SARA PARETSKY – Guardian Angel. V. I. Warshawski #7. Delacorte Press, hardcover, 1992. Dell, paperback, 1993.

   I have in general liked the Warshawski novels well enough, though not nearly so well as many have. Something has changed, however, at least for me, between this book and the last [and] I’ll be very interested in your viewpoint.

   In brief: an old friend of her landlord, Mr. Contreras, mooches off him a few nights and while there, hints that he has something on their old employer that is going to make him wealthy. Contreras boots him out finally, and a few days later his body is found, after he had apparently fallen into a canal and drowned near the old employer’s plant.

   Contreras is grief- and guilt-stricken (the dead man had been his oldest friend), and beseeches Warshawski to investigate, even though there is nothing at all to indicate foul play. There is another plot involving an eccentric neighborhood lady whose yard is overgrown and whose dogs run loose vs. a yuppie lawyer neighbor (who works for Vic’s ex”husband’s law firm) who is out to do horrible legal things to her.

   Due to her success, talent, and willingness to speak out, Paretsky has become something of an icon for feminists in the field. Though I have never met the lady, from the interviews and anecdotes Ive read I think it fair to say that she shares at least some qualities with her heroine: courage, anger, and outspokenness, at a minimum.

   While I’m well aware of the pitfalls in projecting a fictional character’s beliefs onto the creator, I am convinced that Paretsky admires Warshawski much in the manner that Robert Parker does his own creation, Spenser; and that, much as with Parker/Spenser, criticism of the books, or of Warshawski, is often taken by Paretsky’s admirers to be criticism of Paretsky herself.

   That’s unfortunate, for while I am neither anti-feminist nor anti-Paretsky, I am becoming more and more anti-Warshawski. I can intellectually understand why someone with strong feminist sympathies would like and approve of her; I cannot see how anyone else could objectively view her as other than a prickly, neurotic, and unpleasant human being.

   She acts foolishly and impulsively, often in sheer rage at being thwarted. Her respect for the law and for the rights of anyone other than those she crusades for is non-existent. She whines, moans, and perishes with endless guilt over actions that lead to unwanted con-sequences, and then repeats them in kind, ad infinitum. Intensely human, you say. Perhaps; but not a human I wish to know any better. I find Warshawski’s friends as unappealing as I find her. I think it safe to say that Paretsky and I see people differently.

   I’m also tired of books with protagonists that act in ways that are absolutely asinine and unrealistic, and this was another such, though to be fair no more so than many others. I won’t take the time or space to detail the inanities, but they’re there, and you’ll find them if you read it.

   Paretsky’s writing is as competent as ever, but it is an unobtrusive competency, a style that will not carry a book regardless of content. In the end, one likes or dislikes Paretsky’s books only as one likes or dislikes Warshawski’s personality, world view, and actions. In Guardian Angel, I liked none of them.

FROM HELL IT CAME. Milner Brothers/Allied Artists, 1957. Tod Andrews, Tina Carver, Linda Watkins, John McNamara, Greg Palmer. Written by Richard Bernstein and Jack Milner. Directed by Dan Milner.

   Actually, the best reviews of this film have already been written, including the six-word classic, “And to Hell it can go.” But From Hell is not without a certain charm once it gets around to the Monster.

   Before that though, there’s a lot of talk in this movie. And I mean whole great big long stretches of it, as the principals in the drama explain the plot to us — talk is always cheaper than action, after all. So the film opens on an island somewhere in the South Pacific (Hey, that’s a good title for a movie!) with native Prince Kimo lying staked to the ground, about to be executed for the murder of his father the King, who was actually killed by the local Witch Doctor and an ambitious usurper (Are there echoes of Hamlet here?) and everyone tells how he got into this awkward quandary.

   Before he dies, Kimo argues his innocence, and come to think of it, there are echoes of Hamlet, because there’s an awful lot of debate about the ethics of the thing before they get around to killing him and he swears to return from the grave, whereupon the scene shifts (uncomfortably) to the American Research Station elsewhere on the island, where we get another talk-fest as two Government Scientists exchange dialogue about who they are and what they’re doing here.

   Turns out there was a recent nuclear test a few hundred miles away, followed by a freak monsoon that blew radioactive dust this way, and our heroes are here to monitor radiation levels. There’s also been an outbreak of disease on the island, but that couldn’t possibly be related, they assure each other.

   The movie doles out these first twenty minutes like a miser at a fun-fair, ringing in comic relief, romantic interest, internecine politics, and generally dispelling insomnia till Kimo finally emerges from his grave and things start to get interesting, because he has come back as a killer tree, known as Tabanga.

   Critic Michael H. Price has pointed out that trees have been used for scary effect quite well in The Wizard of Oz and sundry old cartoons, and maybe that was the inspiration here, but when it came to actually realizing the Terrible Tree Tabanga, it looks like they splurged about Fifty Bucks on the whole thing.

   The Tabanga is a creation of legendary low-budget monster-maker Paul Blaisdell, whose work includes Attack of the Crab Monsters, The She Creature and the memorable turnip-monster in It Conquered the World. Blaisdell’s work was rarely convincing, sometimes laughable, but always imaginative — the She Creature is even rather effective. But as the scowling stump (no relation) toddles about striking terror into the hearts of all, he looks less like something from Hell than like a fugitive from Captain Kangaroo.

   For one thing, Trees are not known for mobility, but Blaisdell’s Tabanga get-up seems restrictive even for a tree. Lacking long limbs for grabbing, he tends to just lumber about (get it?) until he gets close enough to crush anyone conveniently looking the other way or paralyzed with fright for plot purposes.

   One has to commend the cast and director for getting through all this with a straight face and as much speed as a moving tree will permit, but as THE END finally came across the screen, I had to conclude that From Hell It Came was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

GARY ALAN RUSE – Death Hunt on a Dying Planet. Signet paperback original; 1st printing, October 1988.

   I picked this one up to read on the basis of not the author’s name, a fairly unknown one, even in science fiction circles, but the title and the cover, both of which promised something that I was looking for at the time.

   Namely, a good old fashioned space opera. It was exactly what I got. Marinda Donelson, a scientist on a colony ship to an alien planet is awakened 700 years after the rest of the passengers and crew have landed, and she finds herself the intense object of interest between two opposing parties. First, the University, based on a moon orbiting another planet, and CorSec, the present rulers of Coreworld, nearly decimated by plague and war and famine.

   You know. The usual. Marinda is rescued by a psybot named Roddi and a cyborg by the name of Vandal, but the three of them are soon forced to crash-land on Coreworld and make their way through all kinds of danger, evading mutants, monstrous war machines and the minions of CorSec, most prominently personified by Razer, a sworn enemy of Vandal.

   Also on the ground are a group of other psybots with all kind of powers who are working incognito for the University. Their task: join forces with Marinda and the others, making their way through all kind of danger, evading mutants and all of the above. Giving them a huge assist, however, is a itinerant master of legerdemain (human) named Dr. Arcanus.

   I needn’t tell you more (but there is more, just under 400 pages of more, with a very neat tidying up at the end and just a hint of more adventures to come, which however never happened). To me, this read like a attempt to channel Edgar Rice Burroughs with the added bonus of more than a dash of video game stratagems and firepower. Lots of firepower.

   As for the writing itself, if I’d have read this when I was sixteen, I’d have thought it was the best book I’d ever read. I didn’t think so now, but as I said up above, it was exactly what I was looking for when I was looking, and I enjoyed it.

THE PHANTOM CHARIOT. Svensk Filmindustri, Sweden, 1921. Also known as The Phantom Carriage. Swedish title: Körkarlen. Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Astrid Holm, Tore Svennberg. Director: Victor Sjöström. Shown at Cinefest 18, Liverpool NY, March 1998.

   Victor Sjöström is not only a pioneering and notable Swedish film director and actor, but the acknowledged mentor of Ingmar Bergman, and for about four years, from 1924, [as Victor Seastrom] a successful Hollywood director of Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped, Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter and The Wind, and Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman.

   The Phantom Chariot is his best-known Swedish film and a classic of the horror film. According to legend, a person who dies at midnight on New Year’s Eve is condemned to drive Death’s chariot for a year, gathering in souls.

   In part a moralistic drama (a drunken, abusive husband is redeemed by his vision of Death’s chariot), it is the recurrent visions of the chariot that linger in the memory, a fantasy haunting an austere, realistically filmed narrative.

                                 

               

HUDSON’S BAY. CTV, Canada, 1959-60. “Pilot episode.” Barry Nelson (Jonathan Banner), George Tobias (Pierre Falcone). Guest Cast: Toby Tarnow, Ben Lennick, Jean Caval, Jim Barron, Sean Franck. Director: Alvin Rakoff.

   Quite a few episodes of this series exist and are available either on YouTube or circulating in the collectors’ market. Barry Nelson plays an agent of the famed Hudson’s Bay Company, his bailiwick being essentially all of Canada, and more, or so the opening narration tells us: Labrador to California, Minnesota to Alaska. That’s quite a chunk or territory for two men to cover, but Jonathan Banner and his French-Canadian sidekick Pierre Falcone seem to have done it, for a period of one season, or 39 episodes.

   There was no onscreen title for the episode I watched, and there seems to be some uncertainty about it. The more reliable authority, as far as I have been able to determine, is Classic TV Archives, which does refer to it as the pilot and quite possibly episode one of the series itself. The official title, according to CTVA, is “Battle of Mississippi,” a/k/a “Indian Girl Witness” or “The Celebration.”

   IMDb, on the other hand, has the story listed under the title “Revelry at Red Deer,” which both they and CTVA have listed as Episode #8. The synopsis as given on IMDb matches the story I watched, for whatever worth that may be.

   In this episode, a fight breaks out over a Indian girl at a party held at the end of a hunting and trapping season, and when one of the men who was attracted to her is found murdered, the one who thought he had a prior claim to her is accused.

   Toby Tarnow, a Canadian actress, plays Little Dove (or Little Doe or Little Dory, sources vary) but has little or no dialogue. One telling scene occurs when Banner tries to locate her as a witness by going to the chief of tribe, and the chief says she has no tribe.

   Another longer scene consists of members of two trading companies shooting it out, with lots of dramatic deaths and falls from higher regions of the trading post. This makes sure that the story fills out to its full 25 minutes of so.

   If this series had been filmed in color, I think it might be worth further watching, but in black-and-white and with only a very ordinary episode under my belt, I think I’ll pass. (The first seven minutes are included in the clip below.)

JOHN D. MacDONALD – Cinnamon Skin. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1982. Fawcett, paperback, 1983. Reprinted many times since.

   As anyone who has read Free Fall in Crimson could have easily predicted, it is Travis McGee’s closest friend, Meyer, who is in dire need of rehabilitation at the beginning of Cinnamon Skin, the twentieth and latest in this best-selling series. McGee lives in a world of constant tragedy, and unfortunately that’s what it takes to snap Meyer out of his year-long doldrums.

   Blown out of the water in an ear-shattering explosion, purportedly set off by an unknown group of Chilean terrorists, is Meyer’s boat, the John Maynard Keynes. (Meyer is a world- famous economist, as you may or may not be surprised to learn.)

   On board was Meyer’s niece, his only living relative, and her new husband. Readers familiar with life in McGee’s universe will suspect that all is not what it seems, even before the evidence starts coming in.

   The murderer’s trail leads to Texas and upstate New York before swooping back down to Mexico, where Meyer and McGee unite their efforts with those of a modern-day Mayan princess in obtaining a final bit of retribution. Their prey is a lady-killer of some duration, who promises not to yield without an all-out struggle.

   Most of the action will be found in these final few chapters. Those seeking an epic saga crammed with rugged blood-and-guts action and suspense will have to look`elsewhere. This is a detective story, pure and simple, albeit with a dash more of relentless vigilantism than you’d expect in a more law-abiding sort of adventure.

   As if to compensate for the lack of action in the early going, boiled away as it were in the intense Texas sun, there is enough reflective and introspective interaction and byplay between the characters to more than maintain MacDonald’s reputation as America’s number one philosophical myth-master and debunker. JDM often puts into words what the rest of us only feel.

   In spite of being today the object of almost constant academic scrutiny, MacDonald has added another fine entry to his cumulative bibliography. While there is a definite feeling of déjà vu closing in, as if some elements and patterns in his work are beginning to repeat themselves, John D. MacDonald is still a slick, effective writer.

   Even if much of the cruder vitality of his younger days is gone, the keen, sharp insights he has into each of his characters are still more than sufficient for them to meet any challenge he presents them with.

Rating:   B plus.

ALEXANDER IRVING – Symphony in Two Time. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1948. No paperback edition.

   After murder in the medical school [in Bitter Ending, 1946], Dr. Anthony Post returns in murder with music-some of it good, some of it not. Post is engaged to Paula Taft, pianist and composer, the niece of that grande dame, Mildred Taft-Manning.

   Mrs. Taft-Manning is the power behind the Taft Institute and its orchestra, a leader in the W.C.T.U., head of the Brooklyn anti-gambling league, president of the anti-vivisection committee, etc. You get the idea. She is married to a much younger man, another composer, who is poisoned and then apparently plays the piano in the wrong key in a locked room.

   Strychnine was available for the poisoning, but the murderer switched to the nicotine that Dr. Post had with him. Later, another person dies of arsenic poisoning.

   There arc no sympathetic characters here, just as there were not in Bitter Ending, Irving’s first novel, which I did not particularly enjoy. This one is much more amusing, even though Post may grate on many people’s nerves.

Bibliographic Notes:   Alexander Irving was the pen name of Anne Fahrenkopf (1921-2006) and Ruth Fox (1922-1980). Together they wrote only one other work of mystery fiction, a non-Dr. Post novel, Deadline (Dodd Mead, 1947).

   A mini-review of Symphony in Two Time from The Saturday Review, 18 September 1948: “Ultra-sophisticated in right sense of word; witty, knowledgeable on music matters, actionful — and semi-quaver disappointing in solution.”

   Bill Deeck mentions a locked room in his review, but since the story is not included in Bob Adey’s book on Locked Rooms, it seems doubtful that that aspect of the mystery has any other relevance than that.

SEMINOLE. Universal International, 1953. Rock Hudson, Barbara Hale, Anthony Quinn, Richard Carlson, Hugh O’Brian, Russell Johnson, Lee Marvin, Ralph Moody, James Best. Director: Budd Boetticher.

   There’s a sequence in Seminole when U.S. Army officers are seen trudging through the hot, humid, dank Florida swamps in search of Seminoles to expel from their native lands. It’s incredibly gritty and well crafted and hints at a moral darkness in the heart of the soldiers’ commanding officer, a man gone mad by his hatred of Native Americans. To that extent, Seminole is very much part of the western genre, although the story takes place in Florida, not Arizona.

   Directed by Budd Boetticher, best known for his taut western films starring Randolph Scott, Seminole features Rock Hudson as Lt. Lance Caldwell, an upstanding young army officer who believes in peaceful accommodation with the Seminole tribe. At every turn, he is denigrated and opposed by his commanding officer, Major Degan (Richard Carlson), a scheming, duplicitous man consumed with hate and venom.

   The Seminoles also have their own internal disputes. The Seminole leader, Osceola (Anthony Quinn in a less than stellar performance), must face down the warmongers among his own people. To no one’s surprise, Osceola and Caldwell have known each other since they were children and are divided not just in political allegiances, but also by their affection for the same woman, Revere Muldoon (Barbara Hale).

   Altogether, Seminole is distinguished not so much by its cinematography or acting, but by its humanism. The Seminoles, who aren’t portrayed as mindless warriors, bend over backwards for peace with the U.S. Army. While at times the movie can at times feel just a tad too preachy, it’s nevertheless a welcome reminder that not all Hollywood films from the early 1950s portrayed Native Americans as nothing more than enemies in the way of white settlement. In this Boetticher film, the story is far more complex.

RUTH RENDELL – Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter. Inspector Wexford #15. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1992. Mysterious Press, US, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.

   Well, this is it. No more will Mike (Byrden) turn to Reg (Wexford) with a look of bewilderment and/or irritation. At least I’ve seen ger (Rendell[ quoted as saying it’s probably the kast, but these things aren’t chiseled in stone.

   The book opens with one of Wexford’s minions, off-duty and taking care of personal business, being fatally shot in a bank robbery. The criminals are not apprehended. Several months later and not too far away, a aged and prominent writer, her husband, and her daughter are killed, and her granddaughter badly wounded, by intruders. Are the crimes connected? What do you think? How? Ah, therein lies the story.

   As always, Rendell’s focus is on people rather than clues, and she creates a satisfying group of none-too-attractive ones here with her skewer-like pen. At one point I was ready to indict her for snobbery because of the unremitting unsavoriness of her lower-class characters, and then I realized that no, it’s not just them; just about all of these people are unpleasant (Including Wexford’s actress daughter, but that’s nothing new; she’s been an ass for as long as we‘ve known her).

   On my more optimistic days I suspect that Rendell is a misanthrope; mostly I fear she is an accurate observer of the human condition.

   Though she is an excellent writer, I am not a real Rendell fan (under either name) apart from the Wexford books; primarily, I expect, because I do not care for the people about whom she writes, or the situations in which she places them.

   And really, this is not the best Wexford. I began to suspect much of the outcome far too early, and found the resolution of Wexford’s problems with his besotted daughter(she is such a twit) far too pat Still. even a mediocre Wexford book beats a lot of the tripe being published and shouldn’t be missed — particularly if there are to be no more. Recommended.

Editorial Update:   Barry was not to know, but this was not the last the world saw of Inspector Wexford. I do not know how reliable the rumors were at the time, but the sixteenth in the series, Simisola, came out two years later, followed by eight more. No Man’s Nightingale (2013) is, however, all but certain to be the last. Ms Rendell died earlier this year at the age of 85.

ALAN THOMAS – The Death of Laurence Vining. Benn, UK, hardcover, 1928. Harrap, UK, reprint hardcover, 1931. Lippincott, US, hardcover, 1929. A. L. Burt, US, reprint hardcover, no date stated.

   My copy of this hard-to-find locked room mystery is the Harrap reprint, and I see there’s another copy of this same edition offered for sale on the Internet with a $90 asking price. Otherwise you’ll have to come up with $200 and change for one copy I found of each of the Lippincott and Burt editions.

   I don’t think it’s worth even the $90, but there are some factors that make it worth talking about. The first I’ve already mentioned. The victim seems to have walked into a London tube station, taken a life down to the platform below, and when the gate opens, he’s found dead, stabbed to death in a way that suicide is out of the question, lying against the side of the compartment.

   Another aspect of this book that makes this interesting is that the dead man is a consulting detective who often offers his services to Scotland Yard, à la Sherlock Holmes. Laurence Vining is (or was), according to some, the “incarnation of the devil.” He solved his cases with no sympathies for the perpetrators of the crimes, no matter the circumstances they had found themselves in. He lived in a non-compassionate, black and white world, making enemies of nearly everyone whose paths he crossed, including his own servants and limited family.

    Dr. Ben Willing, on the other hand, a long time friend of Vining who traveled with him on his cases, is quite the opposite, capable of seeing the human side behind the unfortunates who ran afoul of Vining’s investigations. And of course it feels quite natural for Willing to offer his services to Inspector Widgeon in solving the murder of his long time friend, to which the policeman from Scotland Yard most willingly accepts.

   This is a unique twist on the Holmes-Watson stories that I don’t recall coming across before. Thomas is no Conan Doyle, but except for having problems adequately explaining the layout of elevators in England in the late 1920s to readers in the US almost 90 years later on, he acquits himself well.

   The locked room aspect, I am happy to say, is most cleverly done, but it is so intricately planned that it takes 33 pages and a diagram to explain. Books such as this one are exceedingly fun to read, but one does wonder why a blow on the head on a very dark night wouldn’t do just as well.

   Alan Thomas has 16 entries in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, half of them indicated as having only marginal crime content. Inspector Widgeon appears in one other of them, Death of the Home Secretary (Benn, 1929), and Bob Adey’s book on Locked Room Mysteries includes another in that category by Thomas, The Tremayne Case (Benn, 1929). Both of these titles are equally scarce, but not as pricey as this Vining one.