elusive girl. She’s involved in PR work for a movie star who owns a racehorse and has political aspirations, but she’s non-committal about just what she does, and she’s gone a lot, and she won’t give Shifty her phone number.

   The movie star is a right-winger involved with a group that has had several prominent members murdered in the past year, and the whole thing worries Shifty more than somewhat. Not as much as it worries him after someone shoots him, though.

   Murray is one of those writers whose books don’t seem to stick in my mind, and I’m pleasantly surprised each time I read a new one by how well he writes. His dialogue is crisp and witty, both on and off-track, and his characters are vividly drawn.

   Shifty is a likable first-person narrator, but I found the plot a bit fuzzy in this one. Some of it was deliberate, but still… It’s a different sort of ending.

The Shifty Lou Anderson series —

1. Tip on a Dead Crab (1984)
2. The Hard Knocker’s Luck (1985)
3. When the Fat Man Sings (1987)
4. The King of the Nightcap (1989)
5. Getaway Blues (1990)
6. I’m Getting Killed Right Here (1991)
7. We’re Off to See the Killer (1993)
8. Now You See Her, Now You Don’t (1994)
9. A Fine Italian Hand (1996)

Bibliographic Update:   Barry spoke a little too soon there in his first paragraph. This may have been the first book in the series that didn’t have both a hard and soft cover release. In general, that’s a sign that interest in a series is starting to tail off, and sure enough, there was only the one more.

   For those not familiar with the leading character, most sources describe him as a “part-time magician and lifelong horseracing addict.”

FOXFIRE. Universal International Pictures, 1955. Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, Dan Duryea, Mara Corday, Barton MacLane. Director: Joseph Pevney.

   Is there ever a movie about a mining town that somehow doesn’t involve a mining disaster? I ask because I’m not sure that there is. Or at least there doesn’t seem to be. It’s almost a rule. If you’re going to have a drama, particularly a melodrama, set in a mining town, you’re going to have to have a final act in which there’s a cave-in, an accident, a death, or a horrible something else transpiring in a mineshaft. (For supernatural tales, there’s always going to be a creature lurking in a mineshaft).

   Foxfire, a slightly lurid, slightly campy melodrama, is about as far away from the horror genre as you can get. But it’s set in a mining town – a dying little spot on the map in Arizona to be exact – and sure enough, it involves a whirlwind romance between two mismatched lovers. Jane Russell portrays Amanda Lawrence, a New York socialite vacationing in Arizona. She immediately falls for the tall and hunky Jonathan Dartland (Jeff Chandler), a local engineer consumed with the idea of rehabilitating an abandoned gold mine out in the hills.

   They are divided not only by class, but also by race. Dartland is half-Apache and believes strongly in many of their customs, particularly pertaining to the role of women. He’s also a little bit mean. But then again Amanda isn’t exactly the nicest person either.

   The movie’s view on race relations and the smugness and insular nature of small town 1950s America reminded me very much of Douglas Sirk’s films from the same era. Foxfire, with a strong supporting cast that includes Dan Duryea, Mara Corday, and Barton MacLane, is indeed both a melodrama and a penchant critique of bourgeois societal expectations regarding romance and marriage.

   But it plays in 2019 more like pure camp than like anything one would take remotely seriously. Still, with a particularly effective use of color, it’s a beautiful movie to look at. As Foxfire was the very last American commercial film filmed in three-strip Technicolor, it’s worth a look for the deep saturation alone.

FRIEDRICH DÃœRRENMATT – The Judge and His Hangman. Originally published in 1950 in German as Der Richter und sein Henker. First published in English by Jenkins (UK, hardcover, 1954). First US edition: Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1955. Also published as End of the Game. Warner, 1976.

END OF THE GAME. Germany, 1975. Original title: Der Richter und sein Henker. Also released as Murder on the Bridge, Deception, Getting Away with Murder and The Monster That Devoured Cleveland. Jon Voight, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Shaw, Lil Dagover, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Donald Sutherland and Pinchas Zuckerman. Screenplay by Friedrich Durrenmatt and Maximilian Schell. Directed by Maximilian Schell.

   I read Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Judge and His Hangman back in the mid-1970s and again about 20 years ago, but early this year an attack of severe and prolonged acid reflux recalled it to mind and I thought I’d have another look and maybe check out the film made from it.

   Well, it’s pretty good. Ably constructed, well-translated (see Francis Nevins’ comments on the translation here ) with memorable characters and a tricky plot, plus that little something extra one always looks for in a mystery, and so seldom finds: the quirky element that makes a book stay in the memory and tug at the sleeve of your thoughts every now and again.

   As Judge starts, Police Inspector Barlach has been on the trail of a Master Criminal named Gastmann for 40 years. Barlach is prematurely old, in pain, and dying of gastritis. He’s also a slow, methodical cop, considered old-fashioned by his subordinates, superiors, and especially by the object of his pursuit, Gastmann.

   Barlach has set his best officer on the job of catching Gastmann, and that officer is found dead on the first page. Frustrated, in more pain than ever, Barlach puts his second-best man on the job, only to have Gastmann run circles around him. As the book progresses, Barlach becomes little more than a pathetic stooge for his brilliant nemesis, as the master thief plunders his files, disrupts his work, invades his home and even spirits him away at one point, all with the suave nonchalance and impudent ease of…

   That’s when it hit me that this relationship was eerily like that of The Saint and his frequent foil, Inspector Teal. Gastmann describes himself as “an adventurer roaming the world… driven to taste life to the very last drop….” and he sums things up to Barlach, “…I was always one step ahead of you. Time and again I turned up in your career as a gray spectre. Time and again I was tempted to commit, under your very nose, the boldest, wildest crimes, and time and again you were unable to prove them.”

   Yeah, that’s the Saint and Mr. Teal, all right, and as I remember, Teal used to complain of indigestion a lot.

   But this is a darker, more sardonic view of the relationship, and late in the book, when Barlach finds himself outsmarted once again, there’s a stunning moment when he turns to Gastmann and says, “I have judged you and condemned you to death. You will not survive the day. The hangman I have chosen for you will come for you today. You will recognize him. And he will kill you.”

   And from that point, it moves to a truly chilling climax, capped off by a scene so quirky and unsettling, I found myself re-reading it with genuine pleasure. This is one I mean to come back to, even if it takes another quarter-century. If my tattered paperback lasts that long. Or I do.

   Any movie that features Donald Sutherland as a corpse is bound to be idiosyncratic, and End of the Game is rewardingly so. Stylishly directed, with off-beat casting and a cinematic script courtesy of author Durrenmatt (who plays himself in the film) and director Schell.

   The U.S. release is dubbed, not always well, but has been capably translated — they persist in referring to small semi-automatic handguns as “revolvers” but that’s in the book too, and for all I know may be in the original German text. At least they stick to Durrenmatt’s dialogue. Also, for some reason, Ennio Morricone’s original score was replaced by some of his older compositions.

   Despite this, Durrenmatt & Schell capture that “something extra” perfectly, with images that evoke the author’s word-paintings in colors delicate but vivid. The pacing is fast, and the twists and turns of the plot conveyed visually where it suits best. The scene where the executioner calls on Gastmann crackles with tension and explodes in violence with the kind of flair one sees in Don Siegel and Gordon Douglas at their best.

   As for the actors, Friedrich Durrenmatt seems miscast, but Robert Shaw is dashingly sinister as the master criminal, Jon Voight sharp-eyed and ruthless, and Jacqueline Bisset gives her all to a complex and well-written part. But the big surprise is Martin Ritt as Barlach.

   Ritt did some acting in the early days of television, but only rarely thereafter, and as far as I know, this was his only leading part. And he’s perfect. He plods around looking like a plump Percy Dovetonsils, pot-bellied, phlegmatic and bespectacled, but radiating an innate intelligence that lets us know immediately that this is no Dumb Cop.

   This is not an easy film to find. It took me a month to get a copy in English from a dealer in the Czech Republic, but I have to say it was well worth the effort.

ROALD DAHL “Man from the South.” Orinally published in the September 4, 1948 issue of Colliers (as “Collector’s Item”). First collected in Someone Like You (1953). Reprinted many times, including A Shocking Thing, edited by Damon Knight (Pocket, 1974). TV versions: (1) Cameo Theatre, August 7, 1955. (2) Alfred Hitchcock Presents, January 3, 1960 (with Steve McQueen, Peter Lorre). (3) Tales of the Unexpected, March 24, 1979, (with José Ferrer). (4) Alfred Hitchcock Presents, one segment of “Pilot,” May 5, 1985 (with John Huston, Steven Bauer). (5) Suspense, February 12, 2016.

   Even though you may not recognize it from its title, most readers of this blog may easily have read or watched at least one version of this story. In case not, this is the tale of a daring young man who bets the loss of the little finger on his left hand against a brand new Cadillac that his lighter will light successfully ten times in a row.

   Somewhat surprisingly, the story that Dahl is not nearly as suspenseful as the versions I’ve seen on TV, namely (2) and (3). The snapping of the lighter by the boy whose other hand is tied to the table is almost perfunctory. Not nearly so as when drawn out for dramatic effect in either TV version.

   Even so, there is no denying that Roald Dahl’s story, only 12 pages long, is as bizarrely evil as anything I’ve ever read, with a twist as good as any ever written.

ROBERT E. HOWARD “The Horror from the Mound.” Short story. Non-series. First published in Weird Tales, May 1932. Collected in Skull-Face and Others (Arkham House, hardcover, 1946) and Wolfshead (Lancer, paperback, 1968). Reprinted elsewhere many more times, including Trails in Darkness (Baen, paperback, 1996).

   A short tale — only 23 pages long in the Baen edition — but still one of the most effective vampire stories I’ve ever read. Not that anyone except a poor Mexican laborer knows ahead of time who or what lies inside the ancient burial mound on Steve Brill’s land, somewhere in the American southwest, and he makes a great point of avoiding the area whenever he trudges back to his hovel of a home after a hard day’s work.

   What Brill does — in spite of all the alarms that go off in the minds of every single reader of this tale, every single one — his curiosity completely out of control, is to start digging into the mound on his own and far into the night.

   What emerges is something he does not expect, not in today’s day and age (or 1932, to be precise, which is when the story was first published). This is the kind of story in which the suspense builds and builds, whether you’re a believer of the supernatural or not. It’s not a story to be put down easily, I can assure you.

The year before, 1963, was the year I bought my first Bob Dylan LP. Can it really be that long ago?

If I’m reading Mr. Google correctly, and several sites are telling me the same thing, I’m at Stage Three of the cold I’m suffering through now. No details.

This is the first cold or similar illness that I’ve had in 20 years, and I can tell you, I don’t like it one bit. I’m doing everything all those websites say to do, but they also say that the best thing to do is to rest as much as possible and= let the cold take its course.

So, no more trying to fight my way through it. I’m going to take a few days off from the blog. (If you saw how many typos I’ve made in just typing up these three paragraphs you’d know exactly what I mean.) I’ll be back as soon as I can!

THE HOUSE ON GREENAPPLE ROAD. Made-for-TV movie. ABC-TV, 11 January 1970. Pilot film for the Dan August TV series. Christopher George (Lt. Dan August), Keenan Wynn, Janet Leigh, Julie Harris, Tim O’Connor, Walter Pidgeon, Barry Sullivan, [Peter] Mark Richman, William Windom. Based on the novel by Harold R. Daniels. A Quinn Martin Production. Director: Robert Day.

   I don’t know the background behind the making of this far better than average TV movie, whether it was considered a “pilot” film for a possible series from the very start, or or if after did well in the ratings, and only then, they (the people at the network) decided to see what they could do to take advantage of its success.

   Which I believe it was. For one thing, just look at that cast. Some standard TV stalwarts, to be sure, but some actors whose names were big enough to catch anyone’s attention. True, the production was TV level, not big budget movie level, but it wasn’t running in pinch-penny mode, either.

   Of course when it came time to cast the part of Dan August for the series, they chose Burt Reynolds. I have never seen any episodes of the series, but Reynolds’ usual cheeky if not cocky screen presence is to my mind quite the opposite of Christopher George’s calm and sedate portrayal of the role. (He reminded me at times of Jack Lord in that other series you may know about.)

   Lots of people will remember this one for its opening scene. A young blonde girl, maybe 10 or so, comes skipping home from school, calls out for her mother. No answer. She goes into the kitchen, sees broken dishes all over the floor, and a huge amount of blood smeared on the walls and the refrigerator. No one home, she realizes, and off she goes next door to stay with her aunt.

   Suspicion falls immediately on the woman’s husband, even though there is no body to be found. August’s leisurely investigation, in spite of hurry-up pleas from the mayor himself, turns up the fact that the lady was pretty much a tramp. Flashbacks show in detail the missing woman’s various affairs, giving August plenty of other suspects.

   There is a twist in the story, which is a good one — which includes the possibility that there is no twist, so I’m not giving anything away — and the acting is top notch all around. It’s pretty much a routine investigation, but it’s also one that builds in tension as it goes, and it’s told well.