GEORGE HOPLEY – Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1945. Reprinted as by William Irish: Dell #679, 1953. Reprinted as by Cornell Woolrich: Paperback Library 54-438, 1967. Many other reprint editions, both hardcover and soft.

   Cornell Woolrich, that twisted and tortured man who haunted the novel of suspense like some Twentieth Century Poe, coined the term “line of suspense” to describe the mechanism that drives a good suspense novel.

   In the simplest terms it is the element that drives the tale from one incident to the next — perhaps the killer’s motive as in The Bride Wore Black, the heroes amnesia as in Black Curtain, or here, in Woolrich’s masterpiece, the possibility of psychic powers and the inevitability of fate.

   Woolrich’s novels are haunted by fate, sheer blind cruel and pointless fate. An unmarried pregnant woman on a train survives an accident and happens to be mistaken for another pregnant woman in the same car whose husband’s wealthy family has never seen her; a night’s drunk finds you facing the hot seat with no memory of what happened; a leopard escaped from an night club act cloaks the twisted mind of a killer; a sailor and a taxi dancer have only until dawn to clear him of a crime…

   Fate is always having its little joke in Woolrich’s novels and stories, and in Night Has 1000 Eyes that little joke is at its most effective, and terrible.

   Night opens appropriately at night. The hero is a young detective who spots an attractive young woman attempting suicide. He stops her, only to find she is desperate and frightened out of her wits.

   Her wealthy father has been threatened, but this is no ordinary threat. A man claiming psychic powers has told her that her father will die at an appointed time and cannot be saved. And this psychic is never wrong.

   Never.

   Naturally the police take a dim view of this sort of thing, even though the psychic seemingly has asked for no money and committed no crime. But they encounter clever bunco artists all the time and they know that if they look deep enough they’ll find the game behind this one. Besides you can’t go around threatening a cities most wealthy men with blind retribution — it makes the taxpayers nervous.

   Meanwhile the clock ticks and the time nears when the appointed hour will come.

   And for every step forward there is one back, and still the uncanny predictions of this strange man come true.

   When they finally uncover a tawdry romantic triangle involving the psychic, the victim, and the girl’s late mother they are certain they have the key — revenge and extortion. Still, they take no chances. They ring the victim with police and arrest the psychic who insists he means no harm to his old friend, and that he too will die shortly after the first man at his own appointed hour.

   Now Woolrich ratchets the horror up to incredible levels. The tension is palpable and the suspense grows as each twist, each revelation comes. The psychic has predicted the man will die between the paws of a lion, and as the hour nears a lion escapes from the zoo, loose in the very area where the victim lives.

   Mere coincidence, and yet …

   And yet.

   Ernest K. Gann coined the term “fate is the hunter” to explain why he left commercial aviation — because at some point in a pilot’s career the laws of simple math catch up with him and it becomes more likely he will crash than that he won’t. Woolrich understood the idea. Fate is a remorseless hunter, but Woolrich knows too you can’t run or hide.

   Night Has a Thosand Eyes is a suspense novel and not a horror novel, but rightly has been claimed by both genres because the effect of the accumulation of events and coincidence begins to resemble something supernatural, though at each and every turn Woolrich is careful to eschew the simple explanation.

   Again and again he takes the reader right up to the point of madness, and then pulls away, reveals another twist, shows us another possible path, all the while maintaining a palpable line of suspense that is almost unbearable.

   Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a fairly long novel, but I have a hard time believing anyone once starting it put it down before it ended. Or slept much afterward.

   And that may be where this book most resembles a horror novel and not a suspense novel, because most good suspense novels let you go when they come to the end. There is a build up to incredible tension and then a release.

   Not in Night Has a Thousand Eyes.

   If anything this book is more disturbing when it is over.

   Night Has a Thousand Eyes was well filmed by John Farrow with a fine screenplay by Barré Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer, with Gail Russell perfectly cast as the fey girl, John Lund the hero, Edward G, Robinson the psychic, William Demarest a doubting cop, and Jerome Cowan the doomed victim.

   It’s a fine piece of film noir, but it is only a pale shadow of the novel. I don’t know that you could translate on film the tension that Woolrich builds in print. I’m not sure you’d want to, because as I say, Night Has a Thousand Eyes doesn’t let you off the hook. Not even when you have turned the last page and laid the book aside.

   The book also inspired a popular song that warned us “The night has a thousand eyes/ and a thousand eyes can’t help but see…” recorded by Bobbie Vee, and the song from the film by John Brahin was and still is a popular jazz riff. (Follow the link to a YouTube video of the Bobby Vee version.)

   That title has the ring of some ancient bit of wisdom or poetry. It has the feel of found wisdom, of something we all knew, but never put into words before this.

   The night has one thousand eyes and they are watching us. We cannot run from them, we cannot escape them. Fate will not be denied, nor can any man escape his appointed time. We all will make our own appointment in Samara on time.

   And perhaps it is that inevitability that gives this novel its power. We aren’t let off with easy answers, and though the solution leaves itself fully open for rational explanation there is a cold dark corner of the soul that knows that isn’t what Woolrich was telling us.

   Woolrich wrote only one other as George Hopley, the majority of his work appearing as by Woolrich or William Irish. Many of his novels deserve to be read and reread, they are masterpieces of suspense, and despite his tendency to overheated prose even the least of them are worth rereading. But Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a special case.

   Even among his output of taut and often disturbing novels, this one is a masterpiece. This is the one unforgettable novel in his repertoire.

   Read it and you will never forget it.

   But don’t read it before bedtime.

   Not if you ever want a good night’s sleep again.

THE WIND AND THE LION. MGM, 1975. Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston. Screenwriter & director: John Milius.

   I’ve taken my time in getting my notes and opinions written up on this film, a semi-historical movie I watched about a week ago. It’s one that takes place during the tenure of Teddy Roosevelt in office of the President of the United States; or in other words, circa 1905.

   There was at that time an actual American citizen kidnapped by a tribe of Berbers in Morocco, but the victim then was a man, and in the movie it is a woman (Candice Bergen) with two young children.

   Doing the kidnapping is Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates (Sean Connery), and if Sean Connery can play El Raisuli as well as he does in The Wind and the Lion, why then, he can play almost anybody. (But we all knew that anyway, didn’t we?)

   This causes a diplomatic crisis of huge international proportions. Almost as good as Sean Connery is in his role is Brian Keith in his, that of Teddy Roosevelt, and you should take it for granted that no one has or ever will play Teddy Roosevelt (in full imperial mode) as well as Brian Keith.

   Global politics being what they were, both the French and Germans are involved in the attempt to negotiate the return of the kidnapped woman, Eden Pedecaris, but with Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” policy as backup plan, if you the viewer are ever in doubt as to whether or not the US Marines will be called in, you need not be concerned.

   They are, and in full force. Part of the thrill of watching this movie is for the sheer adventure of it all. With the US in full cognizance of its new role in the world, the Marines are simply itching to take over, and eventually they do.

   While John Milius is a strong right-of-center conservative — and if I’m in error about that, please let me know — his portrayal of the Moroccan Arabs and the plight of the nomadic tribes in the face of oncoming history feels (to me) both accurate and sympathetic.

   The thrust of the tale, of course, is the conflicting bond between El Raisuli and his prisoner, the outspoken and openly defiant Mrs. Pedecaris, who in turn grows to respect her captor and his increasingly desperate situation more than she ever realized she ever would or could.

   And yet. All is well and good in my description so far, but there was much to this film that equally displeased me — well, no, disappointed is a far better word. Each scene was well-set and well-filmed, but I found there was no cohesive structure to the film, or at least not enough, and events that were meant to be personal were shot as if at arm’s length far too often, as it were — if not literally, then figuratively speaking.

   It is not clear (or not to me) how and why the Germans got so intimately involved in Raisuli’s capture at the end, but that Mrs Pedecaris had something to say about that was both rousing and satisfying.

   If this sounds like a mixed review, I’m as surprised as you are. When I started writing up my thoughts about the movie, I was prepared to go almost totally negative, and I ended up far more positive than I expected.

   (I no longer plan out ahead of time what I am going to say in one of these reviews. After a certain amount of time has passed by, and this varies, I simply sit down and start typing.)

   There are a lot of artfully created scenes in this movie, and I am sure that is why it received a considerable number of nominations for various awards or another. If you like a rousing adventure movie as much as the next guy, I think you’ll enjoy it as much as he does.

PATRICK QUENTIN – Puzzle for Players.   Pocket #164, paperback reprint; 1st printing, June 1942. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, October 1938. Victor Gollancz, UK, hc, 1939. US hardcover reprint: Books Inc., 1944. Paperback reprints include: Cherry Tree #301, UK,1940; Handi-Book #53, 1946 [abridged]; Avon, 1979; International Polygonics Ltd., 1989.

   This is the second of author Patrick Quentin’s Peter Duluth mysteries, the first being Puzzle for Fools, reviewed here (by Marv Lachman) and in the post just preceding this one. There were nine books in the series in all, written between the years 1936 and 1954.

   The titles of the first six of which began with the word “Puzzle,” indicating the author’s interest in clues, alibis and the other standard equipment of the mystery novel as a work of Golden Age detection, but as time went on, the later books began to depend more and more on matters psychological, and as Wikipedia says, became “increasingly dark and brooding [with] deceit and betrayal, particularly adultery” as primary themes.

   The history of who “Patrick Quentin” was (and when) is a complicated one, and I’ll let the Wikipedia link suffice. For the book at hand, Puzzle for Players, as well as Fools, the authors were Hugh Wheeler and Richard Webb, the latter dropping out of the collaboration in the early 1950s.

   Wheeler may be even better known as a playwright and librettist, rather than a mystery writer, and in fact in 1979 he wrote the book for the musical Sweeney Todd. This fact makes the author of the play that Duluth is putting on in Players rather remarkable, a chap by the name of Henry Prince. Harold Prince, of course, was the Broadway director of Sweeney Todd when it first opened. (The latter would have been 10 years old when Wheeler’s book was written, so the connection is either purely coincidental or pure prescience.)

   Having been released from the sanitarium he was in while the events in Puzzle for Fools took place, along with his wife-to-be, Iris Pattison, Peter Duluth’s hopes for a full recovery depend on how successful this new play is going to be. What Duluth, a recovering alcoholic, does not expect, is that the all-but-abandoned theater where it will be opening may be jinxed, if not with real ghosts, then with figurative ghosts from the past.

   Everyone in the cast seems to have their own demons of one sort or another: lost loves, thwarted loves, all-but-fatal accidents to recover from, new love affairs, and so on.

   This is perhaps the most intense, and authentic, detective novel taking place in the world of the Theatre I can remember reading. Actors and actresses are good at leading the lies of other lives, so the theater and the detective fiction are well connected, but I cannot at the moment provide with a better example.

   But as for Peter Duluth himself, he does a lot of thinking, but he really does no detective work himself. That chore is left to his (and Iris’s) psychiatrist, Dr. Lenz, and Inspector Clarke (who also may have appeared in the first book) who do the heavy work.

   The final scene, in which the play is going on for the first time, in spite of a substitution for the leading man at the very last minute, while Lenz is attempting to go through the facts behind the killings and who the killer is — whew — really a high-powered juggling act on the part of the author, as well as the ultimate in a mind boggling mystery on the part of the reader.

   Highly recommended.

PostScript. Throughout the book, I wondered who I’d cast as Peter and Iris if the book were to be turned into a film.

   In the comments following Marv Lachman’s review of Fools, David Vineyard provided the following information:

    “The Duluths made it to the screen in The Black Widow as Van Heflin and Gene Tierney [as Peter and Iris Denver]; in The Female Fiends (Strange Awakening) based on Puzzle for Fiends as Lex Barker and Monica Grey (called Peter and Iris Chance); and in Homicide for Three based on Puzzle for Puppets played by Warren Douglas and Audrey Long.”

   In reverse order, then: Warren Douglas and Audrey Long — I can’t recall their faces well enough to say yea or nay. Lex Barker and Monica Grey — definitely not the former and I’m rather vague on the latter. Van Heflin and Gene Tierney — any movie with Gene Tierney in it is more than OK.

   But while I was reading the book, I was pulled toward Ray Milland as Peter in one sense — the recovering alcoholic concept made him come to mind right away — but no, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, he’s not quite right.

   For other reasons I also can’t explain and don’t laugh, I somehow had Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys in mind. (You probably know them best later on as the two lead stars in the comedy TV series Topper.)

   Not that there’s anything remotely comedic about Puzzle for Players, and who knows how one’s unconscious mind works, but there you are.

PATRICK QUENTIN – A Puzzle for Fools.

Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1936. Victor Gollancz, UK, hc, 1936. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #83, 1940, with several later printings; Dell D192, Great Mystery Library #4, 1957; Ballantine F461, 1963; Avon PN238, 1969, with at least one later printing. Trade paperback: Penguin Classic Crime, 1986.

   Patrick Quentin is a pseudonym of the collaborative team of Hugh Wheeler and Richard Wilson Webb — who also wrote as Quentin Patrick. From 1936 to 1952, the pair produced a series of successful novels featuring Peter Duluth, a former Broadway producer and recovering alcoholic, and his wife, Iris.

   After 1952, Wheeler went on alone to write seven more novels under the Quentin name, four of them featuring a New York police detective, Lieutenant Timothy Trant (who also appears in novels by Wheeler and Webb under the Quentin Patrick — or, in the original editions, Q. Patrick — pseudonym).

   The novels are well written and well characterized, and frequently the plots are as baffling as the pseudonyms under which they were created. The endings of these novels, be they as by Patrick Quentin or vice versa, are sure to both surprise and satisfy the fan of traditional mysteries.

   A Puzzle for Fools opens in the expensive sanatorium where Peter Duluth has gone to dry out. Bad enough to be in a mental hospital, doubting your own sanity and the sanity of those about you, but what if you also begin hearing a voice whispering to you at night? And what if that voice sounds remarkably like your own? And what if that voice warns you to get away, for there will be murder?

   This is Duluth’s plight. However, instead of doubting him, the director of the clinic believes every word and asks for his help in solving not only this particular puzzle but also several other strange goings-on around the clinic. Thus does Duluth become a sort of Sherlock Holmes at work in a mental institution.

   Certainly Duluth, and the police, have their work cut out for them, because soon the whispering prophecy comes true and one of the staff members is murdered, only to be followed by the murder of one of the patients. This, of course, is a rich and fertile field for the whodunit, and Quentin handles it well; not only must all the patients be considered suspects, but all the staff members as well. And there are secrets to be discovered on both sides.

   Other complex “puzzle” mysteries starring Peter Duluth include Puzzle for Players (1938), Puzzle for Puppets (1944), and Puzzle for Fiends (1946).

   Among the novels featuring Lieutenant Timothy Trant are Death for Dear Clara (1937) and Death and the Maiden (1939), both as by Q. Patrick; and My Son, the Murderer (1954) and Family Skeletons (1965). Wheeler and Webb also wrote a series of mysteries under the pseudonym Jonathan Stagge.

         ———
   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.

Editorial Comment: For another review of this book, see the one by Marv Lachman posted here not so long ago.

MARIA BELLOC LOWNDES – The Lodger.

Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1913. Scribner, US, hc, 1913. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including: Readers Library, UK, hc, 1927 [1st UK Photoplay edition]; Pocket 43, US, pb, 1940. (Both shown.)

   I like to spend Octobers reading spooky stories and watching old monster movies, and I kicked off a past one with a good’un, Maria Belloc Lowndes’ 1913 novel, The Lodger.

   The mystery of Jack the Ripper was a generation old when this was written, and it’s been done to death ever since, but Lowndes brought a sensitivity and feeling to it I found quite surprising.

   The story is told primarily from the point of view of a landlady in dire straits who lets her upstairs apartment out to a well-paying gentleman. Her lodger seems to spend his days studying the Bible, and his rare evening excursions are invariably followed by news of another ’orrible murder.

   All pretty standard so far, but Lowndes puts some real work into the Landlady’s reaction to all this: the more convinced she becomes that her lodger is a mad killer, the more she pities his torment and remembers the debt she owes him for saving her family from the Poor House.

   Meanwhile, the Police blunder about, her loving husband worries over her nerves, and her step-daughter becomes the innocent cause of … well that might be giving something away. Suffice it to say that The Lodger is old-fashioned in spots but never seems dated, and it has the kind of atmosphere and characterization that reward reading.

   Incidentally, The Lodger has been filmed several times, including once as a silent film by Alfred Hitchcock, considerably changed, and more faithfully by 20th Century-Fox in 1944.

   The Fox film is artfully done, and well-acted, if rather stodgy, but conveys none of the feeling of Lowndes book. Laird Cregar delivers an intense, sotto-voce performance, as opposed to nominal hero George Sanders, who looks as if he might die of Boredom (which he did, years later).

   The same script was re-shot by Fox in 1954 [as Man in the Attic] to no great effect, with flat direction from Hugo Fregonese and a surprisingly listless performance from Jack Palance.

         Overnight, Tuesday, July 21 to Wednesday, July 22 —

8:00 PM Footsteps in the Fog (1955)
   An ambitious housemaid learns her employer murdered his wife. Cast: Stewart Granger, Jean Simmons, Bill Travers. Dir: Arthur Lubin. C-90 mins, TV-G, Letterbox Format
9:45 PM Secret Partner, The (1961)
   A shipping tycoon with a record becomes a suspect when money goes missing from the company vault. Cast: Stewart Granger, Bernard Lee, Haya Harareet. Dir: Basil Dearden. BW-91 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
11:30 PM Light Touch, The (1952)
   An art thief tries to double cross his gangster boss. Cast: Stewart Granger, George Sanders, Pier Angeli. Dir: Richard Brooks. BW-93 mins, TV-G, CC
1:15 AM Whole Truth, The (1958)
   A woman tries to prove her cheating husband didn’t murder his mistress. Cast: Stewart Granger, Donna Reed, George Sanders. Dir: Dan Cohen, John Guillerman. BW-84 mins, TV-PG
2:45 AM Secret Invasion, The (1964)
   Five criminals win early pardons to infiltrate a Nazi outpost. Cast: Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney. Dir: Roger Corman. C-95 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

         All day Wednesday, July 22 —

11:15 AM Saint In New York, The (1938)
   The Saint goes undercover to get the goods on New York’s mob kingpins. Cast: Louis Hayward, Kay Sutton, Jonathan Hale. Dir: Ben Holmes. BW-72 mins, TV-G
12:30 PM Saint Strikes Back, The (1939)
   The Saint helps a young beauty take vengeance on the mobsters who ruined her father. Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Barry Fitzgerald. Dir: John Farrow. BW-64 mins, TV-G
1:45 PM Saint In London, The (1939)
   The Saint’s investigation of a counterfeiting ring uncovers a nest of spies. Cast: George Sanders, David Burns, Sally Gray. Dir: John Paddy Carstairs. BW-72 mins, TV-G, CC
3:00 PM Saint’s Double Trouble, The (1940)
   Reformed jewel thief Simon Templer lands in hot water when a look-alike smuggles stolen goods out of Egypt. Cast: George Sanders, Jonathan Hale, Bela Lugosi. Dir: Jack Hively. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC
4:15 PM Saint Takes Over, The (1940)
   Reformed jewel thief Simon Templar tries to help a police inspector who’s been framed on bribery charges. Cast: George Sanders, Jonathan Hale, Wendy Barrie. Dir: Jack Hively. BW-70 mins, TV-G, CC
5:30 PM Saint In Palm Springs, The (1941)
   Reformed jewel thief Simon Templar’s efforts to deliver a fortune in rare stamps are complicated by murder. Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale. Dir: Jack Hively. BW-66 mins, TV-G
6:45 PM Saint Meets The Tiger, The (1943)
   The Saint infiltrates a small English village run by smugglers. Cast: Hugh Sinclair, Jean Gillie, Clifford Evans. Dir: Paul L. Stein. BW-69 mins, TV-G

[UPDATE] 07-22-09. The best laid plans and all that. Our cable, Internet and phone service all took short vacations this evening and early morning. The cable came back after only a 15 minute recess, but it still means there’s going to be a big, unfillable hole in The Light Touch. I haven’t seen any of these Stewart Granger films, so the loss of any of them qualifies as at least a minor catastrophe. Hopefully it’s going to be only the one.

   As for later today, I must have seen all but one or two of the Saint movies, and I probably have permanent copies of them all, but I’ll record them anyway, just in case I don’t.

THE MAN FROM GALVESTON. Warner Brothers, 1963. Jeffrey Hunter, Preston Foster, James Coburn, Joanna Moore, Edward Andrews, Kevin Hagen, Ed Nelson, Karl Swenson. Screenplay: Dean Riesner, Michael S. Zagor. Director: William Conrad.

   The Man From Galveston features one of the most famous figures of the old west that no one has ever heard of, Temple Houston, the last born son of legendary statesman and adventurer Sam Houston.

   Although the character played in the film is called Timothy Higgins, this was the pilot for the television series Temple Houston, and released theatrically because it proved too good for television.

   In the film Higgins (Jeffrey Hunter) is a colorful circuit riding lawyer who takes the case of “soiled woman,” Rita Dillard (Joanna Moore) on trial for her life for murder and as much on trial for her lifestyle as the crime.

   Higgins has to not only defend his client, but also solve the murder and change the mind of a jury who would as soon hang her for her life choices as her crimes.

   Preston Foster is the judge, and Grace Lee Whitney a madam (more or less, this was originally made for television).

   The film is a well done short mystery (57 minutes, intended for a ninety minute television slot) loosely based on one of the real life Temple Houston’s most famous cases in which he delivered the “soiled dove defense”, still considered by many legal authorities to be the perfect closing argument. (You can follow the Wikipedia link for Temple Lea Houston to “the soiled dove defense” and read it for yourself.)

   Coburn distinguishes himself in the film, and Hunter is surprisingly relaxed and comfortable playing the flamboyant Higgins (Houston), a man who is part Perry Mason and part Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel (this was not television’s first western lawyer — Peter Breck played a gunslinging lawyer in Black Saddle). The mystery is both fair and fairly revealed.

   But it is the Temple Houston connection that is the true lure here. The son of the famed Texas patriot and governor of Tennessee and Texas, Houston was as famous for his fast gun as his legal expertise. (In his most famous gun duel he killed one of the brothers of outlaw and later actor and producer Al Jennings.)

    He was known both for his flamboyant manner of dress (inherited from his father who died when he was only three) and his quick wit: “Your honor, the prosecutor is the only man I know who can strut while he is sitting down.”

   In one of his most famous cases he was appointed by a judge to defend a man accused as a horse thief. Told to give his best legal advice, Houston was set in a room alone with his client. When the law returned the window was open and the defendant was gone. “I gave him my best legal advice,” Houston is said to have claimed.

   The real Temple Houston died fairly young at age forty five. His biography, Temple Houston, Lawyer With a Gun, is by Glenn Shirley.

   But Houston is best remembered by a name other than his own. Edna Ferber’s novel of the opening of Oklahoma, Cimarron features as its hero a flamboyant gunfighter, newspaper editor, lawyer, and adventurer Yancy Cravatt, based on Temple Houston.

   The part was played by Richard Dix in the Oscar winning first film of Cimarron and by Glenn Ford in the remake. Both films feature the famed “soiled dove” case as a dramatic high point.

   Incidentally, the twelve man jury found Houston’s client innocent of all charges, and when he died the largest selection of flowers at his grave were sent by her.

   The short-lived television series that followed this pilot never really jelled and could not make up its mind if it was a mystery, trial series, or comedy. It regularly teamed Hunter with Jack Elam and lasted only one season.

   But The Man From Galveston shows what might have been, a sort of frontier Perry Mason crossed with standard gun-fighting tale. Certainly Houston was colorful and unusual enough to have carried such a series, and even here in the guise of Timothy Higgins his personality shows through.

Note: Some information in this article is taken from the Wikipedia entry on Temple Houston and the Glenn Shirley biography.

Editorial Comment: From the photos of each that I was able to add to David’s review, I’d say that Jeffrey Hunter was a very good choice for portraying the real Temple Houston.

LORD EDGWARE DIES.    TV movie/episode of Agatha Christie: Poirot (ITV, A&E).. First shown in the UK on 19 February 2000 [Season 7, Episode 2]. David Suchet (Poirot), Hugh Fraser (Captain Hastings), Philip Jackson (Inspector Japp), Pauline Moran (Miss Lemon), with Helen Grace, John Castle, Fiona Allen, Dominic Guard, Deborah Cornelius, Hannah Yelland, Tim Steed. Based on the novel by Agatha Christie (US title: Thirteen at Dinner). Dramatization: Anthony Horowitz; director: Brian Farnham.

   In the comments that follow Geoff Bradley’s review of Toward Zero, David Vineyard and others, including myself, have been discussing the viability of movie and TV adaptations, as compared to the original books upon which they’re based.

   Which of course brought to mind (mine, that is) my disappointment in the preceding entry in this series of Hercule Poirot dramatizations, that being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which I reviewed here quite some time ago.

   Regarding the latter, allow me to quote my slightly younger self: “I certainly did not recognize the shootout in the chemical factory between the killer on one side at the end, and Poirot and Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) on the other. Good grief. What were they thinking?”

   With Lord Edgware Dies, however, they writer, producer and director get another chance to do it right, and except for one or two details, as far as I could tell, they did. I’ve read all of the comments on IMBD, and they all agree. This was an almost perfect reproduction of the book.

   In which the wife of Lord Edgware hires Poirot to intercede on her behalf in terms of his agreeing to grant her a divorce. Even though the good man (who is not, otherwise why are there so many possible suspects?) says he’s willing, he’s found dead later the same evening.

   The primary suspect is Poirot’s client, played most wonderfully by Helen Grace — she’s supposed to be a woman who attracts men to her like that other Helen, the one from Troy — and she does.

   The problem is, she has an alibi, an unshakable one, such as being at a dinner party set for thirteen at exactly the same time the murder takes place. And what’s more, a well-dressed look-alike is seen entering the dead man’s home just before he died.

   She’s been framed, and it’s up to Poirot, with a little help from Hastings and Japp, not to mention his long-time secretary, Miss Lemon to sort through the evidence, which insists on piling up, and picking the correct killer out of the long list of possibilities.

   Beautifully, beautifully done. Not perfectly done, though. There are some flaws in the story line that won’t come to mind immediately, but they may later. I knew who the killer was early on, but I confess I had my doubts when so many creatively manufactured red herrings did their best to tempt me off the trail.

   Books and books, and movies are movies, and the existence of one does not negate the existence of the other. And sometimes the twain do meet. What this filmed episode of Lord Edgeware does do is to show that it can be done with fidelity to the original, that liberties do not have to be taken, and that the end result can also be as delightful and entertaining as the original.

   As for Roger Ackroyd, if you’ve read the book, you know what the problems are in terms of converting it to cinematic form. It wouldn’t be easy. But the gunfight in a chemical plant? No way.

PATRICK QUENTIN – A Puzzle for Fools.

Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1936. Victor Gollancz, UK, hc, 1936. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #83, 1940, with several later printings; Dell D192, Great Mystery Library #4, 1957; Ballantine F461, 1963; Avon PN238, 1969, with at least one later printing. Trade paperback: Penguin Classic Crime, 1986.

   During the nineteen-thirties many movie comedies had the hero and heroine meet “cute.” Example: Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper meeting in a haberdashery; he only wants pajama bottoms, and she only wants pajama tops. They agree to buy a single pair.

   Patrick Quentin’s A Puzzle for Fools is in that tradition, as Peter Duluth, an alcoholic theatrical producer, and Iris Pattison, a young woman suffering from melancholia, met at an exclusive mental sanatorium. This book has seldom been out of print since it was first published more than fifty years ago.

   The Duluth books were to get better as time went on. This book, the first which Hugh C. Wheeler and Richard Wilson Webb wrote as Patrick Quentin, is lively and readable but shows some of the earmarks of inexperience (Wheeler was only twenty-four at the time) and hasty writing; the team was very prolific in the years before World War II.

   Duluth’s fears as he goes through alcohol withdrawal while trying to solve a murder are not well conveyed. Instead, we have him saying things like, “Those were some of the most harrowing moments of my life,” but the authors do not make the readers feel it.

   Too often the authors rely on Had-I-But-Known writing to get across that there are sinister events to come. For example: “Of course, I had no idea then of the fantastic and horrible things which were soon to happen in Doctor Lenz’s sanatorium. I had no means of telling just how significant these minor and seemingly pointless disturbances were.”

   And, later, “Maybe I could have prevented a lot of tragedy if I had gone to the authorities there and then.” (Quentin comes close to setting a world’s record for the amount of information withheld from the police in this book.)

   The pace is very quick, and Duluth’s light, self-deprecating tone makes him an enjoyable narrator. Don’t expect the kind of sophistication to be found in the British puzzles of the nineteen-thirties, though Wheeler and Webb were born in England.

   No American writer has quite achieved what is to be found in Allingham, Innes, Blake, Sayers, et al. There must be an invisible barrier on the western shore of the Atlantic.

   Incidentally, if the name Hugh Wheeler sounds familiar, it should. After he stopped writing mysteries in 1965 he became a major playwright, best known for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim on such works as A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, and Sweeney Todd.

Editorial Comment:   This is the second of two mysteries taking place in psychiatric institutions that Marv referred to in his recent review of A Mind to Murder, by P. D. James. Although the book was in print in 1987, it no longer seems to be, some 22 years later.

Coming Soon:   Another review of this book by Newell Dunlap and Marcia Muller, taken from 1001 Midnights; then my review of Puzzle for Players, the second book in the series.

   Also relevant: Kevin Killian’s review of The Crippled Muse (1951), by Hugh Wheeler; and two of my previously posted reviews. First, Death My Darling Daughters, by Jonathan Stagge; then Return to the Scene, by Q. Patrick.

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MARPLE: TOWARD ZERO.   ITV.   Series 3, Episode 3.   First telecast in the UK on 03 August 2008.   Geraldine McEwan, Julian Sands, Paul Nicholls, Greg Wise, Saffron Burrows, Julie Graham, Tom Baker, Eileen Atkins.   Based on the novel by Agatha Christie.  Director: David Grindley (uncredited).

   Agatha Christie’s Marple which is what it was called in the listings, returned with the penultimate outing for Geraldine McEwen in the eponymous role. It was an adaptation of Towards Zero, a Christie novel in which Miss Marple plays no part.

   Here she was interjected into the otherwise fairly faithful plot (if my faltering memory of reading it some twenty odd years ago plus the vague plot descriptions in a couple of reference books can be relied upon), involving a gathering of people at the home of Lady Tressilian — played by Eileen Atkins in a fairly star-studded cast which included Tom Baker (former Dr Who and Sherlock Holmes), Saffron Burrows (of Boston Legal) and Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek).

   I have been critical of previous outings in this series but I enjoyed this one. The post-WWII settings were superb, and I thought McEwen kept the knowing grins down to at least a reasonable proportion. There was an amusing gaffe when a scene showing the protagonist Neville Strange (Greg Wise), a tennis player, at Wimbledon (incidentally his opponent was played by Greg Rusedski), had the scores shown on an electronic scoreboard.