BART SPICER – The Golden Door. Carney Wilde #3. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1951. Bantam #975, paperback, 1952.

   “The Golden Door” are the last three words on the Statue of Liberty:

         “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
         I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

   Carney Wilde has been able to sustain his private eye business through a retainer as security detail for the fancy Jonas Department Store in downtown Philadelphia. It’s been a pretty cushy gig — but lately it seems like there’s some insider theft going on. So Wilde has to earn his keep.

   While working on the case, the son of the Jonas Department Store mogul asks for help with an ‘unrelated issue’. The so-called unrelated issue has to do with stolen files from his non-profit agency “Future Americans”. “Future Americans” helps displaced eastern European Jewish survivors of WWII immigrate to the U.S., frequently by promising jobs with the Jonas Department Store. The missing files contain sensitive personal information of prospective immigrants.

   Of course, if you’ve read any detective stories before you know there’s no such thing as an unrelated case.

   The store thief ends up dead, and he’s not the only one. Turns out some of the “Future Americans” think the ‘golden door’ ought to be melted down and cashed in. And that’s pretty much just what they try to do.

   Carney Wilde is a terrific hardboiled detective and Bart Spicer exercises great narrative control. Despite seeming coincidences tying everything together, I never doubted the credibility of the story. No plodder, he’s a skillful plotter. Everything fits; you get a satisfying denouement.

   So I’ll say it again. I have no idea why the Carney Wilde books are out of print. They’re exciting vintage hardboiled detective novels. Some of the best I’ve read by anyone not named Chandler or Hammett.
   

      The Carney Wilde series —

The Dark Light (1949)
Blues For the Prince (1950)
The Golden Door (1951)
Black Sheep, Run (1951)
The Long Green (1952)
The Taming of Carney Wilde (1954)
Exit, Running (1959)

KEITH LAUMER – Spaceman! Serialized in If SF, May-June-July 1967. Published in book form as Galactic Odyssey (Berkley X1447, paperback, September 1967).

   Billy Danger is accidentally kidnapped off Earth by a hunting expedition consisting of two men and a girl, The Lady Raire. He is made a gun-bearer, and when the two hunters are killed, he is made responsible for the girl’s safety. They find cover and means for a signal, but slavers respond and steal her from him, leaving him for dead.

   His hunt for her takes him across the galaxy, with many back-breaking jobs and imprisonments, but also with many friendships, until he reaches her home planet, where she has been returned but under another’s control.

   Rousing action, from beginning to end, descriptive passages of alienness and nightmares, captures and escapes make this a most exciting story in the old tradition. Although a college student, Billy Danger at first seems more a grade-schooler in character, but his experiences mature him soon enough and he begins to fit his name exactly.

Rating: ****½

ACCOMPLICE. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1946. Richard Arlen (Simon Lash), Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Michael Brandon, Marjorie Manners, Earle Hodgins, Francis Ford. Based on the novel Simon Lash, Private Detective, by Frank Gruber. Director: Walter Colmes.

   Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get what you’ve been wishing for, even if you’ve been looking for it for a long time. Case in point: This movie, based on a private eye yarn by a long time master of pulp fiction, Frank Gruber.

   Gruber also had a hand in on the screenplay, but I have to be honest. This is one of the worst assembled detective movies I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long time. It’s a jumbled up mess, one put together by a gang of ham-fisted amateurs, or so it seems.

   Luckily it’s only 68 minutes long, and at that it felt a whole lot longer. PRC didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on their productions, and even so you get the feeling that they cut the budget on Accomplice by thirty percent about halfway through to save it for the next film out of their hopper.

   Another problem, perhaps, is that they tried to film the book fairly closely, but that’s only a guess, not having read the book in over 50 years, but that’s what it feels like. There’s simply too much story, which goes hither and yon and there, and in 68 minutes, there’s not nearly enough time to stitch the pieces of a nicely complicated plot together so the seams don’t show, and badly.

   But as for the story, since you are asking, it starts out in fine fashion. Simon Lash (a mid-career but still dashing Richard Arlen) is a private eye, and not only that, one of my favorite kinds of private eyes, a book collecting PI, mostly non-fiction about the West and how it was Won. He also has an assistant named Eddie (Tom Dugan) who seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting around the office.

   He’s hired in Accomplice by brash blonde Joyce Bonniwell (played to perfection by brash blonde Veda Ann Borg) to find her husband, a bank manager who suffers from periodic bouts of amnesia. (We’ve heard that before, and so has Simon Lash.) What makes things hinky here is that Joyce once dumped Simon at the altar.

   So far, so good. What comes next is fast and furious. There is a mistress on the side (red-headed, as if you could tell in a black and white movie), a mink ranch, a missing bank president who’s been seen with a mysterious brunette, a body found with its head blown off, and — skipping a whole lot — a Castle in the desert being used for nefarious purposes, lorded over by Francis Ford (brother of John Ford, a fact which is of course totally irrelevant to the rest of this paragraph).

   There things come to a flashy and violent end. I had stopped caring about 30 minutes earlier, but the ending, I’d have to admit, is nearly worth waiting for. Almost, but not quite.
   

MICHAEL & JOHN BRUNAS and TOM WEAVER – Universal Horrors.The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946. McFarland, hardcover, 1990, softcover, 2017.

   Fans of that sort of thing should drop what they’re doing and rush out in the street to buy this book. Handsomely produced, exhaustive but never tedious, this is the survey of those wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully inept) Horror Films put out from 1931 to 1946 by the Horror Studio.

   There are fascinating bits of information on budgets and stock footage, intelligent interviews with the surviving principals and minor character actors, and even an occasional bit of critical depth.

   It’s all too rare that a book manages not to insult the reader’s intelligence even while seriously discussing films that do, but Universal Horrors actually manages to chart its way from the giddy heights of Bride of Frankenstein   and The Black Cat all the way down to things like Night in Paradise and The Brute Man without putting a foot wrong.

   Of course, there are a few mistakes in critical Judgement, by which I mean that the authors don’t always agree with me. I have always been struck by the contrast in Universal Monster Movies between the bland, unengaging “heroes” of these films and the intriguing treatment of the hairy outcasts who are supposed to be the Bad Guys.

   I’ve reflected that kids watched these things in movie houses, where they were re-released right up to the early 50s, then stayed up late a night to catch them on television through the 60s, and I’ve always wondered if this was how the Hippies got their start.

   Weaver and the Brunases don’t bring this up — perhaps just as well — nor do they cite the bit of Invisible Man stock footage that was always [any good Sherlockian’s] favorite bit of Holmesian Trivia, but they do manage to run to earth just about every other bit of stock footage, retreaded script and reused actor from almost a hundred movies that most film historians wouldn’t give the time of day.

   And they do it in a way that is almost compulsively readable. I recommend this one highly.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE FALCON. “Kiss Me Not.” Syndicated / Federal Telefilms, 01 October 1954 (Season 1, Episode 15). Charles McGraw. Guest Cast: Nancy Gates, John Dehner, Herb Vigran, Betty Ball. Writer: Herbert Purdom. Director: Derwin Abrahams … (as Derwin Abbe).

   For a quick recap of the long, involved and confusing history, the fellow who does the Spy Guys and Gals website does the best job I’ve ever seen. Here’s the link: spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=2662

   He covers the books, the short stories, the movies, the radio (nearly 500 episodes), but it’s an episode of the TV series that this review is about. It begins with a gangland killing in a two-bit hashery, then continues with Michael Waring in Washington DC as an overall troubleshooter for an unnamed agency as he volunteers to help a war widow whose teen-age daughter has gone off with a hired killer.

   The connection between this and the prologue? The killer in the hashery and the gun man the woman’s daughter has taken off with are one and the same. How, also, you may ask, does the government get involved? Simple. The girl has taken her mother’s monthly assistance check with her.

   Charles McGraw suffers from a screenplay that makes him a one-dimensional PI, tough and gruff, but little more. John Dehner (the gunman) was always a dapper fellow, but not one you might thing would have not one, but two beautiful women fall head over heels in love with him.

   But overall, not a bad story, one that makes the most of limited amount of time it has to work with (less than 30 minutes). I was happy not to have to sit through wasted time watching cars do nothing but drive from one place to another.
   

A. I. BEZZERIDES – Long Haul. Carrick & Evans, New York, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted in paperback as They Drive by Night (Dell, 1950) and Tough Guy (Lion, 1953).

   Brothers Nick and Paul Benay are trying to make it as over-the-road truckers. Between loan payments on the truck, repairs, middlemen, chiselers, and rotting freight, it’s tough road to hoe. One brother sleeps while the other drives. And vice versa.

   The only way to make it pay is to pay off your truck and haul your own freight. That’s the dream that keeps guys going. But just as soon as it seems like they’re gonna get there, something happens. A drunk driver veers into oncoming traffic, totaling their truck, juicy oranges fluttering down the freeway.

   Paul is concussed, and the only way to keep going is Nick has to pull all-nighters, 72 hours, without sleep. He’s nodding off, nightmares jolting him awake, of a crack up. Is it real or only imagined, this time, flying off a cliff?

   Depressing story, yes, but stilted prose is what keeps from the winner’s circle.

   Made into a Bogart film in 1940.

My apologies for the longer than usual break I’ve had to have with the blog. Nothing’s wrong, I’m just a lot busier than I’m used to. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able. (A few more hours a day might help, if you have any to spare.)

A. A. FAIR – Owls Don’t Blink. Bertha Cool & Donald Lam #6. Morrow, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times, including Dell 211, mapback edition, 1940s, and Dell R101, paperback, October 1961.

   A. A. Fair is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, but don’t pick up one of these novels featuring private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam expecting a couple of carbon copies of Paul Drake. Cool and Lam are an amusing and endearing pair — perfect foils for one another.

   Bertha Cool, at the time of this novel. is the middle-aged proprietor of an L.A. investigative firm, pared down to a mere 165 pounds but ever on the alert for a good meal. Her partner, Donald Lam, is a twerp in comparison — young, slender, and forever on the defensive for what Bertha considers excessive squandering of agency money. But there’s considerable affection between the two, and with Donald doing the legwork, they crack some tough cases-and have a lot of fun while doing so.

   Owls Don’t Blink opens in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Donald is occupying an apartment once rented by a missing woman he has been hired to find. He is due to meet Bertha at the airport at 7:20 the next morning and knows there will be hell to pay if he’s late. Fortunately. he arrives on time. and together they meet the New York lawyer who has hired them to find Roberta Fenn. a former model.

   Over a number of pecan waffles — a number for Bertha. that is, who only eats “once a day” —  the lawyer is evasive about why he wishes to locate Miss Fenn. But Cool and Lam proceed with the case-and Bertha proceeds with several lavish meals, still on that same day.

   The discovery of the missing woman’s whereabouts proves all too easy, and also too easy is the discovery of a corpse in Roberta Fenn’s new apartment. But from there on out, everything’s as convoluted as in the best of the Perry Mason novels. The scene moves from New Orleans to Shreveport, Louisiana, and from there to Los Angeles, where its surprising (although possibly a little out-of-leftfield) conclusion takes place.

   And there’s a nice twist in the Cool-Lam relationship that will make a reader want to read the later entries in this fine series, such as Crows Can’t Count (1946), Some Slips Don’t Show (1957), Fish or Cut Bait (1963), and All Grass Isn’t Green (1970). Especially entertaining earlier titles are The Bigger They Come (1939) and Spill the Jackpot (1941).

     ———
   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.

ROBERT FINNEGAN – Many a Monster. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1948. Bantam #363, paperback, May 1949. Stark House Press, softcover, 2022 (three-in-one edition also including The Lying Ladies and The Bandaged Nude).

   Dan Banion’s a reporter. His editor sics him on the story of an escaped lunatic from the insane asylum — a recently convicted serial killer of women.

   Dan looks into the story, but the further he looks, the more it seems like the kook is innocent: The serial murders continue to mount irrespective of whether the kook’s in custody.

   Dan solves the case, but not before tussling with the KKK, quitting his job, and witnessing more grisly murders.

   Dan Banion’s cool, the writing’s great, but the story’s nothing to write home about. It’s one of those where a cagillion suspects are rounded up and the writer settles on one of them seemingly at random as if he was running low on paper.

IF SCIENCE FICTION, July 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Full text and illustrations available at archive.org. Overall rating: ***½

PHILIP JOSE FARMER – The Felled Star. Serial, part 1 of 2. See review later after both parts are available. [The entire two-part serial is a section of Farmer’s novel The Fabulous Riverboat.]

E. A. WALTON “Pelandra’s Husbands. First story. Love proves stronger than possible immortality. (1)

ANDREW J. OFFUTT “Population Implosion.” Novelette. The plague hits only old people, in direct correspondence to the birth rate. Excellent idea suffers [is marred] only by jumps in the story. (5)

C. C. MacAPP “A Ticket to Zenner.” Novelette. A thief leaves behind a ticket, in a SF intrigue story, reminiscent of Eric Ambler, but without the convincing background. (3)

ALAN DIRKSON “Adam’s Eve.” Novelette. A world without humans has only waiting robots, but two find how to obtain services for themselves. (3) [His only published SF story.]

KEITH LAUMER – Spaceman! Serial, part 3 of 3. See review coming up soon. [Book publication as Galactic Odyssey.]