EARL DERR BIGGERS – The Black Camel. Bobbs Merrill, hardcover, 1929. Grosset & Dunlap, hardcover reprint; Photoplay edition. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #133, 1941; Paperback Library 52-312, 1964; Pyramid T-1947, 1969; Bantam N6315, 1975; Mysterious Press, 1987; Academy Chicago Publishers, 2009. Film: 20th Century Fox, 1931 (Warner Oland); remade as Charlie Chan in Rio, 1941 (Sidney Toler).

   “Death is the black camel that kneels unbid at every gate.” Charlie Chan quotes this Eastern saying when Shelah Fane, silent-movie star, is stabbed to death in Honolulu. A famous but fading actress, Fane is in Hawaii to finish off the final shots of a South Sea film started in Tahiti. Apparently she also had witnessed a murder of another movie star in Hollywood some three years earlier and was planning at last to reveal the murderer’s identity.

   Chan has his work cut out for him in this investigation, particularly when the most likely suspect, a fortune teller, has an unbreakable alibi. Not a fair-play mystery, but Chan is always entertaining and interesting.

   Although Inspector Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department is a household name throughout the world, he appears in only six novels. The great number of films, radio plays, and comic strips inspired by Chan are proof of the compelling quality of Earl Derr Biggers’s creation. However, these offshoots do not do credit to Chan’s character. In them, he becomes a stereotypical Chinese, mouthing ridiculous platitudes and doing more than his fair share of bowing and scraping.

   To anyone familiar with Chan only from the Thirties’ and Forties’ B-movies, Biggers’ novels will come as a refreshing surprise. In them, Chan is portrayed as an amiable, wise man, given to philosophic contemplation. He is an individual in whom the characteristics of the East and the West are delicately blended, and often Biggers uses this cultural mix in his plotting, allowing his detective to discern clues that either an Occidental or Oriental investigator would not.

   Chan’s character is one of considerable depth — a welcome period departure from sinister Orientals such as Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu. Unfortunately, Biggers’ secondary characters tend to be less interesting, especially his melodramatic and overly romantic young men and women.

   A sense of place is another aspect of fiction at which Biggers excelled. The Black Camel is set in the Honolulu of the Twenties — a city much different from the one we know today. Waikiki is a quiet beach community where trade winds “mumble at the curtains,” a place where flowers bloom unmolested, and the trip into the city itself is a long journey by streetcar.

   When movie queen Shelah Fane rents a house on the beach, she expects a restful sojourn, but complications in the form of an ardent shipboard suitor, a disturbing session with her trusted fortune-teller, and fear of a secret in her past arise to disrupt it. When Shelah is found murdered, Chan is called in.

   The star has left a letter for the fortune-teller, which could perhaps provide the vital key, but before Chan can read it, the lights in the house go out and it is snatched from him. Without this clue, the detective must sort through the conflicting stories of the murdered woman’s suitor, secretary, co-star, fortune-teller, tourist guide, butler, and a beachcomber — all of whom seem to have had ulterior motives where the film star was concerned.

   An entertaining novel, with suspects galore, and a surprise ending.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

MURRAY FORBES – Hollow Triumph. Ziff-Davis, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted as The Big Fake (Pyramid #97, paperback, 1953).

HOLLOW TRIUMPH. Eagle-Lion, 1948. Re-released as The Scar and The Man Who Murdered Himself. Paul Henried, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks, Mabel Paige and Jack Webb. Screenplay by Daniel Fuchs, based on the novel by Murray Forbes. Directed by Steve Sekely.

   Murray Forbes’ Hollow Triumph has an interesting idea for a book: Henry Mueller is a failed medical student and small-time chiseler with an over-sized ego, fresh out of prison when he discovers he bears an amazing resemblance to Viktor Bartok, a prominent psychologist. Readers of this sort of thing will figure at once that Mueller will kill Bartok and take his place, and that’s pretty much what happens, but Forbes gives it a cute twist: Mueller’s impersonation becomes a greater success than he figured on (the American Dream: if you fail at one thing, re-invent yourself as something else) and as time passes, he wins even greater fortune and honor… and he can’t stand the fact that the murdered man is getting all the credit for his killer’s work: Mueller rubbed out Bartok, but it was Mueller who got erased, and his overweening pride leads him to….

   It’s a clever thought, and somebody should write a book about it someday; Murray Forbes just didn’t seem too interested. Time and again he just tells us about things when he should be showing them. So we get lines like “She felt suspicious,” or “He was scared,” which ain’t exactly deathless prose. There are even points where Forbes seems to lose interest entirely, and instead of story-telling, he resorts to synopsis, resulting in passages like, “He went to New York to receive the honor, then came back and continued work with his patients…”

   I kept reading, but I’m not sure why.

   Fans of Old Time Radio may recall Murray Forbes as an actor on Ma Perkins and other programs, but this was his only novel, and in 1948 the Movies bought it, discarded most of the plot, noired up the rest, and released it under the original title and as The Scar, then as The Man Who Murdered Himself, creating an identity crisis to equal its protagonist’s.

   Joan Bennett is quite good here in a softer role than usual, but Paul Henreid’s acting, like Forbes’ writing, is just perfunctory. On the other hand, there’s fine photography by John Alton, and Daniel Fuchs’ script makes intelligent use of a plot twist that would have been a facile punch-line in lesser hands.

   Triumph/Scar/Murdered starts off with Henried/Mueller getting out of jail and leads quickly into a heist of a gambling joint (not in the book) that goes suspensefully wrong, leaving our antihero on the run from gangsters and hiding out in L.A. Things get tight when he’s spotted by the hoods, but when Mueller makes the switch with Bartok they get even tighter as he finds Bartok has a messy personal life, a grasping girlfriend… and is in debt to the Mob.

   It’s all done in suitably noir style, but without the artistry that distinguishes films like Night and the City or Out of the Past. Director Steve Sekely had his moments (mostly marginal ones in B movies), and he doesn’t spoil this one, but he never gives it the subversive energy that marks the classics of the genre.

   Fortunately Daniel Fuchs’ screenplay provides some unexpected highlights: Even when the leads fail to convince, the minor characters surprise us with quirky moments we weren’t expecting: A garage attendant starts dancing, a dentist turns loquacious, and a lowly scrubwoman proves to be the most perceptive character in the film.

   The marginal virtues aren’t enough to completely redeem The Scar, but I’ll remember it a little longer for them….

SHE COULDN’T TAKE IT. Columbia Pictures, 1935. George Raft, Joan Bennett, Walter Connolly, Billie Burke, Lloyd Nolan, Wallace Ford, James Blakeley, Alan Mowbray, Donald Meek. Director: Tay Garnett.

   Like the definition of film noir, and perhaps even more so, the concept of the screwball comedy has always been nebulous to me. Some films definitely fall in the category, beginning perhaps with It Happened One Night (1934), while other comedies are most clearly not. She Couldn’t Take It, as the case at hand, I’m going to say is; that is to say, if categories are important.

   What the film most definitely is not, is a classic. The members of a screwball family make the headlines so often with their upper class escapades and spending habits that the father (Walter Connolly as patriarch Daniel Van Dyke) would rather go to prison than have to deal with their debts any longer.

   And jail, as it turns out, suits him well, and it is where he meets former bootlegger and racketeer Spot Ricardi (George Raft), whom be befriends and on his deathbed, makes hm the guardian of the family. The comedy comes into full play then, and so does the romance, as Ricardi falls in love with daughter Carol Van Dyke, most fetchingly played by a young and very lovely Joan Bennett.

   The criminous aspect of this film comes when Carol, in order to have some money to spend, arranges with a rival of Ricardi’s (Lloyd Nolan) to have herself kidnapped so she and he can split the ransom. Naturally things do not work out nearly as well as she planned. Very badly, in fact.

   What takes place on the screen during this movie is obviously very contrived and the story does not flow as well as it should as a result, but as I say, Joan Bennett is always worth watching, and even George Raft turns in a performance in which he seems to be much more relaxed than he was in later films. Available on YouTube for free (see below), at least for now, this is far from being a “must see” film, but you may find as many moments worth watching as I did.

JANE HADDAM – Murder Superior. Gregor Demarkian #8. Bantam, paperback original, 1993.

   I feel sort of like I shouldn’t like this series, but however unaccountably, I do. Gregor Demarkian, the retired head of the FBI’s serial killer unit, now known due to his success in several cases he has been drawn into and much to his dismay as the “Armenian Hercule Poirot,” is a character I enjoy.

   A group of nuns are having a convention in Philadelphia, among them a number whom Demarkian had met in a previous case. A reception and buffet dinner includes among its invitees not only Demarkian and several members of Philadelphia’s Main Line, but a controversial local radio show host and the head of a local construction firm who is donating a good deal of labor to one of the nuns’ construction projects.

   There are a lot of animosities floating around amid both the nuns and the secular groups, but everyone is surprised when one of the best-liked nuns drops dead at the banquet, poisoned. The situation is complicated by one of the most over-done incompetent cops I’ve come across.

   This is a typical Demarkian tale, with a longish introduction that sets the stage before bringing Demarkian to the fore to puzzle things out when the crime occurs. There have been those who called these stories boringly slow, but I prefer to think of them as leisurely paced. We’d all agree that they aren’t really exciting. They’re cozies, but they are well done, and I like the characters. Haddam is a competent writer, though not at all flashy. What can I say? I like ’em.

   It’s interesting that after a couple of hardcovers in what was a paperback original series, we’re back to a paperback original. I don’t believe these could carry a hardcover price.

Bibliographic Note:   There are now 29 books in the Gregor Demarkian series, certainly one of the longer lasting ones of recent years. The most recent one, Fighting Chance, appeared in 2014.

GEORGE BAXT – A Parade of Cockeyed Creatures, or Did Someone Murder Our Wandering Boy? Random House, hardcover, 1967. International Polygonics, paperback; 1st printing, December 1986.

   This is the first of three appearances of the crime-solving team of New York City cop Max Van Larsen and Jewish high school teacher Sylvia Plotkin, not that the latter has much to do in this one, their having just met and all, but she in love with him at first sight, and by book’s end she is promising him a home-cooked meal, complete with chicken soup.

   He accepts, gladly. He is attracted too. There’s only one problem. He hates chicken soup.

   But, as I say, they have two more mysteries to solve together: “I!” Said the Demon (Random House, 1969) and Satan Is a Woman (IPL, 1987), so the chemistry they have together is obviously more than of the minor league variety.

   Max works for the Missing Persons Bureau, and Parade opens with a married couple coming in to have the police look for their son, who has been missing for five days. Why have they waited five days, Max asks. They equivocate. It is obvious that there are huge differences between the couple and their son, no to mention between husband and wife as well.

   Max is having his own problems. His wife and son have just died in a fiery automobile accident, and he wonders why he can’t find it within himself to mourn them. It’s that kind of book, brightly and wickedly humorous on the surface, but underneath, full of sorrow, and all the while mocking the foibles of the world, and the people in it — the “cockeyed creatures” of the title, most of them buoyantly over the top. Manhattan in the late 60s — the time of drugs, free love, and the peace movement — was the place to find characters such as the ones you will find in this book, and there are dozens of them.

   Another contradiction: the book is compulsively readable, but after a while the characters prove to be shallow and dull, and the mystery is weak. I probably won’t read another.

CANADIAN PACIFIC. 20th Century Fox, 1949. Randolph Scott, Jane Wyatt, J. Carrol Naish, Victor Jory, Nancy Olson. Director Edward L. Marin.

   Directed by the prolific Edwin L. Marin, Canadian Pacific opens in semi-documentary form with the recounting of the political struggles involved in constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway. Then the movie quickly shifts into a rather mediocre frontier melodrama before settling into its natural rhythm. It ends up a slightly above average and surprisingly enjoyable, late 1940s shoot ’em up.

   It goes without saying that absent Randolph Scott’s formidable screen presence, this rather staid Western wouldn’t have had much of a shelf life. But with Scott’s trademark grit and wit, combined with on screen character’s repartee with a sidekick portrayed by J. Carrol Naish, the film eventually grows upon the viewer. Dimitri Tiomkin’s rousing epic-like score likewise lends itself well to the film, providing it with momentum during some altogether formulaic scenes.

   The plot. Scott portrays Tom Andrews, a surveyor who also doubles as a security guard for the railroad. After discovering a pass that would allow the railroad to continue all the way to the Pacific, Andrews quits the railroad life and returns to Calgary to visit his fiancée, the lovely Cecile Gautier (Nancy Olson). It’s there that he learns to what depths trading post owner Dirk Rourke (Victor Jory) is willing to sink in order to prevent the construction of the railroad through Alberta. Forced to choose between Cecile and the railroad, Andrews opts for the latter and heads back to help his former employer fend off Rourke and his Indian allies.

   Aiding him in his efforts is Dynamite Dawson (Naish), a sidekick that could have just as easily been portrayed by Gabby Hayes. Andrews also has female help. After Andrews is injured in a dynamite explosion, Dr. Edith Cabot (Jane Wyatt) ends up tending to him. A physician who soon becomes romantically involved with her recovering patient, Cabot also has strident pacifist views and is charming enough to temporarily convince Andrews not to wear his gun belt.

   But sometimes, good guys need a gun. Tom Andrews is no exception. So once again, Andrews is forced to choose between a woman and his loyalty to the railroad. Soon enough, Cecile is back by his side and they’re fighting Rourke and marauding Indian bucks. As melodrama gives way to action, Canadian Pacific revs up for a bit before winding down into a happy Hollywood bury-the-hatchet ending.

PETER CORRIS – Matrimonial Causes. Dell, 1st US printing, August 1994. First published in Australia by Bantam, paperback, 1993.

   In order of publication, this is the 13th of what is now a series of 41 novels and short story collections about a Sydney-based private eye named Cliff Hardy. It makes sense, in a way, that it was the first Hardy book to appear in the US, since — virtue of a story within a story — it is the tale of Hardy’s first case, and how he barely survived it.

   Why it doesn’t make sense that Dell would go with this one first is that the story just isn’t all that interesting, involving as it does how the high and mighty in Australia can get around the legal rules defining who can get divorces there without causing a lot of notoriety. And notoriety is exactly what these same high and mighty do not want, not when possible knighthoods lie in the balance.

   Hardy seems like your typical PI in most other ways, though: fighting through a marriage of his own on the brink of a breakup, a cheap mostly unfurnished office in a iffy part of town, and a singular lack of clients. He also, in this case, has not yet made the contacts he should have, either in the underworld or the police force. Especially the police force, a key element in Matrimonial Causes, and Hardy, telling the story later, says it’s a lesson he never forgot.

   To sum up, then. Cliff Hardy himself seems like an interesting character, a little stereotyped, perhaps, but solid enough for another go-round. The story he narrates this time, though, is far too bland for my liking.

Music by a short-lived group from the New York City area in the brassy Blood Sweat & Tears jazz-rock vein. Their self-titled first album from 1970 was also their last. Crank up the volume on this one.