TECH DAVIS – Full Fare for a Corpse.  Aubrey Nash #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. No paperback edition.

   The central premise of Full Fare for a Corpse is irresistible: Four days after Christmas, a transcontinental Union Pacific passenger train runs into a blizzard on the Wyoming Great Divide and comes up snowbound at a whistle-stop station in the middle of nowhere. Snowbound with it is a freight full of supplies, and nearby is a sheep ranch, so the 130 passengers and crew on board the ten-car train don’t need to worry about provisions.

   What they do need to worry about is that one of their number is a murderer. (If this premise sounds familiar, it may be because you — and Tech Davis — happened to read Agatha Christie’s  Murder on the Orient Express, which is about murder on a snowbound train in Yugoslavia and was published three years earlier than Full Fare for a Corpse.)

   Victim number one is an unidentified stranger who isn’t even on the passenger list, but is found in his robe and slippers in one of the compartments, shot to death under very unusual circumstances. Victim number two turns up not quite dead in the baggage car, laid out next to the remains of number one. There is also a victim number three. The task of unraveling all these events falls to suave, “semiprofessional” New York sleuth Aubrey Nash, with the help of an ex-Wyoming sheriff named Sargent. And unravel them they do, but not before the murderer strikes again at an impromptu New Year’s Eve celebration put on by the passengers to “ease the tension.”

   The handling of all this isn’t bad, although the novel does have its drawbacks: Davis’s prose is somewhat overblown, full of words like parturition and expatiated; Nash owes his origins (and methods) not to Hercule Poirot but to Philo Vance, though without Vance’s more obnoxious qualities; and more could have been done with the howling blizzard outside the train.

   On the plus side, the plot is tricky enough to keep one reading and guessing, and Nash’s piecing together of the puzzle is logical and well clued. There are also some good characters, some witty dialogue, and more action than you might expect in this type of whodunit. The whole thing is reminiscent of the better of those delightfully campy B-movie melodramas of the same period .. A good evening’s entertainment.

   Davis published two other novels featuring the exploits of Aubrey Nash: Terror at Compass Lake (1935), which has an upstate New York setting; and Murder on Alternate Tuesdays (1938), set in New York City.

———
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.

BART SPICER – Black Sheep, Run. Carney Wilde #4. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1951. Bantam #1049, paperback, 1952.

   Carney Wilde is one of the top private eyes in Philadelphia. He just opened his brand new office that he can’t afford and a cop he knows busts in on the office-warming party and urgently needs to talk to him.

   The police superintendent committed suicide a week back, but he left a note confessing to graft and naming names. New Jersey gamblers had been paying off cops to look the other way when shuttle services shipped Philadelphians to and fro from Jersey to enjoy an evening of debauchery. The list included the name of a mutual friend, the most honorable homicide detective on the force. The cop hires Carney Wilde to clear his name.

   Wilde heads to Jersey to try to figure out the payoff structure. He ends up getting tailed by another P.I. hired by a reform group of mugwumps aiming to clean up corruption in the City of Brotherly Love. But before Wilde knows it, he’s been framed for the murder of the mugwumps’ P.I., and now the law is after him too. Now Wilde not only has to vindicate the cop, but vindicate himself whilst uncovering the deep dark twisted conspiracy behind the framing of the innocent by the grifters themselves. Who’s behind the conspiracy? And why are the mugwumps so embedded in the swamp?

   Hopefully I’m not giving too much away by saying that the story’s a bit reminiscent of One Lonely Night and The Manchurian Candidate.

   Carney Wilde is a believable, likeable, very human detective, with all the frailties and passions of an everyday guy. He’s no hero. He’s just trying his best. Which is generally good enough.

   I enjoyed the book, as I did the only other in the series I’ve tried (The Long Green). I think he deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Ross Macdonald and Thomas Dewey and William Campbell Gault. Which is to say that, to apply Somerset Maugham’s self-denigrating quote: “in the very top rank of the second rate.”
   

      The Carney Wilde series —

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

   I’ve been in the hospital the last few days, totally unexpectedly. Seems as though I misdiagnosed what I thought was heartburn for far too long. Turns out it wasn’t. One stent later the guys in the operating room proved it to me. All numbers back to normal now, and I feel good, but if I’d delayed any later, maybe not.

JAMES E. MARTIN – The Flip Side. Gil Disbro #2. Putnam, hardcover, 1990. Avon, paperback, 1991.

   While Cleveland-based PI Gil Disbro had a respectable four-book run in the early 1990s from a couple of major publishers, he doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on the mystery reading public. Reviews of his books on the Internet are relatively few, and as is the case with several other PI’s of the same era, he’s generally forgotten now.

   In The Flip Side, his second outing, the case builds from almost nothing to a complicated tale of kidnapping and two murders. He’s hired by the shy tutor (female) for the young son of a college professor, both of whom have disappeared. Just another missing persons case, he thinks, more suitable for the police to handle, he thinks, if even there is a case.

   It doesn’t take him long, though, to learn how wrong he is. Luckily, though, Disbro is one of those guys whom the people he questions start telling their entire life stories to. If he wasn’t, I don’t think he’d have much of a career as a private investigator. But he’s also persistent, in the well-established Lew Archer sense, if not out and out doggedness, and closes out the case in fine fashion.

   Since he tells his story in first person, it takes a while to tell what kind of person he is, inside and out. He’s young, dressed casually, and while a heavy smoker, doesn’t drink a lot. He lives with a college professor (female) who is a few years older than he is, but he (unfortunately) can be seduced by one of his suspects (also female) for no good reason.

   Overall, though, a better than average outing. I’d read another, if one comes along, but without the urgency of needing to hunt down another, if that makes sense.

LEE THAYER – Guilt Edged. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1951.  Unicorn Mystery Book Club, hardcover, four-in-one edition. No paperback edition.

   Here’s a book that has everything – old N’Orleans atmosphere, poor but grand old Southern. families., Creole legends, faithful family retainers (“colored” servants), an inexplicable stabbing, a lovely girl — but why go on? The detective is Peter Clancy, with his English “man” Wiggar. They work along with good-natured, but not too swift Chief of Detectives Burns.

   The trouble is that Peter Clancy is not too swift either. His reason for being in New Orleans is a mysterious letter – anonymous and made up of cut-out printed words, of  course — with an enclosure, a gold certificate for $1000. For those of us who don’t remember, gold certificates are yellow on one side. “Guilt edged,” get it?

   Despite the scattering of clues wholesale in front of Clancy’s  eyes, he sleuths away on other tracks until light finally dawns. Long after it dawned on me. Sorry, folks, good detect1ng it ain’t; if you like atmosphere laid on with a trowel, it may be for you.

PAUL STANTON – Village of Stars. M. S. Mill/William MOrrow, hardcover, 1960; Permabooks M4230, paperback, 1962.

   Nothing so defined the 1950’s and the early 1960’s as the novel of nuclear terror. Some were science fictional post apocalyptic novels like Philip Wylie’s Triumph and Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, while others were strictly thrillers like Ian Fleming’s Thunderball and Wylie’s (again) The Smuggled Atom Bomb. There were tense warnings of the dangers of nuclear brinksmanship like Eugene Burdick’s Fail Safe and Peter George’s Red Alert (which became the black humor of Dr. Strangelove) and frightening tales of that brinksmanship gone too far like Nevil Shute’s On The Beach.

   Village of Stars was probably the first one of these book I ever read at age twelve. The man behind the pseudonym Paul Stanton was David Beaty, a fine British aviation novelist in the Nevil Shute/Elleston Trevor tradition who was best known for Cone of Silence.

   The set up for the novel is fairly simple, and riveting.

   There is a crisis in the Middle East, it is getting hotter by the hour. Russian troops are on the move and the West is taking note. Sabers are rattling.

   Helen Durrant is the personal assistant to Air Marshal Chatterton when she meets Squadron Leader John Falkner. The chemistry is almost immediate, and like people living on the edge in any place in the world things move pretty quickly. At the same time things are moving quickly in the Middle East.

   Our main characters set and the milieu of impending nuclear war there to ratchet up tension it is inevitable that Falkner will be sent on a mission to the hot spot, that while he is on patrol the tension comes to the boiling point. So much so that Falkner has to take a step he has never taken before.

   One of his nukes, F6, is armed. F6 is capable of destroying a 40,000 square mile area. And for a few tense moments the world sits on the edge of the razor. Then the order comes.

   The Russians have withdrawn. They are pulling back.

   Falkner and crew can breathe a sigh or relief.

   The fuse can be disarmed. But you can’t always put the djinn back in the bottle.

   K6, the nuke, will not defuse. There is no way for Falkner and his crew to defuse the bomb.

   They are near the limit of their flight path, fuel is getting low. There is no place on Earth they can reach and safely dump the nuke, and if the ship drops beneath 5,500 feet the nuke will detonate. If they crash into a mountain above 5,500 feet the nuke will detonate.

   There is one chance in the Arctic Sea, but when they reach that spot there are ships from the Russian fleet there. Dropping K6 or even ditching would trigger WWIII.

   What now? As they fly over Greenland Falkner wonders what if he just dumped the nuke in the ocean, saved the life of his crew and took the consequences. Who could really blame him?

   There is one last chance if they have enough fuel, a landing field at Nairobi at 5,700 feet. Awfully close, but still, a chance, with two hundred feet to spare…

   The hero chooses not to think about it, but Stanton is perfectly happy to let us sweat it out. There is a streak of sadism in good suspense writers that has never been sufficiently explored.

   Village of Stars is a heavy breather, a well written two-fists on the wheel read, that builds up, in its relatively short length, considerable suspense. It is tightly written, and would not work half as well as a bloated best seller. Stanton/Beaty keeps the story moving, switching between characters and settings, avoiding the tiresome soap opera of most bigger books to focus on the immediate problem and danger, which in this case is more than enough.

   By the time you reach the end, even if it is all a little dated today, you may want a hug and a drink like John Falkner. It’s still a hell of a ride.

MICKEY SPILLANE – Kiss Me, Deadly. Mike Hammer #6. Dutton, hardcover, 1952. Signet #1000, paperback, 1953. Reprinted many times.

   So, yeah, this is my third crack at Mike Hammer (previously having read I, the Jury and One Lonely Night). I was a big fan of the Stacy Keach TV show Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in the 80’s. Which I think may be part of the reason why I keep trying to enjoy the books — results be damned.

   In this yarn, Mike Hammer finds himself cruising down the highway between Albany and Manhattan when an escapee from the loony bin leaps in front of his coupe wearing only an overcoat. He picks her up. Shenanigans ensue.

   They get rolled by the mafia, literally rolled off a cliff, and Hammer gets framed for the lady’s murder.

   Turns out the lady he picked up was the moll of a that guy bilked the mafia out of $2 million bucks worth of merchandise. And now the mafia thinks Hammer knows where it is. He’s got to get the goods and kill the bad guys before they kill him. And this time he’s without his trusty .45 as the FBI pulls his license. So it’s two-fisted action for Hammer. But the results are never truly in doubt. If there’s one thing Hammer doesn’t lack, it’s self-confidence.

         —

   I think Spillane may be a better writer than he gets credit for. His prose isn’t half bad half the time:

   “Trouble. Like the smoke over a cake of dry ice. You can’t smell it but you can see it and watch it boil and seep around things and know that soon something’s going to crack and shatter under the force of the horrible contraction….”

   “I went to say something. It never came out. The moon that had been hidden behind the clouds came out long enough to bathe the earth in a quick shower of pale yellow light that threw startlingly long shadows across the road and among those dark fingers was one that seemed darker still and moved with a series of jerks and a roar of sound that evolved into a dark sedan cutting in front of us.”

   And he’s quite good at action scenes, clipped and visceral: “I had my hand clamped over his, snapped it back and he screamed the same time the muzzle rocketed a bullet into his eyeball and in the second before he died the other eye that was still there glared at me balefully before it filmed over.”

         —

   The problem is really just that Mike Hammer is a jerk. And the dialogue that comes out of his mouth is frequently so stupid it stretches credulity: “Get your nose to the ground, kitten……Velda…..Show me your legs.” His mouth just utters one cliche after another. You couldn’t use much of the tired patter at all now for any film script other than parody.

   The other problem is the plot. You get the feeling Spillane doesn’t know ‘who did it’ either. He’s like Mike Hammer. He figures if he keeps punching and punching the typewriter and Hammer keeps punching and punching the bad guys, at some point he’ll make it. Heroes turn villains and villains turn hero on a dime, with little explanation. Motives are as hazy as are lines of authority and control. In the end all you know is that Mike Hammer metes out justice and all the bad guys are dead. And least Hammer thinks so. And Hammer says if you kill the right guy for the wrong crime, what does it matter?

   Me? I guess I care a bit too much about the process. I guess I’m just not a Hammer guy after all.

   P.S. I did really enjoy the movie — but it’s been awhile. It’s by Robert Aldrich with a screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides. It’s currently available for free at https://archive.org/details/kissmedeadly1955_202001 and I’ll have to check it out again soon.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, March 1967.       Overall rating: **½

JAMES YAFFE “Mom and the Haunted Mink.” OK, if played a a game to trick the reader. But the police detective telling the story to his mother must certainly have recognized the name-switch at once. Pfui. (0)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon.” Original title: “Ingots of Gold.” [The Royal Magazine, February 1928]. The theft of gold bullion is solved by knowing gardeners never work on Monday. (2)

DONALD E. WESTLAKE “The Sweetest Man in the World.” Another insurance company fraud, mixed with impersonation, embezzlement, and murder. (3)

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN “The Yellow Wallpaper.” [First appeared in New England Magazine, January 1892.] First published over 60 years ago; “a classic tale of horror.” A woman is driven insane by wallpaper. Not very effective. (2)

ELLERY QUEEN “The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln’s Clue.” [First appeared in MD, June 1965, as “Abraham Lincoln’s Clue.”] Items with the signatures of both Lincoln and Poe turn out to be forgeries, but the stamps are worth a fortune. (4)

RICHARD DEMING “The Jolly Jugglers, Retired.” Bank robbers take over restaurant. Obvious from beginning. (1)

JOSEPH MATHEWSON “A Stranger’s Tale.” The fresh wrinkle in this story of identical twins is the same old crease. (2)

HUGH PENTECOST “The Monster of Lakeview.” Uncle George’s dog is is stolen for laboratory and saved by a befriended man-child. (3)

MARGERY ALLINGHAM “Bubble Bath No. 3.” [First appeared in Argosy (UK), July 1956, as “Three Is a Lucky Number.”] Wife-killer is foiled in third attempt. (3)

FRANK SISK “The Strange Adventure of Charles Homer.” The estate Surcease Isle becomes Circe’s Isle, but Homer escapes. A weird fantasy. (3)

CHARLES DICKENS “The Pair of Gloves.” [First appeared in Household Words, September 14 1850, uncredited.] Primitive police procedure; gloves have nothing to do with murder. Of historical interest only. (0)

PRINCESS ZAWADSKY “Third Act Curtain.” An actor masquerades as a notorious killer. (3)

JOAN KAPP “Mystery, Movie Style.” A lady jewel thief scares off two others. A fun story. [The author’s only published crime story.] (5)

GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Directs.” [First appeared in English in Argosy (UK) November 1961, as “Under the Hammer.”] Maigret puts all the characters in a murder-drama through their paces continuously until the culprit is revealed. ( 4)

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “Mr. Strang Gives a Lecture.” A high school clears a student framed for robbery. Not a very promising series start. (2)

DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. Bantam Street, 2009. Jim Beaver, Jennifer Blaire, Larry Blamire, Bob Burns (as Kogar the Gorilla) Dan Conroy, Robert Deveau, Bruce French, Betty Garrett, Trish Geiger, Brian Howe, Marvin Kaplan, and H.M. Wynant. Written and directed by Larry Blamire.

   A Larry Blamire thing.

   That should be description enough for those familiar with The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra  (2001) and Blamire’s other delicious send-ups of films no respectable critic would deign to notice. Night, however, offers a thin patina of low-budget Class missing from Cadavra, and a script well-attuned to the niceties of old Dark House movies.

   The story line here follows the classic Cat/Canary recipe: mix greedy relatives on hand for the reading of the will; stir in a crooked lawyer, wise-cracking reporter, and a clutching hand or two, and heat until it all catches fire quite nicely.

   Don’t get me wrong, like most of Blamire’s things, Night is far, far from perfect. Often it’s not even very good. Running jokes get run into the ground, and the level of hysteria frequently rises too high for comfort. Then again, while director Blamire lavishes B-movie (1930s variety) atmosphere on this, writer Blamire sometimes forgets to be funny.

   But this is balanced by some genuine wit, rapid-fire dialogue in the Howard Hawks tradition, and an attitude of affection for the genre that puts the viewer in a receptive mood when good jokes (and there are many) do come along.

   Which may be the key to the charm of any Blamire thing; it’s done with love.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Grinning Gorilla. Perry Mason #40. William Morrow, hardcover, 1952. Pocket, paperback, 1956; many reprint editions. Ballantine, paperback, 1982. TV Episode: 29 April 1965 (Season 8, Episode 28).

   Hang on tight. You’re going to keep your seat belts on all the while you read this one.

   It begins innocuously enough. On a whim Perry Mason buys at an auction a box containing the personal effects of a young woman who recently committed suicide, presumed lost at sea with no body found. Among the items in the box, however, are five volumes of the woman’s diaries. When it is known that he has them, he quickly has a very handsome offer for them. Does he sell? Need you ask?

   As it turns out, the woman’s employer is an eccentric millionaire part of whose home has been transformed into a zoo for all kinds of monkeys, chimps and apes – including gorillas. And when the man is found dead, Mason’s client claims that she saw a gorilla kill him with a knife. When Mason goes to the house, he finds the gorillas on the loose and himself face-to-face with the most ferocious one of them.

   Neither Hercule Poirot nor Sam Spade had this kind of narrow escape.

   Given the hypothesis, though, Gardner is in top form with this one, his usual smooth but idiosyncratic writing combining with a plot perhaps even more complicated than usual. Unfortunately the trial scene in this one is marred by a tedious recitation of the fine points of testing for human blood versus that of a gorilla, and a fairly ridiculous ending that will remind you of one of the worst facets of B-movie jungle movies. (Dan Stumpf, please take note.)

   On the other hand, Perry and Della Street do find time to share a long kiss, and later on we find Perry’s arm holding her somewhat affectionately about the waist. I have no idea where Gardner thought this might lead, but I’m fairly sure it was nowhere fast.