MIRIAM BORGENICHT – Fall from Grace. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1984. No paperback edition.

   A twenty-six year old nurse marries a sixty-seven year old doctor and two months later he’s dead, a suicide, leaving a note that seems to imply that the marriage was a mistake.

   What does the world think? Naturally, that she’s to blame. But the world was wrong. Nan Dunlop has married Dr. William Gardner for love, and their marriage was happy. So, after his death, she sets out to find the “mistake” that had driven him to his death.

   Probing into his past, she finds his younger sister, an alcoholic whose dull husband made it big with a defense contract. She finds two nurses who had fallen for the glamorous doctor 21 years before. She finds a research project begun with great enthusiasm and abandoned for no apparent reason.

   Her husband’s lawyer, suspicious of her motives, follows the course of this delving into the past. So does Dr. Collins, who is supportive. After two attempts are made on her life, she realizes that there is something of greater moment than an old love affair to be found. Slowly the suspense builds, as Nan uncovers the solution to this engrossing puzzle.

         Biographical Notes:

   Miriam Borgenicht (1915-1992) was the author of 17 crime novels written between 1949 and 1991. Her obituary in the New York Times states that “She completed her last, yet unpublished, by dictating the conclusion to a daughter from her hospital bed.” She was also an occasional contributor to The New Yorker magazine.

   On the main Mystery*File website, Marvin Lachman had this to say about her work: “Miriam Borgenicht was one of those writers who never seem to write the same book twice. These writers typically don’t have series characters since having a continuing protagonist usually leads to a certain predictability. Andrew Garve was another whose books followed little pattern, though, as I have written elsewhere, Garve was probably his own series character. Borgenicht was a sophisticated writer who created many different strong female protagonists….”

RENEGADE. Pilot episode: 19 September 1992. Syndicated: Stu Segall Productions / Stephen J. Cannell Productions. Cast: Lorenzo Lamas, Branscombe Richmond, Kathleen Kinmont, Stephen J. Cannell. Theme by Mike Post. Created and Written by Stephen J. Cannell. Executive Producers: Nick Corea and Stu Segall. Director: Ralph Hemecker.

    Sometime after Stephen J. Cannell’s masterpiece, The Rockford Files went off the air Cannell developed a fervent case of TV cheesiness. Renegade represents one of his best efforts in TV cheese, and offered classic dialog such as when Val says to Reno, “Sometimes you seem so sad, I wish I could cry for you.”

    The story maintains this Kraft quality style. Reno is in love and has agreed to give up police work and marry the big-breasted Val. But he has one last case, a favor for an old friend (two clichés in one sentence, you know this will not end good), he goes undercover in Bay City (Cannell’s favorite fictional city) and finds cops on the take and involved in murder for hire.

    Evil Police Lt. “Dutch” Dixon orders his henchman Sergeant to kill Reno. The Sergeant goes to the conveniently located prison and they release Hog to the Sergeant. So what that Hog is serving life for murder, the Sergeant (who is alone) says its necessary.

    Hog wants to kill Reno, the man who had put him in jail and hurt his brother. Bad cop Sergeant sets Hog after Reno, but Val is shot instead, and Hog escapes. Remo rushes Val to the hospital. Dixon arrives and kills the Sergeant, his bff for ten years. He faces him and shoots him twice with Reno’s gun. But, according to the later TV news report, the body was found handcuffed (Reno’s) and killed “execution style” (which I understand to mean shot in the back of the head, not from across the room).

    The frame is on. Reno doesn’t want to leave Val, who is now brain dead but kept alive on machines in a hospital. However, Reno needs to get away from the cops while making enough money so he can pay Val’s hospital bills (viewers who might remember that Val has a brother who owns a construction company are paying far too much attention).

    Dixon hires Bobby, the world’s best smart-ass Native American bounty hunter, to find Reno. Computer expert and Bobby’s white blonde big-breasted sister Cheyenne tags along.

    Reno chases Hog. Bobby and Cheyenne chases Reno. Reno catches Hog. Bobby catches Reno and Hog. Reno escapes Bobby, who refuses to stop telling bad Indian jokes. Hog’s biker friends attack Bobby and Cheyenne. Reno returns and saves Bobby. Meanwhile, Cheyenne is taken by the bikers, who are proper gentlemen and just tie her up. Reno and Bobby bond and rescue Cheyenne.

    Thus the premise of Renegade is set up. Reno is on the run wanted for murder. He will catch wanted criminals and turn them over to Bobby to collect the rewards. Bobby, after his cut, sends the reward money to the hospital to make sure the docs keep Val alive. Meanwhile, Dixon lurks evilly in the background.

    Lamas portrays Reno as a man with great pecs and hair. Richmond has the charm to make smug Bobby a likeable character. Stephen J. Cannell as Lt. “Dutch” Dixon is surprisingly good as the evil villain. For Renegade, Cannell was better in front of the camera than he was behind it.

    Auteur Ralph Hemecker’s vision properly favors boobs (females and Lamas’s chest) and hokey macho camera shots. My favorite was when Reno and Bobby prepare to rescue Cheyenne. Bobby and Reno stand alone in the shot staring into each other’s eyes in a true macho bro moment. Bobby cocks his shotgun and says, “Let’s do it, friend.” And the two stride off camera.

    The pilot episode’s opening theme tells us Val is shot before we see her shot in the story. Yes, the theme song is a spoiler of its own story, but if you are paying enough attention to notice, you are watching the wrong show.

    Renegade was syndicated until its fifth and final season when it moved to USA network. With the growing success of cable in the 90s, the market for TV syndication of first run series increased. Renegade was the ideal entertainment for a lazy weekend afternoon.

    Vapid, mind numbing television with all the necessary elements, half naked beautiful women and men, mindless action (chases and fights), silly humor, and a pure evil villain versus a persecuted good-guy hero, all combined for a simple and satisfying way to spend sixty minutes on a slow weekend afternoon.

    Available to view on DVD and various downloading sites.

BARBARA HAMBLY – Those Who Hunt the Night. Ballantine/Del Rey, hardcover, December 1988; reprint paperback, 1990.

   Most assuredly a tour de force, if there ever was one. If you don’t know the story, hang on to your Bunsen burner. Under considerable duress, James Asher, one-time foreign agent for the British government is hired by Don Simon Ysidro to find out who is killing the vampires of London.

   The year is 1907, and the fact is that Ysidro himself became a vampire in 1555. Held over Asher’s head is the life of his wife Lydia, who is herself a scientist of some ability, and who knows something of the pathology of blood.

   Several of Ysidro’s companions are dead, with stakes in their hearts and their coffins opened to the light of day. What Ysidro cannot understand is how a human could be doing these deeds any vampire’s knowing, and thus he turns to what would otherwise be unthinkable: he is asking the assistance of a human. (Worse than that, of course, is actually allowing a human to know of the vampires’ existence.)

   Nominally a detective story, there are a few flaws along that line, mostly those of conjectures that somehow become facts within minutes of their being stated, and small jumps of logic that on occasion stumped me badly. (And sometimes they are wrong, leading to long wild goose hunts that circle back upon themselves, and only then are they crucial to the story.)

   What this may sound like is a horror story, but it really is not, although with vampires involved, how could there not be any chills? What it is, when it comes down to it, is a science fiction novel. There is a reason the story takes place when it does, and that’s because in 1907 there was just enough known about blood and bacteria and related matters to provide a solid “scientific” basis for the existence of vampires, and not yet enough to know that they are not possible.

   And always overshadowing Asher’s investigation is the question of how it’s going to work out when it’s over. Ysidro is a creature who has killed thousands of humans in his “lifetime,” and yet he and Asher become strange allies in their hunt for the killer of the vampires, and each in their own way begin to stand taller in the opinion of the other.

   While there may not be a definitive answer to this not-so-subtle problem, Hambly does offer the reader a resolution to it. She also supplies a solution to the mystery itself, and of the two (resolution and solution), it is the solution to the mystery that is stronger.

   All in all, this is a fascinating book, one I didn’t think I was going to read — it’s not my usual bill of fare — but as it turned out, I’m glad I did.

[UPDATE] 05-20-12.   Unknown to me until now, this was the first of a series of vampire novels that Barbara Hambly wrote about Jim Asher. I’ll list those below.

   Hambly is one of the few authors I can think of who has written as many mysteries as she has in the SF/Fantasy field. Most notable among the former are her eleven novels (through 2011) featuring “free man of color” Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher whose first adventure takes place in New Orleans in 1833.

      The James Asher series —

1. Those Who Hunt the Night (1988)
2. Traveling with the Dead (1995)

3. Blood Maidens (2010)
4. The Magistrates of Hell (forthcoming: July 2012)

PETER LOVESEY – Upon a Dark Night. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1997. Soho Crime, softcover, 2005. First published in the UK by Little Brown, hardcover, 1997.

Genre:   Police Procedural. Leading character:  Det. Supt. Peter Diamond; 5th in series. Setting:   Bath, England.

First Sentence:   A young woman opened her eyes.

   An unconscious woman, found in a hospital parking lot, awakens to find she has no memory. Released to social services, she is placed in a hostel and befriended and named “Rose” by Ada Shaftsbury, a good soul with a large personality and a penchant for shoplifting.

   The Bath police have their own problems with the apparent suicides of an elderly farmer by shotgun and a woman off a roof. But were they suicides, and how do they link to Rose, whom Ada is pushing the police to find after she’s not seen her for two weeks? It’s up to DS Peter Diamond to figure it out.

   There is nothing better than a book that not only has an intriguing beginning but also causes you to wonder what you’d do in a similar situation.

   An unusual facet to this story is that Diamond doesn’t begin to play a major role until quite a way into the story, but what a dynamic, and flawed, character he is. I enjoy the relationship he has with his wife, Stephanie, and their cat, Raffles.

   At the same time, he is not an easy person for others to deal with, particularly Detective Inspector Julie Hargreaves. Diamond respects her, but releases his frustration publicly on her and it is through his imperfections and some of their interchanges that we get to know Diamond better.

   Ada, with all her faults, is a pivotal character and often allows Lovesey to exhibit his delightfully dry humor… “While her old man was refusing to admit to anything, she was singing like the three tenors.”

   What I most appreciate, however, is the plotting. It takes you down interesting, unexpected roads where you learn about everything from film shooting schedules, ancient English history and detectorology and treasure troves. The inclusion and care of such details is only one element that sets Lovesey apart as a writer.

   I particularly like that DS Diamond investigates the case by looking for evidence, doing the research, working his team and following the clues rather than working from assumption. There are good climatic twists and a very well done ending. I am delighted that there are many more books in the series waiting for me to read.

Rating:   Excellent.

       The Peter Diamond series —

1. The Last Detective (1991)

2. Diamond Solitaire (1992)
3. The Summons (1995)
4. Bloodhounds (1996)

5. Upon A Dark Night (1997)
6. The Vault (1999)
7. Diamond Dust (2002)

8. The House Sitter (2003)
9. The Secret Hangman (2007)
10. Skeleton Hill (2009)
11. Stagestruck (2011)

12. Cop to Corpse (2012)

TALMAGE POWELL – Corpus Delectable. Pocket, paperback original, October 1964.

   Apparently this is the fifth and last case of private investigator Ed Rivers, the agent in charge, though there seem to be no other agents, of the Southeastern Division of the Nationwide Detective Agency.

   Two things are happening in Tampa, Florida: The annual Gasparilla Week has begun, “a fun week dedicated to the legendary Jose Gaspar, who roamed these Gulf [of Mexico] waters back when buccaneers were for real,” and Rivers is waiting somewhat impatiently for a possible client who is running late.

   The client, a lovely young lady as are all the females in this novel when they aren’t downright beautiful, is shot by a silenced gun in the hall leading to Rivers’ office. She manages an obscure dying message: “Incense.”

   Her killer also tries to murder Rivers on this and another occasion. He fails in the latter attempt because, like most professional hit men in private-eye novels, he’d rather narrate what he is going to do than do it. Which is good for the longevity of private eyes, I suppose.

   Rivers begins an investigation of his would-be client’s background, which involves the recent death of a rich old woman and some rather unpleasant characters connected with the woman. The reader will be way ahead of Rivers, but then the reader isn’t threatened by a garrulous gunsel or attacked by a chap with a pirate’s sword or encountering females likely to divert one’s mind.

   Rivers is an early “sensitive” private eye, and the Florida setting, I believe, was unusual in the 1960s. The novel is rather fun reading.

       The Ed Rivers series —

The Killer Is Mine. Pocket, 1959.

The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer. Pocket, 1960.

With a Madman Behind Me. Permabooks, 1961.

Start Screaming Murder. Permabooks, 1962.

Corpus Delectable. Pocket, 1964.

MOCKERY. MGM, 1927. Lon Chaney, Ricardo Cortez, Barbara Bedford, Mack Swain, Emily Fitzroy, Charles Puffy, Kai Schmidt, Johnny Mack Brown. Scenario by Benjamin Christensen based on a story by Stig Esbern. Cinematography by Merritt B. Gerstad; edited by John W. English. Director: Benjamin Christensen. Shown at Cinevent 35, Columbus OH, May 2003.

   After a notable career as a director and actor in his native Denmark that included the controversial Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, Christiansen was brought to America in 1926 by MGM, where after completing two films, The Devil’s Circus and Mockery, and working on The Mysterious Island (begun by Maurice Tourneur and completed by Lucian Hubbard), he moved to First National.

   There he completed (among other films) a version of A. Merritt’s Seven Footprints to Satan that’s not a lost film but one that’s in restoration limbo. (It was announced for a showing on Turner several years ago that was cancelled with the explanation, as I recall, that the soundtrack was not up to standard. An odd explanation for a silent film’s cancellation. A good friend, Charlie Shibuk, who saw the film some 25 years ago at the Museum of Modern Art with Czech intertitles, points out that the original titles were written by Cornell Woolrich as William Irish.)

   Chaney plays Sergei, a brutish peasant who rescues the Countess Tatiana (Barbara Bedford) from revolutionaries, helping her to escape to Novokutsk to deliver a message to the Czarist forces. Sergei falls in love with Tatiana and she, in turn, falls in love with a Czarist officer (Ricardo Cortez) who arrives in time to save her from the Bolsheviks.

   Chaney learns to hate the aristocrats but can’t overcome his love for Tatiana and sacrifices his life for her. Chaney, almost unrecognizable in his effective makeup, gives a nuanced performance, one of his strongest in a non-genre film that I’ve seen.

   I didn’t detect any of the stylistic flourishes for which Christiansen’s horror films are known, but his sensitive handling of the fine cast is, perhaps, a testament to his own acting skill.

   I wondered if the editor is the same John English who co-directed, with William Witney, some of Republic Studio’s finest serials in the late 1930s. IMDB says yes.

BEDROOM EYES II. 1989. Wings Hauser, Kathy Shower, Linda Blair, Jane Hamilton. Director: Chuck Vincent.

   Harry Ross is a guy who seems to have an inordinate amount of trouble with women. His ex-wife JoBeth evidently tried to murder him five years before, and now here she is, out of prison. His present wife Carolyn is still in a case of traumatic shock — something to do with another of Harry’s girl friends, Alexandria, who died in a hit-and-run accident the same night he broke up with her.

   And now there’s Sophie, an artist who provides Harry with an overabundance of sympathy soon after he spots Carolyn (also a patron of the arts) in the passionate embrace of her own current discovery. (Nor is Sophie all she seems, either.)

   Harry is also a successful stockbroker who, with his partner, is on the verge of making five million dollars in an illegal inside stock transaction. This makes him especially vulnerable to blackmail, say, but what actually happens is that he ends up being framed for murder, in a sloppy, murky sort of way.

   The sexual activity pictured in this movie — it is rated “R” — is fast and perfunctory. There is also a considerable amount of of promiscuous violence — reason Number Two for the rating. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, each of these two factors often happen in close proximity to each other.

   As far as the people in the movie are concerned, Wings Hauser and Linda Blair both seem to be veterans of this sort of film-making, and they each turn in an adequate, professional-looking job. The others in the cast have moments when they seem alive and functioning, but for the most part they seem to have only been pointed in the right direction, just before the cameras started to roll.

   But then again, that’s why they’re called directors, right?

JOHN GARDNER – The Secret Generations. Putnam, hardcover, 1985. Charter, paperback, 1986.

   This might be called The Railton Saga. It is billed as a panorama covering the years between 1910 and 1939. It begins in 1910 with the death of General Sir William Railton, but almost all of the story is in the first decade.

   When Sir William dies his brother takes over the clandestine network of informants the General has gathered. One by one brother Giles works other members of the family into the league. His daughter is in Paris with her French husband. One son, Andrew, is in London with a cover in the State Department. The other is in Ireland with his Irish wife Bridget and both are operating, unbeknownst to the other, inside the Sinn Fein.

   The General’s two sons, John and Charles, are also in the family business. And, eventually, Denise of the third generation is in occupied Belgium running a courier service behind the Kaiser’s lines.

   You can’t fault Gardner’s writing. It’s up with the best and it shows off well in a long novel like this. There are plots within plots, many twists to every turn, and any other cliche you would like to use.

   But there is no cliched material in this book. The story line is unusual and the people are fresh, bright, right for their parts, and carefully drawn. The post-WWI sections are brief but revealing as a lightning-lit scene. The last chapter brings a surprise that backlights the rest of the story with a whole new meaning of the idea of “double agent.”

       The Railton Family series —

The Secret Generations. Heinemann, UK, 1985 [1909-1935]
The Secret Houses. Bantam, UK, 1988 [1940s]
The Secret Families. Bantam, UK, 1989 [1964]

CLEO JONES – Prophet Motive. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1984. No paperback edition.

   This is a first mystery, though not a first novel, and it’s a real find. In Magpie, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Police Chief Christopher Danville, himself a lapsed Mormon, must deal with the murder of Mormon Bishop Manion in an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility.

   Newcomer Naomi Green, Planned Parenthood director, is the townspeople’s prime suspect because of their opposition to her work. There are also Mormon fundamentalists who hold on to the old way of polygamy. Danville’s sergeant, Wilkes, turns out to be one of them, so he is automatically a suspect.

   Danville himself is a complex character. Divorced from a “good Mormon wife,” feeling guilty about not spending enough time with his daughter, sexually attracted to Naomi, his own conflicts get in the way of his work. However, he goes about tracking down a good Mormon husband who has supposedly run off with a dancer at a Las Vegas casino owned by a wealthy Magpie Mormon.

   He finds that there are others interested in the missing man as well. The denouement is startling, but no more so than some of the action along the way. I recommend this highly, except to Mormons, who aren’t going to like the inside information this ex-Mormon author spills.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   Al Hubin has no information about the author, except to say that she is an “ex-Mormon living in Utah.” I have a feeling that ‘Cleo Jones’ may be a pen name. She wrote one other mystery, The Case of the Fragmented Woman (St. Martin’s, 1986), which takes place in San Francisco and does not involve Police Chief Danville as a character.

DANGER HAS TWO FACES. 20th Century-Fox/Palomino Production, 1967. Cast: Robert Lansing as Peter Murphy/Mark Wainwright, Dana Wynter as Eva Wainwright, Murray Hamilton as Colonel Jack Forbes, Alex Davion as Roger Wainwright. Created by Teddi Sherman, Judith and Julian Plowden, and John Newland. Theme by Frank Cordell. Written by Teddi Sherman, Judith and Julian Plowden, Robert C. Dennis, and Judith and Robert Guy Barrows. Executive Consultant: Merwin Gerald. Director & Executive Producer: John Newland.

    This movie was made from episodes of ABC-TV series The Man Who Never Was (1966-67) edited together, and released theatrically and for TV syndication by 20th Century Fox in 1967 (Broadcasting, September 25, 1967, and October 9, 1967).

    Peter Murphy is an American agent in East Berlin. He meets with his contact and handed pictures of four men, but before he can learn more his contact is killed and he is on the run. He stops to pick up a woman he loves so they can escape together. During a chase through secret tunnels under the Berlin Wall, his lover is killed and he is hurt.

    Peter makes it into West Berlin with the Eastern killer on his trail. Peter ducks into a bar and is shocked to find his exact double, drunk, and about to leave the bar. Stunned, he watches as the killer from the East gun down his unsuspecting double. The killer leaves and a confused Peter exit the bar only to be mistaken for his double by the man’s chauffeur. Peter collapses and wakes up in his double, billionaire Mark Wainwright’s bed and his wife talking to him about a meeting they need to attend.

    The wife, Eva needs her husband alive or his evil stepbrother will take over the family’s billions and shove her and her family out. Peter’s control, Colonel Forbes wants him to continue as billionaire Mark Wainwright who has access to many important people and places. While the two looked exactly alike, Peter and Mark were opposites. Peter is a kind caring man while Mark was a rude mean drunk. Mark was an expert mountain climber but Peter is not, so in one episode he had to fake an injury to avoid suspicion.

    Limited by the thirty-minute format, the series never succeed in making this Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper theme believable as a spy drama. Instead, the interesting plots with surprising twists, fitting soundtrack, visual locations, and exciting action was overshadowed by the series implausible premise.

    Early reviews of the series were mixed, and perhaps best expressed by Dean Gysel of the Chicago Daily News, “If you can swallow the first episode, it may turn out exciting” (Broadcasting, September 12, 1966).

    As a movie it was further weakened by the obviously edited together 30-minute TV episodes. Every thirty minutes or so, Colonel Forbes would show up and give Peter/Mark his next assignment.

    The beginning of the story focused on establishing the premise. Then the killer discovers Peter is not dead. Eva joins him as they travel to save a priest from the East’s secret police. Eva is close friends with the wife of a suspected security leak. Over time, Peter and Eva would fall in love and give the movie a surprising final ending.

    The Man Who Never Was had an interesting past. 20th Century Fox produced the TV pilot for sponsor Philip Morris tobacco (Broadcasting, November 1, 1965). Originally the series was not supposed to be on ABC’s fall schedule, but in March 1966, it suddenly replaced the never to air The Long Hunt of April Savage (Broadcasting, March 28, 1966).

    The Man Who Never Was was filmed in Germany and suffered from production problems that had some concerned the series might get cancelled before it even aired (Broadcasting, June 20, 1966). The series filmed all over Europe and the locations were distractedly beautiful. Oddly, every source from Broadcasting to IMDb claim the series (and this movie) was done in color, but my copy was in black and white off a broadcast by KYW (Philadelphia).

    In September 1966, ABC previewed several of their new shows a week early. Of the twelve new shows, The Man Who Never Was received the lowest rating of a 38.6 share (Broadcasting, September 12, 1966).

    The next week, up against the other networks premieres, its ratings (Arbitron) dropped to a 27 share versus CBS’ Green Acres 38 share and NBC’s Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre with a 25 share (Broadcasting, September 19, 1966). By October, the series was ranked #50 (out of 88) in the ratings (Broadcasting, October17, 1966) and cancelled by November (Broadcasting, November 7, 1966).

    The Man Who Never Was lasted 18 episodes, beginning September 7, 1966, and ending January 4, 1967.