VICTOR CANNING – The Limbo Line. Wm. Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1963. William Sloane Associates, US, hardcover, 1964. Hardcover reprint (UK): Companion Book Club. Paperback reprints (UK), Pan; several printings. Paperback reprints (US): Berkley F1085, 1965; Award 1467, 1975; Ace/Charter, 1979.

   Victor Canning isn’t read much today, which is a shame. He was a major figure in the period from the 1950’s to the 1980’s and one of the best of the British thriller writers, a club that included Eric Ambler, Hammond Innes, and Desmond Bagley.

   Though he began his successful writing career before the war in England, it was with The Chasm in 1950 that his real career began. His best known work is probably The Rainbird Pattern, an atypical crime novel set in the South of England and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as The Family Plot.

   The Limbo Line is one of only three Cold War novels Canning wrote during the first half of his thriller-writing career, and something of a throwback to the thrillers of John Buchan, although the subject is up to date and contemporary to the period it was written in.

   Richard Manston (the similarity to the name of Buchan’s Richard Hannay is no accident) is a typical Canning hero, a retired agent turned gentleman farmer, a sportsman (golf fanatic like his creator), and a cool capable customer. As The Limbo Line opens he is drawn back into the spy game while on the links with his old boss Ronnie Sutcliffe. Manston resists at first, but his mistress visiting at his farm knows he will go back to work. He always does.

   The Soviets have been up to their usual tricks, and this time it’s a cleverer scheme than usual. AGRIP, a Soviet trade organ, is the front for the kidnapping and brainwashing of Russian defectors who are then smuggled back to the Soviet Union to much fanfare at yet another triumph of the Soviet system.

   The British Secret Service has identified the next victim, a balllerina, Irina Tovskaya, as the next victim. Manston’s job is to dangle her as bait and follow her through the “Limbo Line” the organization that handles the kidnapping, brain washing, and smuggling of the kidnapped defectors.

   It’s a dirty business using an innocent like Irina as bait but Manston is a pro, at least until he starts to fall for her. The trail leads to the spectacular country around Fauberg St. Honore in France and Manston sets out to track down the locals who run the Limbo Line for AGRIP.

   Along the way there are numerous crosses and double-crosses, escape and evasion, and Manston finds himself falling for Irina before he finally smashes AGRIP, shuts down the Limbo Line, and finds himself in love with Irina after nearly losing her.

   The writing is crisp and intelligent as might be expected in Canning’s hands. Manston is a tough smart agent and the Soviets running AGRIP are portrayed as believable men and women who are professionals and not monsters however monstrous their actions.

   The developing relationship between Manston and Irina is countered by the one between Oleg, the head of AGRIP and Ludmila his attractive and smitten secretary. When Oleg is killed at the end we last see Ludmilla:

   Manston later appeared as a much darker character in Canning’s novels about international private detective Rex Carver, and the cynical Birdcage sequence of novels later in his output, when he had come to take a darker view of the British security services and their actions.

   The Limbo Line was a mediocre film in 1968 with Craig Stevens heading an otherwise British cast.

   Virtually any of Canning’s thrillers are worth reading. Just out of personal preference I would suggest Panther’s Moon (filmed as Spy Hunt, about a pair of escaped leopards loose in the Balkans with microfilm in one of their collars), Castle Minerva (filmed as Masquerade, the 1965 Basil Deardon film a slick spy spoof with Cliff Robertson and Jack Hawkins, reviewed here), The Great Affair, Queen’s Pawn, and the off beat Fingers of Saturn, as well as any of those mentioned above. He also wrote a notable series of Arthurian novels late in his career.

   Canning doesn’t deserve his temporary decline. He was simply one of the most intelligent and capable of the writers who marked out the territory of the British thriller in this period. His books sold well and are easy to find, and if you have never read him, or haven’t read him for a while you’ll soon find how good he can be. Many of his books were made into films including His Bones Are Coral filmed as Sam Fuller’s Shark; Venetian Bird filmed as The Assassin; The Golden Salamander; and The House of the Seven Flies filmed as The House of the Seven Hawks.

   During his heyday he ran Eric Ambler a close race for the top British thriller writer, and Hammond Innes an equally close race for the title of best adventure novelist — neither a small achievement. He deserves to be rediscovered by anyone who likes the British thriller at its most literate and intelligent.

JAMES McKIMMEY – The Long Ride. Dell First Edition B211, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1961.

   I don’t actually seek out books by James McKimmy, but when I find one I pick it up, so I was glad to happen across The Long Ride at a local spot.

   The ending’s a bit weak, but the characters are well-realized (mostly… more on this later) and the plot is a neatly-built thing involving a sadistic bank robber, a one-armed chiseler and his abused wife, a vulnerable FBI agent, and the usual leggy temptress.

   All of them, for sundry reasons, are sharing a wild ride to the West coast with a little old lady who drives like she has some sort of death wish and her librarian spinster friend, and they all take turns bluffing about their hands in a complicated game of who’s-got-the-loot-from-the-bank-job, sounding each other out, forming temporary alliances, and trying to side-step disaster.

   There’s a lot to like here: the action is well-handled, the locations nicely-drawn, and the resolution… well, it would have been easy to wrap this up with a bit of action, but McKimmey goes for a more thoughtful approach, which I appreciated.

   My only objection to the whole thing was his portrayal of the spinster Librarian as a snoopy pedant. I’ve been married to a librarian for nigh onto thutty year now, and I know them to be lively, considerate and totally captivating creatures who deserve better treatment at the hands of a writer as good as McKimmey.

THE UNHOLY THREE. MGM, 1925. Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen, Harry Earles, Matthew Betz. Based on the novel by Clarence Aaron ‘Tod’ Robbins; director: Todd Browning. Shown at Cinevent 19, Columbus OH, May 1987.

   There was, perhaps, one film at the convention in which acting, script; and direction combined in an often unforgettable combination: Todd Browning’s The Unholy Three, starring Lon Chaney, Victor MacLaglen, and, memorably, the fine midget actor, Harry Earles. This is the 1925 silent version.

   Chaney plays a side-show ventriloquist (Professor Echo) who engineers a scam in which he, strongman Hercules (McLaglen), and Tweedledee (Earles) gain entry to homes of the rich who are clients of a pet store where the trio’s foil, Mae Busch, works. Chaney, disguised as Busch’s grandmother, and Earles as a year-old baby, make service calls to treat “ailing” parrots who, once they have left the store, cannot talk.

   Earles is a malevolent presence who fully justifies W.C. Fields’ wariness toward children, and McLaglen, at moments, in makeup and hulking movements bears a striking resemblance to Karloff’s Frankenstein monster.

   Eventually, a sentimental ending weakens the somber power of the best scenes, but this is still a striking film, with a vein of nastiness that gives it an acerbic edge sixty years after its production.

Sometime earlier today the 200,000th visitor stopped by, and 315,000th page on this blog was viewed. I don’t know who these two people are, or they’d get prizes of some sort. They’ll have to settle for a small round of applause from me, as well as a great big thank you to all of you!

EAGLE EYE. DreamWorks, 2008. Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Billy Bob Thornton. Director: D.J. Caruso.

   This is one of those thriller movies in which events start to happen as soon as the movie begins, almost faster than you can assimilate them, and the reason that you can’t put the pieces together is that they’re pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that takes time – be patient – until at last – finally – one key piece snaps into place, and all of sudden – but not before – do you see the big picture.

   Wonder of wonders, the people who made this movie made sure that the key piece I’m talking about is not discovered for a full three-quarters of the way through a two-hour movie.

   That’s a long time to keep people in the dark, so to speak, and I take my cap off to the director, screenwriters and players for pulling it off so successfully for so long.

   There are two main players, one male and one female, both in some sort of terrible danger and brought together to accomplish some sort of errand, plus one other whose name is not even mentioned above: a female voice on the phone whose commands must be obeyed, or else.

   This female voice also seems to have at her command every cell phone, every on street camera, every public piece of electronic equipment in the entire country, and more, leading Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf), suspected terrorist, and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), mother of a young son on a trip with his school band to play in a concert somewhere unspecified, on a series of more and more complicated errands – to do what?

   Other reviews of this movie may tell you more than I will, or intend to. Suffice it to say that you will be sitting on the edge of your seat (figuratively, and maybe even literally) for a good solid portion of the two hours you will spend watching it.

   I suppose there is an underlying moral involved, or maybe more than one, and one of them (which I think you can gather yourself from the paragraph above) is that there is not nearly enough privacy in this country any more. You may think you are alone, but very seldom are you alone as you think you are.

   After watching this movie, you may wish to give up your cell phones and GPS’s and maybe even your laptop computers that you take with you everywhere, but who among us is willing to do that?

   There are some political considerations that are also involved, and lots and lots of action scenes, with cars roaring up and down streets and turning over on their sides with lots of flames bursting from them, and all kinds of heavy machinery doing the unknown female voice’s bidding. You will not be bored.

   Shia LaBeouf is young and rather light weight as an actor, but he does well in this film and the Transformer movies in which a lightweight, or a slacker, is exactly the persona that’s needed. He didn’t do so well in the Indiana Jones movie he was in, in my opinion. The gravitas of a Harrison Ford he doesn’t have, yet.

   Michelle Monaghan, who was such a successful femme fatale in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, doesn’t have nearly the same opportunity in Eagle Eye to display her glamorous side. Frantic, though, she does very well, and overall, both actors are very determined to be a good sports about being in this movie. Both get solid A’s for Effort, and it shows. The screenwriters (all four of them) might have done it without them, but it would have been awfully difficult.

P. D. JAMES – A Mind to Murder. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1963. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1967. Reprinted many times, both hardcover and soft, including Popular Library, paperback, US, 1976. (All shown.)

   Although mystery fiction has had more than its share of characters with psychiatric conditions, there have been few books set in psychiatric institutions.

   Coincidentally, two of these are currently available in paperback, and they are both worth seeking out. A Mind to Murder is P. D. James’s second novel and draws heavily on her own experience for its setting, a London psychiatric outpatient clinic.

   The victim is a hospital administrator, a position Miss James held in the British Civil Service System.

   Not only does the author know the workings of such a clinic, but she also knows the heartbreak of mental illness firsthand, since her husband, a physician, was hospitalized due to that condition for most of the twenty years before his death in 1964.

   Authenticity is the strong point of this book, along with the writing,which is civilized and perceptive; its plotting adequate, but it is not as good in that regard as the 1962 James debut novel, Cover Her Face.

   James is very adept at characterization, especially as regards Adam Dalgliesh, her series ,detective, who shows depths not often found in sleuths who solve the kind of classic puzzles James presents. Her skillful writing evokes considerable poignancy in describing his personal life.

   There is also a superbly written section about his searching the apartment of the victim, and Dalgliesh has enough empathy to realize that the necessary act is a violation of a dead person.

   If P. D. James seems to have received an inordinate amount of praise in recent years, do not begrudge it to her. She, more than most, combines the ability to plot interesting puzzles with the writing skill to observe society create real characters, and write with intelligence and sophistication.

Editorial Comment:  The review by Marv of the second of the two paperback mysteries he refers to will appear on this blog soon.

JACK FOXX – Wildfire.   Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1978. Reworked and republished as Firewind, as by Bill Pronzini: M. Evans, hardcover, 1989; paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   Very nice review of Wildfire, which I missed seeing when it first appeared; I’m pleased that you found it to be a suspenseful read. Firewind is a reworking of Wildfire, but not merely a reissue under a different title.

   Although the basic storyline and general progression are similar in both versions, Wildfire has a contemporary setting and Firewind a historical one, and the characters and their motives and interactions are different.

   I wasn’t satisfied with the way Wildfire turned out, but it wasn’t until a few years after it was published that I realized why: the story works better as a “western” and should have been written as such in the first place.

   So when Sara Ann Freed, who was editing M. Evans’ western line in the late 80s, asked me to do a second book for her (after The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran), it gave me an opportunity to transform Wildfire into Firewind. The latter is much the better of the two.

   As to the Jack Foxx name, which you also asked about, I chose it for two reasons. The minor is that it’s short and punchy, both surname and given name just four letters; the major is that I’ve always considered the letter “X” something of a lucky talisman.

   Long-time readers of my work might note that I often give characters names containing an “x”.

   Pronzini’s “X” file. One of my many quirks, on and off the printed page.

TWO SMART PEOPLE. MGM, 1946. John Hodiak, Lucille Ball, Lloyd Nolan, Elisha Cook Jr., Hugo Haas, Lloyd Corrigan, Vladimir Solokoff. Screenplay: Ethel Hill, Leslie Charteris. Director: Jules Dassin.

   Two Smart People is a charming little romantic crime caper often falsely identified as a comedy thanks to the presence of Ball and the byplay between her, Hodiak and Nolan. Instead it could easily be an adventure of the Saint, as it plays a good deal on the cat and mouse game between con man Ace Connors (Hodiak) and cop Bob Simms (Nolan), who is hot on his trail.

   Connors has stolen some valuable bonds and is planning to sell them. Nolan wants the bonds even more than he wants Connors and hopes to convince the charming con man to turn them in for a reduced sentence. Lucy is a con woman on the lam from a charge in Arkansas.

   Simms has caught up with Connors in California, but Connors talks him into traveling back east on the train that will take them through the Southwest and end up in New Orleans — where Connors plans to elude Simms and sell the bonds.

   Complicating things are the presence of Ball’s Ricki Woodner, and Elisha Cook Jr. as Fly Feletti, a murderous accomplice of Ace’s hot on the trail of him and the bonds. Simms plays along hoping to get Ace and the bonds.

   Suspense isn’t really what director Dassin is after here. The train trip is an excuse for the romance to develop between Ace and Ricki as Simms works on Ricki to help him convince Ace to go straight before it is too late.

   There is a brief twist when Ricki gets Ace across the border into Mexico when they stopover in El Paso, but Simms lures him back, and now Ricki’s only hope is to get Ace to hand over the bonds, but Ace has plans of his own — it’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans and amid the chaos and costumes he and Ricki can elude Simms, sell the bonds, and head for Cuba.

   But Ace hasn’t counted on Ricki’s conscience or Feletti’s obsession, and when he goes to sell the bonds to fence Vladimir Sokaloff in New Orleans he finds Ricki, himself, and Simms all in danger.

   Though there are comedy elements in the film and even a few noir elements (notably Cook’s Fellitti), Two Smart People is neither a comedy nor film noir. But it is a charming little romantic crime film with elements of both and an exceptional cast at the top of their form.

   It’s one of only a handful of screenplays by Charteris, and though it is impossible to know how much he contributed to it, the film has many elements of the Saint in Ace Connors character, although he is more a professional and less an adventurer.

   Watching it I couldn’t help but think in many ways this was closer to how Charteris would have liked to see Templar played on the big screen than the previous series entries he was so vocal a critic of.

   Two Smart People may not be for all tastes, and it is only a minor work of Dassin’s, but it plays well, and the triangle of conflicting interests between Ace, Ricki, and Simms within the confines of the train journey with stopovers for a little scenic.tour and romance play smoothly and keep your interest.

   Hodiak and Ball are well cast opposite each other, and Nolan was making a career of playing very human cops (ironically he played one opposite Hodiak’s amnesiac private eye in Joseph Mankiewicz’s film noir Somewhere In the Night the same year as People) in this period.

   Cook is good as the nervous killer, a bit of a throwback to Wilbur in The Maltese Falcon instead of the nervous cowards he became typecast as, and the rest of the cast are all in high gear.

   Two Smart People isn’t a lost masterpiece, or a major work from director Dassin, just a very good and entertaining film with more to offer than might at first be obvious. It’s not going to become your favorite film, but it might just become a surprising discovery, one of those little films you might otherwise have missed or skipped, but are glad you discovered, and sometimes those are as rare and prized as lost masterpieces.

   I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have a number of these minor films on my list that I turn to when I might not be in the mood for something more challenging. Sometimes you just want to watch a movie, not change your life. Watch it in that light, and it’s likely to surprise you. These days sheer competence and skill and a tale well told are rare enough to be applauded and even treasured.

PHILIP KERR – A German Requiem. Viking, UK/US, hardcover, 1991. Paperback edition: Penguin, 1993 (shown), with many later printings.

    I’ve already read the fourth and fifth books in Kerr’s series about German investigator Bernie Gunther. When I started to read the fourth I had thought that I had read the first three in the series but came to realise that I hadn’t read the third. I’ve now rectified this and I’m glad in did.

    It’s set in 1947 and Bernie, struggling with a rather bleak existence in Berlin, is hired by a Russian Colonel to go to Vienna to help one of his, Gunther’s, old police colleagues who is to be tried on charges of murdering an American officer.

    Bernie takes the case and finds a world of subterfuge where everyone has things to hide and where the Russians and Americans are vying for control and each are anxious to harness the abilities of ex-German military leaders, even if they are wanted for war crimes.

    The situation is bleak and the overwhelming emotion of many is despair, and the cynical, but moral, Gunther tries to work his way to a just conclusion to the case. This is an excellent series and I’m glad I took the time to fill in this gap in my reading of it.

The Bernard Gunther novels:

      1. March Violets (1989)

      2. The Pale Criminal (1990)
      3. A German Requiem (1991)
      4. The One from the Other (2006)

      5. A Quiet Flame (2008)
      6. If the Dead Rise Not (2009)

PHILIP CLARK – The Dark River.

Perennial Library; paperback reprint, 1985. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum, 1949. Hardcover reprints: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1949; Garland [50 Classics of Crime Fiction, 1950-1975], 1983.

   Do you believe in coincidence? Coincidences that occur in works of fiction are usually tough to swallow, at least for me. I remember one mystery in which a character defended the coincidences that made the plot come together by saying something like, If coincidences didn’t happen, why do we have a word for them?

   And yet, when they happen in the course of everyday living, as they invariably do, we have to accept them. But what are the odds, I ask, of picking up two books to read, at random, and have them start out with essentially the same plot? A husband and wife, he very jealous, she innocent. He strikes her, without warning, and very soon thereafter, he ends up dead.

   At which point the two books diverge, this one and Woman on the Roof, by Mignon G. Eberhart, reviewed here earlier on this blog, but the similarity was simply amazing. In The Dark River, the wife gradually begins to realize that her neighbors in Charleston, South Carolina, think she is responsible, and perhaps even her friends.

   On the back cover is a quote from Jacques Barzun praising this book as “Classical detection of the best period,” and except for one small matter, he’s right. The details of the motive for the killing are unfortunately withheld until the very end, but other than that, Judy Rossler’s attempt to defend her reputation by finding the killer herself poses an intellectual challenge that’s both gripping and (in the end) satisfying.

   Philip Clark wrote only one other earlier mystery besides this one (Flight into Darkness, 1948), which is surprising, since he’s a very perceptive writer. His characters ring absolutely true, and he has total control of this rather moody and introspective tale from beginning to end.

   In that regard, here’s a quote from page 62 that might be appropriate:

   Even though it falls an inch or so short of being a masterpiece, this rather obscure and old-fashioned detective novel is exactly the kind of book I read mysteries for.