BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST. RKO Radio Pictures, 1945. Lee Tracy, Nancy Kelly, Richard Loo, Regis Toomey, Philip Ahn, (Victor) Sen Yung, Drew Pearson. Based on the non-fiction book by Alan Hynd. Director: William Berke.

   This wartime almost-pure propaganda movie is no longer easy to find. It was released on video cassette but not (so far) on DVD, and the now out-of-print VHS tape (shown) seems to command high prices. I taped my copy from American Movie Classics, sometime B.C. (before commercials), but maybe, just maybe, its staunch anti-Japanese sentiment is part of the reason it seems to have slipped out of sight.

   Drew Pearson, one of the most famous newspapermen of the day, appears as himself at the beginning and end of the film, warning heavily against fifth columnists in general and Japanese spies in particular. Considering the relocation camps that Japanese-Americans were forcibly moved to during World War II — but later repudiated in 1980 as “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” — it is difficult to view this movie in an purely entertainment mode today.

   And in fact, it wasn’t intended to be then, and with the passage of years, it’s certainly not meant to be today. Which is not to say that this movie doesn’t have moments that are worth watching. Nearly ninety minutes long, the film’s production values are a step above the B-movies being made at the same time, and with a little tweaking of the story, dropping Drew Pearson’s role, and tweaking some more, it could have been another Across the Pacific. But they didn’t, and it isn’t.

   Lee Tracy as Eddie Carter, now out of the army and low on funds, is tempted by a Japanese friend into making a few dollars, but when he discovers that what’s wanted are plans for defending the Panama Canal, he has second thoughts about what he’s gotten himself into.

   Also taking an interest is Peggy Harrison (Nancy Kelly), a slim and pretty brunette who manages to work up an acquaintance with Carter, an acquaintance that quickly becomes more than that.

   Tracy was much older than Kelly at the time, 47 to her 24 (and pudgier) and the love affair doesn’t set off any sparks as far as I was concerned, although I could see the attraction she has for him. Even with a couple of nifty plot turns, the whole affair is about as ham-handed as this, made with good intentions at the time, perhaps, but in retrospect, no.

   Of perhaps major significance or importance, let me announce first that I recently uploaded Part 30 of the online Addenda to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, 1749-2000. It’s a long list of recently discovered additions and corrections, largely a matter of birth and death dates and setting of stories, but as always, there are books newly listed, new series characters determined, and new biographical data about the authors.

   I’ve not had a chance to do any of the annotating that I usually do: adding links and cover images and the like. It’s just the facts, as some TV detective is well-known for saying, or is supposed to have said, which are not quite the same thing.

   What I have been doing in this regard is merging Parts 1 and 2 with Part 3 in alphabetical order, A through H so far. To demonstrate, here’s a section of authors whose last names begin with B. And as always, if you know anything more about any of these authors, do let me know about it.

CAREY, BASIL. 1898-? Born in Plymouth, England; author of a number of thriller novels published between 1926 and 1937, some reprinted in the US.
      Gray Amber. Add British edition: Constable, hc, 1930. US edition: Clode, hc, 1930.

CAREY, DONNELL. Pseudonym of Joe Barry Lake, 1909-1961; other pseudonym: Joe Barry. Under this pen name the author of one book included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV; see below:
      Kisses Can Kill. Phantom, US, pb, 1951. Comyns, ca.1952. “The amazing story of a birthmark that solved a savage murder!”

CARR, JOHN DICKSON.
      The Burning Court. TV movie [series episode/Dow Hour of Great Mysteries]: NBC, 1960 (scw: Kelley Roos [Audrey Roos & William Roos]; dir: Paul Nickell). [Note: Audrey and William Roos won an Edgar from the MWA for their television script.] Note: For more on the Dow TV series, see this earlier post on the M*F blog.

CARTER, ANGELA.
      The Bloody Chamber and other stories. Film: The Company of Wolves, based on ss in this collection: Cannon, 1984 (scw & dir: Neil Jordan)

CARTER, JOHN.
      The Eagle’s Nest. Novelization of TV movie [series episode/The New Avengers]: TV1, 1976 (scw: Brian Clemens; dir: Desmond Davis). SC: The New Avengers: John Steed (Patrick Macnee), Mike Gambit (Gareth Hunt) and Purdey (Joanna Lumley).

CARTER, MARY. Pseudonym.
      Prisoner Cell Block H: Trials of Erica. Pinnacle, 1981. (Novelization of the Australian TV series Prisoner; distributed in the UK and the US as Prisoner: Cell Block H, and in Canada as Caged Women.) SC: Regular cast members including prison governor Erica Davidson (Patsy King).

CASTLE, JOHN. [Joint pseudonym of John William Garrod & Ronald Charles Payne.]
      Flight Into Danger (with Arthur Hailey). TV movie: CBS, 1971, as Terror in the Sky (scw: Elinor Karpf, Steven Karpf, Dick Nelson; dir: Bernard L. Kowalski)

CAUSEY, JAMES O(LIVER, JR.) 1924-2003. Replace tentative years of birth and death with correct ones and add full name. Author of three crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
      The Baby Doll Murders. Gold Medal, US, pb, 1957; Fawcett, UK, pb, , 1959.

      Frenzy. Crest, pb, 1960. [Reviewed by Bill Crider on his blog.]

      Killer Take All! Graphic, US, pb, 1957. Hale, UK, hc, 1960.

THEODORA WENDER – Murder Gets a Degree. Avon; paperback original, October 1986.

   A slim book, at 150 pages (of large print), it still packs a wallop of intensity, emotional drive and impact.

   It is also the second fictional collaboration of Wading River’s chief of police Alden Chase with Glad Gold, female professor of English at Turnbull College, the first being Knight Must Fall (Avon, pbo, 1985), in which the former president of the school was murdered and his body thrown into a pool.

   Wading River is based on a good many New England towns of the same type — this time apparently of the Rhode Island variety. Providence, H. P. Lovecraft’s hometown, is nearby, and witchcraft, black magic and secret covens figure prominently in the death of poor addled Adah Storm, the last descendant of a long line of permanent Wading River residents.

   She even dies on Halloween, but the none of all this has much to do with her murder or the destruction of her home by fire. The motive lies elsewhere, for which I give thanks, as in the context of detective fiction I often find sorcery and contact with evil spirits invariably making for barely tolerable reading.

   As another of the new authors recently published by Avon, Theodora Wender does a capable job of misleading the reader with the real clues uncovered by Chase and Gold, but any reader who is paying attention should easily decipher the killer’s identity.

   The occasional propensity for using four-letter words seems misplaced in this particular setting and type of story, however, and I while I am happy for Chase and Gold’s delight in each other, I found their tendency to jump into bed (or the equivalent) at every opportunity (so to speak, and hardly explicitly) something I’d somehow (curiously) rather they’d do off-page.

[UPDATE] 11-27-08.   I know a little more about the author than I did in 1987. The two books were the only two mysteries she wrote, and from Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV we learn that the author’s real name was Dorothea S. Wender. She was born in 1934 and died in 2003.

   This helped me use Google to good advantage, allowing me to discover that “Dorothea Schmidt Wender was born in 1934 in Ohio and graduated from Radcliffe College, and then went to the University of Minnesota and Harvard University. She has been Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Classics at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. Her publications include book reviews and scholarly articles.”

   One of her scholarly publications was a translation of a book by ancient Greek authors Hesiod and Theognis: Theogony, Works and Days, and Elegies (Penguin Classics).

   I confess that at this relatively late date I do not remember much about the book, but what I said at the time makes me (a) feel like reading it again, and (b) wish that there had been more in the series.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Beyond Blame.

Villard, hardcover, 1985; paperback reprint: Ballantine, January 1987.

   Synchronicity strikes again! In A Deadly Sickness, the John Penn mystery reviewed here not long ago, a local doctor is left a painting by Corot in a dead man’ s will. In Beyond Blame, Stephen Greenleaf’s latest case for California private eye John Marshall Tanner, the father of the law professor accused of his wife’s brutal mutilation murder has a painting by Corot in his front parlor.

   So, yes, I’m stretching it. (I have to admit I’d never heard of Corot before this week, but sometimes certain things just stick in your brain and jump out at you like this.) The point is, though, this is the only point in common to the two books. From a small village in England to the streets of present-day Berkeley is a trip more than a world apart. The number of deaths works out to be about the same in each, but in the Greenleaf booK the nature of the beast shows its true colors in biting, bone-chilling detail.

   Here’s the main theme of Greenleaf’s book: concerning those shown to be guilty of a crime, but deemed to be insane at the time of its commission, how blameless should they be considered in the eyes of the law?

   Also up for considerable discussion are: the proper role of law school in guiding their students to their destinies; the inadequacies and ineptness of the American penal system; and how the Free Speech movement of the 60’s has turned into nothing more than a sour dream.

   Through Tanner’s eyes, at least, we see only one extreme, the worst of the today’s contemporary drug underculture; the sad abandonment of a cause; and the broken and crazed psyches left fluttering in its wake. This is a depressing work of fiction; its aim is truth, not beauty. While the former is always debatable, in this book, I guarantee there is not much of the latter.

   A comment on the mystery (there is one, if your mind is not totally distracted by other matters before you reach the solution): the facts fit nicely together, but I couldn’t help but feel cheated by Tanner’s escape from the killer in the closing scene staged at the university’s Greek Theater. Dramatic, yes, and pure luck as well.

[UPDATE] 11-26-08.  One of the reasons I write reviews like this for almost every mystery I read is so that I won’t forget what I read and how I liked a given book. In this case, almost nothing came back, either writing the review or reading the book. I’d read it again, but I confess that my review didn’t encourage me very much to do so. I have a feeling that I’m going to have to be in the right sort of mood before I do.

   But I do admire what Stephen Greenleaf was trying to do in this book, and there are many other Greenleaf books I haven’t read. My review isn’t going to persuade me not to read any of those, and if you’re a private eye fan, especially one with a middle-to-left persuasion, it shouldn’t do so for you either.

   For a long overview of his books by Ed Lynskey, and an interview we did with the author several years ago, may I recommend that you go here on the main Mystery*File website. You’ll find a complete bibliography there as well.

   Last Thursday I posted an old review I’d done of The Last Man Standing, by Jim Wright. With a little bit of luck I was able to track Mr. Wright down. When I sent him an email link to the review, he graciously answered back to tell me more about himself and the two mysteries he wrote.

   I’ve revised the followup comment I posted with that review to include his reply. Here’s the easy link to find it.

THE SPOILERS.  Selig Polyscope Co., 1914; Colin Campbell, director; William Farnum, Tom Santschi, Kathlyn Williams, Wheeler Oakman. Shown at Cinecon 41, September 2005.

   The first filming of Rex Beach’s Alaskan adventure novel, with a fifth version released in 1955. A knockdown fist fight is the high point of the film, with the fight between John Wayne and Randolph Scott in a 1942 version still fondly remembered by filmgoers of my generation.

   In this first silent version, William Farnum (a big man with a pummeling technique) goes at it with Tom Santschi. The fight is filmed in a small interior set that doesn’t give the actors much room to maneuver but heightens the scene’s excitement. The print was a bit light but this doesn’t detract significantly from the atmospheric staging.

   Sets seem (at times) makeshift, although this gives a realistic look to the Alaskan frontier setting at a time when towns went up almost overnight as goldhunters poured into the region.

   Tempers flare frequently, the corporate and political villains haven’t a decent bone in their bodies, and the screen seems at times to explode from the vitality of the almost primitive action and emotions.

   A vibrant example of early feature length filmmaking that’s no lost masterpiece but still a very entertaining take on a historical period.

JOHN PENN – A Deadly Sickness.

Bantam, reprint paperback; 1st printing, Nov 1986. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. UK first edition: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1985.

   There is a type of British detective story I read and greatly enjoy, and I’d have to say that Agatha Christie represents it best.

   It’s an old-fashioned sort of story, one seldom taking place in London, but rather in one of the many villages England seems to be endlessly populated with. The police may take part, but the primary focus is often on other main characters, all of whom are more or less involved with the mystery, some more than others.

   And so, I have discovered John Penn. Everything I said above seems to apply. The first case Detective Superintendent Thorne and Sergeant Abbot worked on together seems to have been A Will to Kill, also recently published by Bantam. As in this one, a young girl is the key figure, and the same local doctor makes an appearance in each.

   In fact he is more of a main character in this one, as the police make only a late and mostly routine appearance in finally solving the death of the wealthy Sir Oliver Poston. The identity of the killer is unknown to the reader, of course, but what’s also a mystery, for a while, is what actually happened after his heir’s drunken accident on the occasion of his 40th birthday, preceding the death of his father. (Of the whole crowd, only the young girl mentioned above seems not to know.)

   As I am aware that most of you are completely capable of reading between the lines, I have probably said too much already. For that reason, I liked A Will to Kill more, but sometimes even when you know what’s going to happen, it’s fascinating to watch well-developed characters as they go through their paces.

[UPDATE] 11-24-08.  By some strange coincidence, when I used my computer to check the date just now, it also told me the time, which was exactly 11:24. I think this may be the day I should buy a whole stack of lottery tickets!

    When I wrote this review, over 20 years ago, I was rather down on British mystery and thriller fiction. How do I know? I deleted the first two paragraphs, neither of which do you see here, nor will you ever see them.

    I’ve changed my mind about British detective stories in the meantime. Maybe I’ve slowed down and I enjoy the pace of the older “humdrums” (of which category I do not consider the above to be an example) a lot more than I did when I was younger, but the glitz and glamour of present-day London and other larger cities, with all of their problems with the younger generation and immigrant populations, holds a lot of interest for me as well.

    I believe what remains of the review reads smoothly enough. Enough time has elapsed enough since I wrote it that I cannot tell you, however, whether the doctor figure that I mentioned was the same person, or if I meant to use him as a generic character.

    “John Penn,” and I did not know this when I wrote the review, was the joint pseudonym of Paula Harcourt and John H. Trotman. The latter did not write any mystery fiction of his own, but the former, who died in 1999, has a list of over 20 books to her individual credit in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, mostly of the espionage thriller variety, from what I can deduce from their titles.

    From CFIV then, here’s a list of all of John Penn’s work. Series characters: GT = Insp. (Supt.) George Thorne; DT = Chief Insp. (Supt.) Dick Tansey. (Most of the Tansey books have never been published in the US.)

* Notice of Death (n.) Collins 1982
* Deceitful Death (n.) Collins 1983
* A Will to Kill (n.) Collins 1983. GT
* Mortal Term (n.) Collins 1984. GT

* A Deadly Sickness (n.) Collins 1985. GT
* Barren Revenge (n.) Collins 1986. GT
* Unto the Grave (n.) Collins 1986. GT
* Accident Prone (n.) Collins 1987. GT
* Outrageous Exposures (n.) Collins 1988. DT

* A Feast of Death (n.) Collins 1989. DT
* A Killing to Hide (n.) Collins 1990. DT
* Death’s Long Shadow (n.) Collins 1991. DT
* A Knife Ill-Used (n.) Collins 1991. DT
* A Legacy of Death (n.) Collins 1992. DT
* A Haven of Danger (n.) Collins 1993. DT
* Widow’s End (n.) Collins 1993. DT
* The Guilty Party (n.) Collins 1994. DT
* So Many Steps to Death (n.) Collins 1995. DT
* Bridal Shroud (n.) Collins 1996. DT

* Sterner Stuff (n.) Collins 1997. DT

MAX BRAND – Gunman’s Goal.

Five Star, hardcover, Feb 2000. Leisure, paperback; 1st printing, Nov 2002. First appearance: Western Story Magazine, 14 July 1928.

   Max Brand is one of this country’s most famous western writers, and that’s exactly how this latest of his works is being marketed, but what it an action-packed crime novel that just happens to take place in the West. Reprinted from its serial form when it first appeared in the pulp Western Story Magazine in 1928, this is one of a series of adventures of James Giraldi, a dashing young adventurer to whom crime is a fine art, looking solely for the excitement, not ill-gotten gains.

   He’s hired in this novel by a girl (beautiful) to find her father (innocent) who has disappeared, fleeing from the law after being charged with murder. The girl’s Cousin Edgar (dastardly) has evil intentions toward the estate, and to that end he is making romantic overtures to her mother (fluttery and weak-minded).

   It reads much better than it sounds! The action is continuous, the dialogue often lyrical, and the tale truly epic in nature. This is the stuff that legends are made of, the American West of the imagination, not of reality, but to my way of thinking, every so often a strong dose of balladry and fables like this is just what the doctor ordered.

   [One note of caution, though: Going back to Brand’s original manuscript may be responsible for some glitches a good eagle-eyed editor should have caught. Giraldi’s horse gains a new name from one chapter to the next, and once in Giraldi’s hands, a saddlebag full of valuable papers suddenly seems to contain currency instead.]

[UPDATE] 11-23-08.   Put this in the “For What It’s Worth” category: A reviewer of this book on Amazon claims that it was published earlier as Three on the Trail and warns people not to buy it. I don’t believe the two books are the same. “Three on the Trail” was published as a six-part serial in Western Story Magazine beginning 12 May 1928; and as as you can see from the cover to the right, “Gunman’s Goal” was in the 14 July issue of the same year.

STEPHANIE BARRON – Jane and the Stillroom Maid: Being the Fifth Jane Austen Mystery.

Bantam, hardcover; August 2000. Reprint paperback, May 2001.

   Never having read any of Jane Austen’s works, or at least none that I can recall, I may not be the ideal person to be reviewing this book. On the other hand, speaking as a mystery fan, I thought the Jane Austen in this make-believe fiction does superbly well in her role as a full-fledged detective. By way of presentation, the book is related to us by her “editor” Stephanie Barron (a/k/a Francine Matthews), and I enjoyed it immensely.

   The year of the text is 1806, when it was entirely possible that Jane Austen could have been visiting Derbyshire, where she could have seen the house she used as an inspiration for Pemberley, the grand manor in the novel, as Barron says, “we now know as Pride and Prejudice.”

   And if she were in Derbyshire, is it not possible that she could have been once again (see the subtitle) involved in a murder there, this time of an apothecary maid in the most mysterious of circumstances?

   This is a well-plotted, well-told throwback to the Golden Age of detective fiction, in my humble opinion, with complication piled on complication. The maid has been shot in the forehead, but her body has been mutilated in a manner such as to cast blame on the demonic Masons the local folk fear so greatly. A sacrifice of some sort? More, and perhaps most puzzling, she is dressed in men’s clothing.

   Jane’s investigation — for definitely no timid wallflower is she — suggests that the maid’s death involves those well above her station. For many reasons, there are many who are not displeased that she is dead. Once again Lord Harold, the Gentleman Rogue in Jane’s life, is available to give her entrance to the world of the local gentry; if not for him, doors otherwise opened would have remained closed, and the case would never have been solved.

   Told in what satisfies me as being Jane Austen’s own words, with touches of delicate humor throughout, here’s a trip back in time I can’t recommend more. Charming and delectable; a complete pleasure.

   Bibliographic data:

      The JANE AUSTEN series —

1. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (1996)

2. Jane and the Man of the Cloth (1997)
3. Jane and the Wandering Eye (1998)
4. Jane and the Genius of the Place (1999)
5. Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2000)
6. Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (2001)
7. Jane and the Ghosts of Netley (2003)
8. Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (2005)
9. Jane and the Barque of Frailty (2006)

   Stephanie Barron’s most recent book, A Flaw in the Blood (Feb 2008), may be the first in a new historical series. In this one Irish barrister Patrick Fitzgerald, along with his ward Georgiana “Georgie” Armistead, initiates an enquiry into the death of Queen Victoria’s beloved Prince Albert.

STEPHEN BOOTH – Scared to Live. HarperCollins, UK, hardcover, 2006; Bantam, US, hc, May 2008.

      —, Dying to Sin, 2007. HarperCollins, UK, hc, Sept 2007.

   I’m not going to mince words about the latest installment in this British rural procedural series: it’s far too long for the interest it generates in its investigation, of the murder of a middle-aged woman who turns out not to be what she seems to be.

   Booth has always reveled in details about the region but the protracted and not really very interesting investigation, and, in particular, the handling of one of his two main characters, D.S. Diane Fry, sapped much of my interest in the novel.

   Diane is an outsider to the region and has become increasingly dissatisfied with her job (and life), and Booth, perhaps himself dissatisfied with the character, has no firm sense of the direction in which he might take her. I didn’t find the character “development,” if that’s what it is, believable. She just comes across as unhappy and unpleasant, and any sympathy I’ve felt earlier for this troubled D.S. greatly diminished.

   I can only hope that Booth gets a firmer grip on her character in the next novel although I’m not really sure that I care to see if he does.

   [ … ]

   As an addendum to this rather glum take on Booth’s novel, I’m happy to report that the next novel, Dying to Sin, finds Booth in a return to form, with DS Fry and DC Cooper working together to trace the history of skeletons turned up in ground breaking work by the new owner of a local farm, a history that will lead to a third body and a trail of abuse and murder that leads the investigators far afield in their attempts to identify the remains and track down the perpetrators.

   The novel is also a record of the tremendous changes in farming and landowning that are transforming the landscape of rural England. Fry is perhaps no more content with her present assignment than she was in the preceding novel, but she’s able to work effectively within its framework and the more settled Ben Cooper.