MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Kill Your Darlings. Walker, hardcover, 1984. Tor, paperback, 1988.

   The first mystery novel set at a Bouchercon, Max Allan Collins’s Kill Your Darlings takes place in Chicago, where Bouchercon was held in 1984, though Collins wrote the book before that event.

   It’s an enormously enjoyable tale, well plotted and with lots of insights into a mystery convention and publishing, though mostly from a writer’s viewpoint. (Fans do not loom large in this book.) The plot device, an unknown Hammett manuscript, is an inspired idea.

   Despite Collins’s disclaimer that the victim, an old-time mystery writer, is a composite, he reminded me of someone in particular. If you ask me at the next Bouchercon, I’ll tell you who. Until then, attend a Bouchercon vicariously with Max as your guide.

Bibliographic Data: The detective who solves the case in Kill Your Darlings is “Mallory,” a former cop who became a mystery writer living in Iowa.

       The Mallory series —

The Baby Blue Rip-Off. Walker, 1983.

No Cure for Death. Walker, 1983.
Kill Your Darlings. Walker, 1984.
A Shroud for Aquarius. Walker, 1985.
Nice Weekend for a Murder. Walker, 1986.

ERIC WRIGHT – Death By Degrees. Charlie Salter #10. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1993. Worldwide, US, paperback, 1995. Doubleday, Canada, hardcover, 1993. Bantam Seal, Canada, paperback (shown).

   In Charlie Salter, Wright has created one of the more credible and likable policemen of modern detective fiction. I’m delighted — though somewhat surprised — that the books haven’t been driven off the shelves by the plethora of Big Cop and serial killer books that have appeared of late.

   Charlie’s father has fallen and suffered a head injury, and probably had a stroke as well. Charlie is somewhat surprised to find himself distraught to the point of being unable to function; his relationship with the old man had not been close.

   To take his mind off his troubles, and a report he’s working on that has been eating him alive, he volunteers to investigate a killing at a local non-degree college. At first thought to be a cut-and-dried robbery, its status is now in doubt because of a series of anonymous notes pointing toward involvement of some university personnel.

   In between all night stays at the hospital, Charlie begins to snuffle around in the halls academe, and introduce himself to the intrigues of academic bureaucracy.

   For me, the Salter books have a number of strong points, Charlie and his family — his wife, their two sons, his irascible father and his common-law wife — have all been developed over the course of the series into fully fleshed-out human beings, in whom the reader can be interested, and for whom it is possible to care.

   There is real police work, accomplished without violence or pyrotechnics. And Wright writes well. It’s an excellent series.

Editorial Comment:   I concur, as my review of The Night the Gods Smiled, the first of the Charlie Salter series, should tell you. I won’t repeat it here, but following the review is a complete bibliography of all of Eric Wright’s crime fiction.

“Murder in Mesopotamia.” An episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. ITV, UK, 8 July 2001. (Season 8, Episode 2.) David Suchet (Hercule Poirot), Hugh Fraser (Captain Hastings), Ron Berglas, Barbara Barnes, Dinah Stabb, Georgina Sowerby, Jeremy Turner-Welch, Pandora Clifford, Christopher Hunter, Christopher Bowen, Iain Mitchell. Based on the novel by Agatha Christie (1936). Dramatized by Clive Exton. Director: Tom Clegg.

   In this film Agatha Christie’s famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is in what is known as Iraq today, visiting an archaeological dig, and so is his good friend Captain Hastings, although he was not in the novel. In the book the story was largely told from the point of view of Nurse Leatheran (Georgina Sowerby), but in this made-for-TV adaptation her role has been cut down considerably.

   There are a few other relatively minor changes and enhancements, but for the better, I can’t swear to it. The nurse’s patient, the new wife of the expedition’s leader, is the primary victim.

   She is found dead in her room beside her bed, having been hit in the head by the old stand-by, a blunt instrument. Strangely, though, the window is locked and the only access to her room was a door that was under watch at all times.

   The exterior scenes were filmed in Tunisia, a very worthy stand-in for that other war-torn part of the world, and are beautifully done, if not out-and-out stunning. Suchet, as usual, is the pitch perfect Poirot, and all of the other players play their roles with distinction.

   The problem is, and I really do hate to say that there are problems, but for a film that is less than two hours long, there are simply too many characters involved. There were a couple of them I did not even recognize in the final “let’s gather all of the suspects together and I will name the killer” scene.

   A second viewing would also help in putting together the various scenes that took place both before and after the murder, many of them too brief to make sense at the time – but of course they are needed to fill in the details as Poirot begins his final re-creation of the crime before his enraptured audience.

   The puzzle of the “locked room” is very cleverly done, however, which makes watching this movie worthwhile, even in the face of a motive (and how it came about) that seems quite unbelievable to me. Perhaps Agatha Christie made a better job of it in the book, but checking Robert Barnard in A Talent to Deceive, he agrees with me: “Marred by an ending which goes beyond the improbable to the inconceivable.”

   This episode is available on DVD, and at the moment, it can be seen in several parts on YouTube.

ELLERY QUEEN – Calamity Town. Little Brown, hardcover, 1942. Pocket 283, paperback, 1945. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft.

   When I first started reading Mysteries, back in the mid-60s, I pretty much devoured the earlier titles of the acknowledged “masters” of the Classic Detective Story (except for Erle Stanley Gardner, whom I ignored until the late 70s) so I probably first read this about a quarter-century ago. I turned to it again, just recently, because it was the only Ellery Queen selected by H. R. F. Keating in his 100 Best Books of Crime and Mystery.

   Ellery “Smith” comes to the New England town of Wrightsville to work on his new novel, and stays — due to Wartime housing shortages — in a house built by Mr. Wright for his daughter Nora, when she was going to be married … only just before the Wedding, her fiance, one Jim Haight, disappeared.

   Shortly after Ellery takes up residence, however, the missing Haight returns, and it isn’t long before he and Nora are re-betrothed and then married. Ellery gives up the house, but as he and Nora’s sister are moving some of Jim’s things in, they discover three letters, dated for the forthcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, in which he describes Nora’s illness and death.

   Sure enough, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Nora is ill, but come New Year’s Day, it’s someone completely else who buys the farm, a victim of Arsenic poisoning.

   Hard to say whether I figured out the solution of this one or just remembered it from my Salad Days, since the idea has been used since. The characters are credible, if not terribly deep, and the prose serviceable. Not as memorable as the three Queen novels on my list, but pretty good nonetheless.

Editorial Comment:   The top image is that of the hardcover First Edition. The lower one is one of the later Pocket reprints. I chose it because of the rare split-screen effect, one that I don’t believe was used very often by paperback publishers, then or now.

THE BIG BROADCAST (Paramount, 1932) should have been revived in the 60s for the benefit of the Drug Culture. Its spacey, cartoonish moments impart the look and feel of a Max Fleischer cartoon to this live-action flick, including such delights as a cat, edited to move in rhythm to a swinging pendulum, who oozes under a door; a clock that grows a literal face; a radio speaker that turns into a crooning skull; Cab Calloway (who did music for a couple of Betty Boops) doing a drug-song complete with pantomime coke-snorting; and a covey of frenzied female fans who, upon spotting their idol (Bing Crosby) form a football line and rush him! As I say, pretty spacey. There’s also Burns and Allen (briefly) and some very enterprising sight gags.

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 (Paramount — need I add the year?) features much less interesting material, but a likeably zany plot, with Jack Oakie, the year before Super Sleuth, improbably moustached, playing Lochinvar, the Great Lover of the Airwaves, abducted to the island kingdom of a Russian (I think) Countess, along with an invention called “The Radio Eye” which picks up events (primarily musical and comedy spots by a variety of performers) around the world. Inventors Burns & Allen(!) are hot on the trail of their creation, and Oakie has to contend with the lethal rivalry of C. Henry Gordon and Akim Tamiroff for the Countess’s affections. Very enjoyable.

   Oakie, incidentally, was a mildly prominent star in the early 30s, who for some reason went out of style, though his persona was adopted by Bob Hope and (later) Jack Carson. Hope, Carson and Oakie always played cowards who fancied themselves Men of Action, Nerds who imagined they were Great Lovers, consistently unable to understand why everyone on Earth doesn’t love them.

   With this in mind, Oakie was a Natural to play Mussolini in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and he did a fine job of it in his last great part. He can still be seen in small parts as late as The Wonderful Country, but the Golden Days were behind him.

   Bob Hope shared most of Oakie’s persona, but where Oakie was the eternal Cheese, Hope was the inveterate Schnook, with a hungry vulnerability that Oakie never sought. He also looked slightly more like a Leading Man.

   I particularly like Hope’s “Road” pictures, where he and Crosby send up Adventure Flicks with gay abandon. Road To Zanzibar for example, has a highly enjoyable fight between Hope and a Killer Ape, where both combatants use the corniest old wrestling Routines imaginable: Airplane spins, Body Slams, leg-holds, beating the ground in mock-agony, etc. etc.

THE BIG BROADCAST. Paramount, 1932. Bing Crosby, Stuart Erwin, Leila Hyams, Sharon Lynn, George Burns & Gracie Allen, The Mills Brothers. Director: Frank Tuttle.

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936. Paramount, 1935. Jack Oakie, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Lyda Roberti, Wendy Barrie. Director: Norman Taurog.

EUNICE MAYS BOYD – Murder Wears Mukluks. Farrar & Rinehart Inc., hardcover, 1945. Dell #259, reprint paperback, mapback edition, 1948.

   I’ve owned the Dell mapback edition of this book since I first became aware of the series, which is perhaps some 40 years ago. I’ve also been fascinated by the title, which I’m sure is unique in the annals of crime and detective fiction, but what I can’t explain to you (or anyone else, for that matter) why I never sat down to read the book until now.

   Which I have, at last, but — I have to confess — I was disappointed. Not at first, though, not at all. I enjoyed the first fifty pages so much that I found inexpensive copies of the other two books in the series (see below) and ordered them online. All three books take place in Alaska, and the hero of record is a mild-mannered grocer in Fairbanks named F. Millard Smyth.

   Or at least he’s a grocer in this one. The other two books are still en route, and I can’t swear to anything I don’t know for sure. After being visited by the previous owner of his store – F. Millard has fallen behind on his payments – he makes his nightly visit to his warehouse next door to stoke up the stove to keep his stock from freezing.

   The building used to be an old dance hall, and F. Millard (which is how the author refers to him also) is treated to a ghostly dance by what appears to be a beautiful young woman on the balcony. The lights go out, and the F. Millard flees. In the morning, though, when he returns, he finds the body of the man to whom he owes the money he cannot repay, Tom Blaine.

   The marshal’s deputy thinks he has the case solved right away, but when Jeff Peters, the marshal himself, returns, he demurs. It seems as though everybody who lives on the same short road as Smyth may have a motive – and opportunity, once their alibis are checked more closely.

   As I say, it’s a fine beginning, but F. Millard Smyth, though he’s a devoted reader of Flatfoot magazine, is no great shakes of a detective, and if Jeff Peters is an improvement (and he is), the author of this pale imitation of a detective puzzle can’t seem to show it.

   All of the possible suspects have known each other for a long time, and have been married to each other (some of them), or in love with each other (a different set than that of the previous category) and/or have cheated each other out of mining claims or furs or possibly some other tangible goods that I skimmed over. Strangely enough, the entire population of Fairbanks seems to live on this one short, dead-end street.

   The biggest disappointment comes, however, with the ending, as the killer traps Smyth in his store, believing him to be coming too close to the truth (we know better), and proceeds to explain in detail how everything came about and why.

   The recitation is long and complicated and takes up fifteen pages, before the marshal shows up and utilizes the last ten pages to clean up all the loose ends.

      The F. Millard Smith series —

Murder Breaks Trail. Farrar, 1943.
Doom in the Midnight Sun. Farrar, 1944.
Murder Wears Mukluks. Farrar, 1945.

TWILIGHT IN THE SIERRAS. Republic Pictures, 1950. Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Estelita Rodriguez, Russ Vincent, Foy Willing & the Riders of the Purple Sage. Director: William Witney.

   I was recently talking to a friend about the Hopalong Cassidy movies, and how he thought they were better than the B movie classification they’re lumped into. I still haven’t seen any of them recently enough to say whether I agree with him or not — and maybe I’m overstating his premise — but I just watched this Roy Rogers movie, and even though Roy was the “King of the Cowboys,” it’s a B movie all the way.

   You probably know how it goes without my much telling you. Roy and his gang spend the movie singing around the campfire or up in the bunkhouse, and every once in a while a story breaks out.

   In this case it’s a gang of counterfeiters Roy is after, and a parolee in Roy’s custody was once an engraver, if you get my drift.

   The parolee has a sister, and if the gang can get their hands on her, well sir, they’re in business. There is also a hunt for a vicious mountain lion, lots of fights, a shooting or two and a couple of runaway buckboards.

   What set Roy’s movies off from all the others, I think, is that they took place in the “modern” west, with buses coming into town instead of stagecoaches, and Roy, Pat and Dale communicating with each other by walkie-talkie. This is kids’ fare, all right, but even though I winced every so often at the wooden dialogue, I still thought it was neat.

EDITH HOWIE – No Face to Murder. M. S. Mill, US, hardcover, 1946. TV Boardman, UK, paperback, 1946.

   As the choir of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church is finishing its practice session, Miss Tess King, a chorister and the church secretary, discovers in trying to recover her dropped anthem that her hand is soaked with blood. A body is subsequently located with its throat slit, and then another is found that has been murdered the same way.

   From the evidence, it would seem that a choir member or the organist, who had a tendency not to follow the score but to let the choir follow him, must have done the killings. All, of course, have something to hide.

   Miss King is a passable narrator and a sensible person, except when the author turns her temporarily into a Gothic idiot. Ran Garrison, the police investigator and Miss King’s boyfriend, is a competent but dull investigator. Only when Bishop Walters shows up midway in the novel does it take on any life.

   Unfortunately, he gets bopped on the head by someone who may be the murderer and decides, wisely for him but not for the reader, to end his career as a sleuth almost as soon as it was begun.

   Hubin’s bibliography says that this novel is set in Missouri. I haven’t figured out how this was ascertained.

Bibliographic Notes:   Edith Howie, dates uncertain, was the author of seven crime novels written between 1941 and 1946. A complete list may be found here. A short synopsis and review of No Face to Murder that appeared in The Saturday Review may be seen here.

“The Case of the Final Fade-Out.” An episode of Perry Mason (1957-66). Season 9, Episode 30. First broadcast: 22 May 1966. Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, William Talman, Richard Anderson, James Stacy, Estelle Winwood, Jackie Coogan, Denver Pyle, Dick Clark, Gerald Mohr, Marlyn Mason, Kenneth MacDonald, Lee Miller, Gail Patrick (uncredited), Erle Stanley Gardner (uncredited). Executive producer: Gail Patrick. Writers: Ernest Frankel and Orville H. Hampton. Director: Jesse Hibbs.

   You’ve probably seen crime dramas centering on a murder during the production of a movie or television show (one installment of Ellery Queen comes to mind), and “The Case of the Final Fade-out” is one of them.

   A young and handsome but amoral TV actor (Stacy) is the star of a hit TV crime series. Not content with his success, he’s more than willing to double cross his colleagues to get what he wants — and you just know that when a character in a Perry Mason episode starts throwing his weight around, he is very likely going to end up a corpse.

   When filming a hectic shootout scene, Stacy is killed in the confusion; but who pulled the trigger?

   Just about everybody this crumb bum knew had a good motive to rub him out, and it’s no small matter for Perry Mason to finally finger the culprit.

   This show is special in several ways: (1) It was the final (271st) episode of the original black-and-white Perry Mason series; (2) many of the production crew had a chance to appear on camera (since they were “witnesses” to the crime); and (3) Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner put in his one and only appearance as a judge.

   It might also be the only time lawyer Mason defended a dead client — and then went on to defend the person accused of killing him!

   When this episode wrapped, everyone thought they were finished with Perry Mason. Raymond Burr (1917-93) went on to what he considered a more interesting character in the Ironside series (196 episodes, 1967-75), but apparently couldn’t resist the money, returning to Perry Mason in 26 made-for-TV films (1985-93).

EDITORIAL COMMENT:   Please note the date!

DAVID L. LINDSEY – In the Lake of the Moon. Atheneum, hardcover, 1988. Bantam, paperback, 1990.

   I’m of two minds about this book, the latest of David L. Lindsey’s novels about Stuart Haydon of the Houston police department. On the one hand, it’s notable for the depth of character revelation and exploration and for the strong sense of place.

   On the other, its 341-page length draws out the tale, thins it out, demanding reader patience. Photographs, decades old, come to Haydon in the mail. At first he doesn’t recognize the person pictured, but it’s his father, fifty years before. Stuart was very close to his father until his death some six years before, thought he knew him intimately.

   But the pictures, sent with malevolent purpose, are followed by others, and the trail leads from the steaming rain of Houston to the density and sprawl of Mexico City, to a man whose brain, bubbling with madness, is bent on death. But why him, Stuart wonders, off balance and out of his element, and how could there be so much of his father he didn’t know?

      The Stuart Haydon series —

1. A Cold Mind (1983)
2. Heat from Another Sun (1984)

3. Spiral (1986)
4. In the Lake of the Moon (1988)    [Nominated for an Edgar as Best Novel]
5. Body of Truth (1992)

   David L. Lindsey has written eight other stand-alone novels, the most recent being The Face of the Assassin (2004).