17 MOMENTS OF SPRING. Gorky Film Studios, USSR, TV Mini-Series, 12 x 70m episodes, 1973. Original title: Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny. Vyacheslav Tikonov, Oleg Tabakov, Rotoslav Plyatt, Yekterina Gradova. Narrated by Yefim Kopelyan. Screenplay by Yulian Semyenov, based on his own novel. Director: Tatyana Lioznova.

   A man and an elderly lady stand in the wood and discuss the beauty of nature and the glory of spring after a long winter. We are in Germany, outside Berlin in February 1945 in the last days of WWII and it has indeed been a long winter.

   The man, Mr. Bolyan, is also Standartenfuherer Otto Von Stirlitz, a decorated and trusted intelligence officer in the SS who has the ears of Walter Shellenberg a popular and important officer with ties to Hitler, the general staff, and Reichmarshall Himmler of the SS. Darkly handsome and Nordic, Stirlitz seems the perfect Nazi and for six years he has been. For six years he has buried his real identity as Colonel Maxim Isayev of Soviet Intelligence while working in German intelligence and rising to an important position in SS intelligence.

   So begins the low key Soviet spy drama from 1973 that brought to life the adventures of Stirlitz, the creation of novelist Yulian Semyenov in a twelve part mini-series that rocked Soviet television and popular entertainment to its core. Power shortages happened whenever 17 Moments of Spring aired because ninety percent of television sets in Russia were tuned to Stirlitz’s adventures. Even today Stirlitz jokes are common in post Soviet Russia (and simply don’t translate into English — I tried) mostly drawing on the dour deliberate Stirlitz glacial resolve to show no emotion whatsoever and his plodding ways.

   Yulian Semyenov was the Russian Ian Fleming, like his British counterpart a journalist with intelligence ties from the war and well known by his superiors. His creation, known as Stirlitz rather than Isayev, is no James Bond however. Stirlitz is stoic, sexless, dour, brooding, self sacrificing (at one point he sees his wife he has not seen for six years and cannot reveal himself and we are treated to three minutes of baleful sad eyes), and there is precious little violence in his adventures.

   That isn’t to say Semyenov was unaware of Fleming and Bond. One of his novels about Stirlitz is called Diamonds for the Revolution of the Proletariat, in which the young Isayev is assigned to find the jewels of the Royal family that have gone missing after their execution and which are needed to fuel the new Soviet Republic, you have to wonder since that Republic certainly wasn’t forever, about the Fleming influence.

   Some of the novels were even printed in English, at least one as by Julian Semyenov even getting into an American paperback edition, but far and away 17 Moments of Spring is the best known of his works and Strilitz adventures, covering, as the title suggests, in semi documentary style, seventeen days in early spring 1945 as Strilitz strives to uncover transcripts of talks between the Western allies, England and the United States, with the crumbling panicked Nazi elite, Soviet paranoia under Stalin at least providing the McGuffin for a deliberate but fairly fascinating documentary style spy drama populated with a spate of historical characters on both sides.

   The project came into being during the period of detente, when things loosened up considerably and even a James Bond film or two got into the hands of Soviet elites. While there is a clear implication the West is not always up to any good in relation to the Soviets (and that was a two-way street in reality) the real bad guys are the Nazis and it takes a surprisingly soft middle ground stance on the role of the West, certainly giving credit where it is due despite the McGuffin about possible Western double dealing (in truth, by that point the West would not have settled the war with anything but unconditional surrender, but you have to give a spy story it’s McGuffin — nonsense or not — certainly there were those in the West arguing to save what was left of Germany to turn against the Russians). In short, the propaganda isn’t noticeably intrusive.

   Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Stirlitz and Oleg Tabakov as Shellenberg are the stand out performances here, a subtle cat-and-mouse game underway as Stirlitz falls under suspicion and the inevitable end of the Reich puts every nerve on edge as rats either try to desert the sinking ship or fanatics refuse to see the truth. Shellenberg is presented as a charming ruthless Nazi who nonetheless sees the writing on the wall and that it is increasing late to save anything including his own neck.

   While Semyenov and Stirlitz are pretty much it for Cold War Soviet spy fiction from Russia for something livelier, you might seek out the adventures of Boris Stolitzy, a smart charming hard drinking and womanizing KGB agent whose Cold War adventures were penned by a Finnish writer and who bore a resemblance to later 007 outings in that his adventures never really seemed to pit him against the West. Since the fall of the Soviet Union mystery and thriller fiction is somewhat livelier than before with writers like Boris Akkunin, but still far from well known here.

   Currently BBC 4 Extra is airing The Soviet James Bond, a half hour documentary about Semyenov and Stirlitz, and the complete series of 17 Moments of Spring can be seen on YouTube with English subtitles. It’s worth watching one episode just to see how the other side did it, and in its quiet way it is surprisingly like a John Le Carre tale crossed with early spy dramas like The House on 92nd Street and Walk East on Beacon Street. Actually it is considerably less leftist than Le Carre to be brutally honest resembling one of those politically uneasy WWII flag-wavers where the Soviets are reluctantly embraced as Allies.

APACHE DRUMS. Universal International, 1951. Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Willard Parker, Arthur Shields, James Griffith, Armando Silvestre, James Best and Clarence Muse. Written by David Chandler, from “Stand at Spanish Boot” by Harry Brown (as stated in the credits; no record of publication known). Produced by Val Lewton. Directed by Hugo Fregonese.

   The last film and only Western of a legendary producer, this is more Val Lewton’s film than director Fregonese’s or writer Chandler’s. The whole approach — a mostly-unseen menace and gradually growing tension, punctuated by moments of shock and horror — harks back to classics like The Seventh Victim and I Walked with a Zombie.

   Which is a good thing, because as a Western, it ain’t much. Director Hugo Fregonese (Man in the Attic, Savage Pampas, etc.) was always a reliable craftsman, but not much more. In his hands, the fights, chases etc. are capably done but strangely unexciting. What makes Apache Drums memorable is Lewton’s feel for the characters and their growing sense of entrapment.

   And the characters are a well-realized lot. Stephen McNally headlines as a raffish gambler run out of town, who returns to warn the disbelieving townsfolk of imminent danger; Coleen Gray, memorable in Red River and The Killing, shows genuine indecision about her feelings for him, while Willard Parker projects stolid blandness as the thudding voice of authority.

   In the supporting cast, Arthur Shields plays yet another reverend, but more complex than usual this time, subject to serious errors of judgment balanced by acts of courage. James Griffith is fine as a smarter-than-usual cavalry officer, and Clarence Muse brings real dignity and pathos to a small part — as he always did.

   The solid characterizations keep Apache Drums watchable, even in the dull stretches, and when the scary parts come, with the townspeople trapped in an old church, unable to see the drum-beating attackers till they leap in from overhead like harpies, the tension really ratchets up. And there’s a truly nightmarish bit toward the end with Willard Parker a captive of the Apaches, locked outside the church, unseen from inside, screaming at everyone not to let him in!

   I guess Val Lewton will always be remembered for those remarkable films at RKO, but Apache Drums is a fitting, if minor, coda to a great career.

I, MONSTER. Amicus Productions, 1971. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Mike Raven, Richard Hurndall, Susan Jameson. Director: Stephen Weeks.

   There are moments in I, Monster, an Amicus film based on and inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde where Christopher Lee is at the absolute top of his game.

   One early scene in particular comes to mind immediately. It’s when his character, the psychologist Charles Marlowe, scalpel in his hand, cradles one of his lab rats and eerily mimics the rat’s facial expressions. Of course, at that point, Marlowe (Lee) isn’t all Marlowe. He’s also Marlowe’s alter ego, the barbaric Edward Blake.

   And that’s by far the best thing that I, Monster has going for it: Lee in a dual role as Marlowe/Blake, wherein the famed British actor gets to demonstrate just how well he can portray screen villains.

   Unfortunately, however, this lesser known entry in Lee’s vast filmography suffers from a decidedly mediocre, if not tedious, script that does little to keep the viewer fully engaged with the story.

   Even worse, as much as it pains me to say this, Peter Cushing’s presence in the film is just underwhelming. Sure, it’s great to see Lee and Cushing go at each other in the final sequence. But it’s simply not enough to make I, Monster more of a missed opportunity rather than the cult film it might have been.

GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM – The Hymn Tune Mystery. Metheun, UK, hardcover, 1930; Bobbs Merrill, US, hardcover, 1931.

   As the Dean of Carminster Cathedral is seeking solace in the Cathedral from his daughter’s harassment, the not-abstemious organist is playing, and playing well. Then the drink apparently catches up with him, and he collapses head first on the keyboard. Or so the Dean supposes, until it is discovered that the organist had fallen backwards, struck his head, and died from a heart attack.

   Feeling guilty and suspected of becoming senile by his daughter and the Archdeacon, the Dean takes to his bed, otherwise the inquest might have had a different outcome. But things begin to heat up when the representative (Special) of the Harpsichord Company arrives seeking a musical manuscript that doesn’t appear to exist, and when the organist’s girlfriend, described by the Dean’s butler as “a young person” — and we know what that means — ostensibly comes hunting the letters she wrote to the organist.

   Fortunately, the young precentor, the Rev. John Dennis, is somewhat alert and not a respecter of authority. He aids the police and breaks the musical cryptogram in a delightfully amusing novel.

Bibliographic Notes:   George Birmingham was the pen name of James Owen Hannay, (1865-1950), and the author of 19 books and story collections listed in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Many of these are indicated as only borderline criminous, however.

   In Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor describe this book as “a delight” with “intelligence, humor, character and prose in equipoise,” with Inspector Smallways eventually taking over the case, apparently his only appearance in print.

   Another book, Wild Justice, they describe as a “straightforward English country house murder,” even though they hasten to point out that it actually takes place in Ireland.

Editorial Thanks:   You may have noticed that Bill Deeck’s reviews are back. I’d run out of my own supply of them, but thanks to Richard Moore, who has provided me hard copies of pages from his stack of back issues of Mystery Readers Journal; and especially to Janet Rudolph, editor and publisher of MRJ for 30 years now, who has given me permission to reprint Bill’s reviews from her zine, which I highly recommend to you (see the link above), I’m sure I’m supplied now through the end of this year.

RICHARD N. SMITH – Death Be Nimble. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1967.

   Here’s a book I’ve had since just about forever. I may have even purchased it new, but it would have been a long time ago, so I’m not so certain about that. It’s a private eye novel, so I’ve always meant to read it, and when a spare copy came along and I had it hand, I decided that its turn had finally come.

   I don’t know, but back in 1967 I might have liked this book, but reading and finishing it these past couple of nights, just before going to sleep, I can find nothing in of interest in it to tell you about, other than of course that it’s a private eye novel.

   His name is John Kincaid, and he works in the Boston area. He’s by a anonymous client who send him an invitation (along with $500 in cash) to a fancy party at a Yacht Club. He is, after all, known as the Boston area’s “society detective.” There he meets a good-looking redhead, who mysteriously disappears on him just before the wife of the man hosting the affair is found floating in the harbor. Somehow he also finds a small fortune in jewelry in his pocket. He immediately throws it overboard. Wouldn’t you?

   So, OK, the opening is not all that bad. He never meets the person who sent him the invitation, but he’s hired the next day by the husband of the woman who fell or was pushed overboard. Kincaid assumes that what the man really wants him to do is frame his wife’s brother for the killing

   After that there follows nothing but a series of dumb PI cliches; to wit: the brother-in-law objects to Kincaid hanging around; a gangster and his goons beat Kincaid up; Kincaid narrowly misses death from some adulterated suntan lotion; the previous mentioned redhead runs hot and cold before declaring her love for him; Kincaid is taken for a ride, but instead opens the car door, jumps out, and turns the table on the previously mentioned goons; and the real killer comes after Kincaid with a gun, but Kincaid turns the table on the killer…

   Sorry. Maybe I’ve told you more than you want to know. None of the characters are given any motivation as to why they do anything, and Kincaid himself is nothing more than the person telling the story, without a whit of anything interesting to say about himself.

   This was his only adventure to ever have been published. I probably wouldn’t have cared for it back in 1967 either.

   My last column took us to France, and for the first part of this one we’re going to stay there, or at least in Europe. Lately I’ve been reading a number of Georges Simenon’s novels and short stories, dating from 1936 till the late years of the war, that are usually lumped together as the Maigret middle period.

   How many short stories should be included in this group depends on how long a tale must be to disqualify it for the designation. According to the most comprehensive Maigret website, the number of shorts is 28. The earliest nine of these were apparently written in a single month, October 1936, and at least eight of them were first published in Paris-Soir-Dimanche between late that month and the first week of 1937.

   Nobody seems to know where and when the ninth originally came out, but it’s one of these tales that I want to dissect here. Why? Because, unless I’ve missed something, it makes zero sense.

   â€œPeine de Mort” (Paris-Soir-Dimanche, November 15, 1936) appeared in EQMM as “Inspector Maigret’s War of Nerves” (October 1968) and in Maigret’s Pipe (Hamish Hamilton 1977, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1978) as “Death Penalty.”

   Maigret stalks Jehan d’Oulmont, a dissolute young Belgian he suspects of having bludgeoned to death his wealthy uncle and stolen the 32,000 francs Unc had brought with him to Paris for a bout of high living. It’s a foregone conclusion that if convicted, d’Oulmont will be sentenced to the guillotine. But Maigret has absolutely no evidence against the guy, who therefore is given official permission to return to Belgium in the company of his Jewish mistress, with Maigret taking the same train and continuing to shadow and harass the young man.

   Along the way Simenon plants the crucial information that d’Oulmont has studied law and that Belgium has abolished the death penalty. The climax takes place in a Brussels nightclub where in Maigret’s presence, a local detective arrests d’Oulmont and claims to have an extradition warrant for him. D’Oulmont reaches inside his girlfriend’s handbag, pulls out a gun and shoots at Maigret, who has earlier had the weapon replaced by another loaded with blanks.

   So no one’s been hurt, there’s no new evidence, the missing 32,000 francs have never been found, and yet Simenon assures us that d’Oulmont, although he’s escaped the guillotine, will be sentenced to life in a Belgian prison! For what crime? Discharging a pistol in a crowded nightclub? I’m amazed that Fred Dannay didn’t spot the glaring holes in this story.

   We can understand what went wrong here if we call on our friend Joe Google and discover, among other treasures, a 2007 essay in The Spectator by Simenon biographer Patrick Marnham. One of Simenon’s acquaintances during his early days as a journalist in Liège was an older man named Hyacinthe Danse, the obese proprietor of a pornographic bookshop whom Simenon described as “un vicieux” and Marnham calls a pedophile, blackmailer and pimp.

   One day in May 1933 the 50-year-old Danse butchered his mistress and his own mother with a hammer in a small village south of Paris and fled to his native Belgium. In Liège he called on one of his old teachers, a Jesuit named Father Hault who had also taught Simenon, made his confession to the priest, shot him three times, then took a taxi to the police station and surrendered.

   In December 1934 his death sentence was automatically commuted to life imprisonment, which meant that he couldn’t be extradited to France and the guillotine until he was dead. Simenon clearly based “Peine de Mort” on this incident, even having Maigret refer to “the murderer Danse” at the climax, but apparently forgot that there needed to be a real murder in Belgium in order for the legal gimmick to work. Quel dommage.

   Marnham discusses the matter on page 81 of his Simenon biography The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret (1992). I suspect that the obese porn merchant Labri, who appears in another of the stories Simenon wrote in October 1936 (“Une Erreur de Maigret,” translated in Maigret’s Pipe as “Maigret’s Mistake”), was also based on Danse.

   Let’s cross the Channel again, shall we? Every so often I feel an urge to revisit the world of John Rhode (1880-1964). Usually Rhode is lumped with the school of British detective novelists that Julian Symons labeled the Humdrums, and it can’t be denied that his prose is wooden and his characters flat, including Dr. Priestley, that ancient and magisterial grouch who starred in dozens of Rhode’s novels between the late Twenties and 1960 when he retired from writing.

   But I discovered him in my teens, built up a goodly supply of his books over the next few decades, and still find him readable in an unchallenging sort of way. Recently I tackled In the Face of the Verdict (Dodd Mead, 1940), in which Dr. P is longer onstage and more active than is his wont.

   The scene is Blacksand, a seaside village a little more than two hours by train from London. Sir John Hallatrow, the community squire, asks for help from Priestley’s friend Dr. Oldland, who in turns calls in Dr. P, when the drowned body of a fellow aristo who was badly scarred in World War I is hauled in by fishermen in their net.

   The evidence seems to indicate that the dead man somehow fell into the local river late at night while crossing the footbridge between Hallatrow’s stately home and his own, but Priestley has his doubts about the verdict of accidental death that the coroner’s jury brings in. Then the brother of the first corpse is also found drowned, and slowly but surely Priestley and his Scotland Yard colleagues uncover a complex scheme to route a substantial estate according to a sinister design, with a telepathy racket and a Water Drinkers League figuring on the edges of the plot.

   When I saw the 1940 copyright date on this novel, I was surprised that not a word of Rhode’s dull but soothing prose suggests that England is reeling under Hitler’s blitz. A quick check on Google explained why: the book was first published in the UK (without the first “the” in the title) back in 1936, three years before World War II began. I was also surprised that Rhode didn’t provide a map of the area around Blacksand, which I for one would have profited by. (I tried to draw one for myself but gave up.)

   This is certainly one of the smoother Rhodes that I’ve hiked over the years, but I recommend it only to those who have a taste for the humdrum now and then.

LOUIS L’AMOUR – Reilly’s Luck. Bantam, paperback original, 1971. Reprinted many times.

   I have a theory that the reason so few of Louis L’Amour’s novels have done well on screen is that his quality as a writer doesn’t lie in story and character alone, but in his voice and small details that are almost impossible to translate to the screen. The same, by my estimation, is true of John D. MacDonald. Both men have had successful screen translations, but most often their work seems to lose something when it moves to film.

   Reilly’s Luck is a good example of the qualities that illustrate my point: it is a strong well written western on classical lines with a story worthy of Greek myth, and yet as cinematic as it would seem I can’t really see it working on screen.

   Valentine Darrant’s mother Myra abandons him in a snowstorm to the mercies of Will Reilly, a young gambler who like most L’Amour heroes is a little too good with a gun. Reilly is angered at first, but soon warms to the child and takes him under his wing as father and mentor.

   With Reilly, Val kicks around the West from one trail town to another, from San Francisco to the capitals of Europe, gambling, working, and adventuring, but always haunted by why he was abandoned, and an unvoiced threat from his past. It is not until Val reaches maturity that things come to a head and he finds cold blooded gunman Henry Sonnenberg paid to kill him — by his own mother with a Russian nobleman from his European adventures involved.

   L’Amour liked his themes from classical literature and he certainly works them here. Will Reilly is a sort of Charon ushering Val to manhood, and you can certainly see Myra as Medea murdering her own children when one interferes with her ambition. Val himself could be Jason or Theseus easily. Myra Fossett, Val’s mother, is certainly the most unusual woman in a L’Amour novel that I have encountered.

   Obviously this sounds as if it would be a natural on screen. But the fact is the qualities that make a good L’Amour novel, the complexities and the details, just don’t transfer to the screen anymore than the savage commentary on the world of a MacDonald novel do. Like MacDonald, who he does not otherwise resemble, L’Amour’s plots aren’t really the point. You read them to be in their world, to experience them and not merely the story they tell.

   The experience of reading L’Amour doesn’t translate to the screen as well as an Elmore Leonard or Luke Short western for instance. Here, and in many L’Amour works, the plot meanders a bit, a quality that is admirable in a novel but less so in a movie. Most of Reilly’s Luck would have ended up on the cutting room floor to the detriment of the novel and disappointment of L’Amour’s readers.

   This one is one of my favorite L’Amour novels, penned later in his career and more ambitious than earlier titles. It’s a fairly big book, close to 300 pages, with a great many characters and a fairly busy plot. I’m sure many L’Amour fans dislike it for that reason, but for whatever reason I found Val Darrant’s quest an entertaining read, and Will Reilly a memorable companion for Val and for myself.

“The Daemons.” A serial of five episodes from the eighth season of Dr Who, BBC, UK, 22 May 1971 through 19 June 1971 (episodes 21 – 25). Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Roger Delgado, Damaris Hayman, Nicholas Courtney, Richard Franklin. Director: Christopher Barry.

   Sometimes it’s fun to go back and watch movies or television shows that you really enjoyed as a kid, things that really made an impression on you. I remember, for instance, watching the Doctor Who serial, “The Daemons,” on public television when I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old.

   Even decades later, I still remembered how this was the serial in which a gargoyle came to life. That idea fascinated me for years and so began a lifetime interest in those stone creatures. I even went so far as taking a series of photographs of cathedral gargoyles while vacationing in France.

   So it was a real pleasure to finally get the opportunity to watch “The Daemons” again, this time on DVD, after so many years. And I have to tell you: it didn’t disappoint.

   Originally aired on the BBC in spring 1971, “The Daemons” features Jon Pertwee as The (Third) Doctor and Katy Manning as his companion, Jo Grant. In this five-part series, The Doctor faces off against his longtime nemesis, The Master (Roger Delgado) as the scheming, bearded villain seeks to summon the seemingly occult power of an ancient alien force that has been using mankind as some sort of bizarre laboratory experiment.

   There’s also a giant horned beast named Azal and a gargoyle come to life named Bok. It’s a thrilling, occasionally tongue-in-cheek journey through the British occult with enough cliffhangers to keep you enthralled and watching. And the gargoyle with the power to make people disappear is pretty cool too. Even after all these years.

THE CIRCUS QUEEN MURDER. Columbia, 1933. Adolphe Menjou, Greta Nissen, Donald Cook, Dwight Frye, Ruthelma Stevens. Based on the novel About the Murder of the Circus Queen, by Anthony Abbot (Fulton Oursler). Director: Roy William Neill. Shown at Cinefest 18, Liverpool NY, March 1998.

   One of the disappointments of the convention. Menjou plays Anthony Abbot’s Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt, vacationing in a small town, where the arrival of a circus and an attempted murder draws him reluctantly into the center of a hastily conducted investigation. But not hastily enough.

   The beginning is promising and Colt’s secretary (Ruthelma Stevens) registers strongly as an attractive, smart companion, but her role is never sufficiently developed and the lame melodrama is capped by an underpowered, restrained performance by Dwight Frye that never ignites. (He’s much livelier in The Vampire Bat [Majestic, 1933], a cheap but entertaining thriller that I watched last night on a cheap video tape. He reprises his Renfield role from Dracula, even using the Renfield laugh.)

Editorial Note:  This move was also reviewed by Dan Stumpf some time ago on this blog. Check it out here.

JOHN D. MacDONALD – You Live Once. Popular Library #737, paperback original, March 1956; reprinted as You Kill Me, G507, 1961. Reprinted several times in paperback under its original title by Gold Medal, including d1761, 1966.

   I read a lot of John D. MacDonald when I was twenty, and I always meant to get back that way someday. Well here I am. You Live Once is a tight, fast-paced and deftly-plotted thing, maybe no great shakes as a mystery, but it will keep you turning the pages right from the start.

   Ah yes, the start: That’s when Clinton Sewell, a mid-level cog in the local branch of a giant manufacturing corporation (we used to have them here) is awakened by police who want to know what happened to the missing young lady he was last seen with last night—a local heiress named Mary Olen, known (according to the back cover) for her “easy-loving” ways.

   Clint satisfies the cops that he doesn’t know where-the-hell she is, they leave, and minutes later he funds Mary’s body in his closet, strangled with his belt.

   Now that’s how to start a story!

   Clint knows he didn’t kill Mary last night, and it turns out he was only dating her as a cover for her affair with his sunuvabitch boss, but he also knows the police won’t look very far for the murderer if he calls them back, so he does what any Real Man would do in a paperback: he hides the body and tries to find out whodunit.

   The next hundred pages are the usual thing, with sexy ladies and suspects looking equally guilty, a few beatings, tough cops and a too-smart private eye, all done up in the smooth style that made MacDonald a favorite over at Gold Medal a few years later. Like I say, the solution is nothing that will make you jump up and holler “Damn, that’s right!” but it’s agreeable getting there.

   And I did notice a couple of things that lift this one a bit out of the ordinary: first, MacDonald paints a compelling picture of America in the mid-1950s, sharply-drawn and colorful, reflecting the fads and mores of the time without the fatuous moralizing that slowed down the Travis McGee books. And then there’s MacDonald’s women….

   I liked the way he did this. When Clint Sewell / John D. MacDonald describes a woman for us, he does it like a man who loves women, appreciating their flaws and perfections in equal measure without the gaping, juvenile objectification of too many pulp-writers. It’s a mature, respectful and stylish lust, and just one of the pleasures of reading MacDonald.