MARVIN H. ALBERT – The Law and Jake Wade. Gold Medal #553, paperback original, 1956; Gold Medal #756, 2nd printing, movie tie-in edition, 1958.

THE LAW AND JAKE WADE. MGM, 1958. Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Robert Middleton, Henry Silva, DeForest Kelley. Screenplay by William Bowers, based on the novel by Marvin H. Albert. Director: John Sturges.

   I’ve never been a big fan of Marvin H. Albert, but this ain’t bad. Like all the best Gold Medal originals, it starts with a crackle of mysterious action as Marshal Jake Wade travels to a nearby town to break Ben Swift, a condemned killer, out of jail. The jailbreak is handled with the terse violence one expects in a Gold Medal, and we soon learn that Marshal Wade himself used to ride what they call The Outlaw Trail, and he’s repaying Swift back for saving his life back in those days. Been me, I’d a let him hang, but that wouldn’t have made much of a book, I guess.

   It seems Wade hates and fears Swift, who has been trying to find him for more than a year — the result of a misunderstanding over the loot from their last job together, which was last seen in Jake’s possession. Jake buried the loot in a fit of remorse, and has built himself a decent life, as they say in westerns, complete with a career as an upright lawman and a fetching fiancée named Lorna, but none of this makes a damn to Ben, and soon we’re off on a long, punishing ride to recover the loot, with Jake and his bride-to-be the unwilling captives of Ben and his henchmen.

   The ensuing action is pretty gripping, what with raiding Comanches, blizzards, rugged mountains, and the ever-present tension as Jake works to maneuver his captors to destruction. But the real emphasis is on the relationships between the characters, as it quickly becomes apparent that our hero won’t get away from these owlhoots until he understands them.

   And likewise, he won’t be able to rescue Lorna until she understands him. A nice touch this, and it lifts the story a bit out of the ordinary — as does the climax, when Jake realizes he can’t really escape at all, and calmly waits for his fate to overtake him.

   Albert evokes some fine tension by concentrating on the small stuff: the effects of having one’s wrists tied for days on end, the constant attention to keep Jake and Lorna secured and apart, and the careful cat-and-mouse maneuverings of Jake and his captors. But this is primarily a book about the characters, and he does an exemplary job of balancing thought, feeling and action…. plenty of action.

   When they filmed this in 1958, MGM and producer William Hawks did well by it: they got director John Sturges, back when he was lean & fast, Robert Surtees to photograph it, and William Bowers to fashion the script. Bowers specialized in comedy-westerns, including Alias Jesse James and The Sheepman, and he even injected some humor into Henry King’s fatalistic The Gunfighter. Here, he imparts a laconic lilt to the proceedings that makes the action scenes somehow more intense and brutal by way of contrast.

   The blizzard is omitted, probably for reasons for reasons of economy and expeditious film-making, but they don’t stint on the wide-open scenery and they even provide a highly cinematic ghost town for the Comanche fight, and the final showdown—possibly borrowed from Yellow Sky, but no less exciting for that. And the acting….

   The acting is what academics call top-notch, with the performers slipping easily into their parts. Robert Taylor plays the marshal Randolph-Scott-style: tight-lipped and square-jawed, the perfect foil for Richard Widmark’s talkative and brutal bad guy. Patricia Owens (who starred in The Fly that same year) has little to do as the fiancée, but she does it capably. And Widmark’s gang includes Henry Silva, Robert Middleton and DeForest Kelly, who had a nice line in smiling cowboy bad-guys in those pre-Star Trek days.

   The only thing that puzzles me is why they changed so many names: Ben Swift becomes “Clint Hollister;” Lorna becomes “Peggy” and Henry Silva’s character, named “Henry” in the book, is now “Rennie.” Most puzzling of all, a major character named “Otero” in Albert’s novel is listed as “Ortero” in the credits.

   I guess it’s just one of those unsolved mysteries of The Cinema. Don’t let it spoil the movie.

Editorial Comment:   It wasn’t planned; it’s only one of those great cosmic mysteries of the universe called a coincidence. But Jonathan reviewed this same film on this blog exactly one year ago today.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Deadly Beloved. Hard Case Crime #38, paperback original; 1st printing, December 2007. Cover art by Terry Beatty.

   I enjoyed this one. I’ve followed the adventures of female PI Michael Tree (Ms. Tree) rather haphazardly over the years, all in comic book or graphic novel form. This is her first appearance in true novel format, and it goes back and retells the story of her first big case, that of solving the murder of her husband, PI Mike Tree, on their wedding night a year earlier.

   It begins, however, with another case, one which as she puts the pieces together, she finds is intimately connected with the Chicago-based Muerta family, a longtime nemesis. As a PI in skirts, Ms. Tree is as hard-boiled as they come. In his afterword to the novel, Max Allan Collins says that she was based on Mickey Spillane’s assistant slash secretary Velda, which certainly made sense to me as soon as I read it.

   As a writer, Collins may not be the best word-stylist in the world, but he certainly puts the words together well enough that this book can be read straight through in two hours or less, about the same as a good PI movie from the 1950s. If you’re a private eye fan, see if you can’t find this one.

Note:   For more on Ms. Tree and her previous appearances, you might check out her Wikipedia page or Don Markham’s Toonopedia page.

JOHN RECTOR – The Cold Kiss. Forge, hardcover, July 2010; paperback, May 2011.

   This one reminded me in a good many ways of the Gold Medal paperbarks of the 1950s and early 60s, only brought up to date in (to me) a not entirely satisfactory fashion. It begins just fine, with Nate and Sara (not married) picking up a stranger while on the road from Minnesota to Reno.

   The stranger appears ill, or they wouldn’t have picked him up. What they didn’t expect was that he would die on them. Or that when they look in his suitcase they find two million dollars in cash. What do they do? What would you do?

   Especially when they’re stranded in a motel along the highway in a blizzard, with phone lines down, the electricity out (there is gas heat) and no way to contact the authorities, even if they wanted to.

   There are other refugees from the storm stranded there, totally isolated from the outside world. The owner of the motel seems strange but OK. The owner’s nephew seems only strange. As things develop, it turns out that Nate has a criminal record and Sara is pregnant. There is more, but why should I tell you everything?

   Reston has a smooth tight way of telling the story, and the first half is a doozy. There was one point around two in the morning when I simply had to shut the book down for the night, so intense it was.

   I was OK with the ending, but some of the reviewers on Amazon weren’t, a minority, to be sure, and yet I’m not so sure that they might not be right. But what makes this book not a keeper for me, though, is not the ending so much, but rather that — given this absolutely top notch and A-One firing-on-all-cylinders beginning — there is a point beyond which the tone of the book changes, giving what most neo-noir readers seem to want, if not relish, in their reading material today.

   You may wish me to say more, but I won’t, other than to add that I’m old-fashioned. I’m happier with the sort of on-the-edge-of-the-chair suspense that’s created by an author like Cornell Woolrich, say, a writer who fills your mind with images of your own making, rather than one who brings them to life in vivid reality, so to speak, even though Rector may be the better writer.

   Please don’t take this as a warning to not read the book. This book may be exactly what you’re looking for, and if you didn’t know about it before, then my job is done.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. BBC Radio 4, 25 July 2015. Toby Stephens as James Bond, John Standing as M, Lisa Dillon as Tiffany Case, and Martin Jarvis as Ian Fleming. Dramatized by Archie Scotney, based on the novel by Ian Fleming. Directed by Martin Jarvis. Available online for the next two weeks on BBC 4 Extra. Earlier adaptations of the Bond novels are available in full form on YouTube.

   So far the BBC have adapted Dr. No, You Only Live Twice (Michael Jayston as Bond), Goldfinger (with Ian McKellan as Goldfinger), From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Alfred Molina as Blofield) in 90 minute adaptations of the novels. Of course much gets left out, but these are dead on and not too slavish. Diamonds opens by using a scene cutting technique letting us in on Bond’s assignment while at the same time using Fleming’s evocative opening chapter from the novel.

   Most of the adaptations open with Fleming telling the story and then become straight radio adaptation.

   Listening to this one the thing that stands out for me is that, dated as it is, Fleming manages to write as good a horse-racing thriller and Vegas novel as most I have read, with much more detail and background than most. His skill as both journalist and spy shows in these details that often have the authentic feel of well written intelligence reports (it is no accident many spies become writers, one of the skills is communication).

   That feeling of being in on something you shouldn’t be hearing is as important to the Bond novels as the sex, sadism, and snobbery, and the Saturday morning serial plots. The Fleming Effect, as it is known, works even on radio.

   If your favorite Bond novel got short changed by the film series in terms of things you wanted to see (Diamonds certainly did) this is the authentic Bond and Toby Stephens is excellent playing Bond as more a man and less an icon. It is a fine dramatic performance and not merely a reading with Stephens ably managing to let us know when we are hearing Bond’s thoughts and not spoken dialogue by a mere change of tone. Fleming’s voice intrudes only when absolutely needed.

   It may also remind you that the best of Fleming lay in his ability to write prose that kept readers turning pages. These adaptations show just how well Fleming could do that even without pounding music scores, over size sets and set pieces, beautiful scantily clad women, and iconic actors.

   I won’t get into the plot. I’ll just point out the full cast radio dramatization gets it right. If you enjoy radio drama these run just under ninety minutes and are fast paced and well done. They are an improvement over the many readings of the novels available in audiobook form.

The last couple days I’ve been thinking about PulpFest which will be held August 13 through 16, 2015, in Columbus Ohio. That’s this Thursday coming up! I’ve been deluged by logical and sane looking collectors and non-collectors all asking me the same question. Why bother attending PulpFest? They have shown up at my house; they have called me on the telephone; they have sent me emails.

Enough is enough! Here’s a list of excuses for not attending that I hear all the time, and why none of them are good ones:

1–I have no money! Sorry but I’ve attended many a Pulpcon in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s and I went with very little money. Are there no credit cards? Are there no credit unions? Are there no non-collecting spouses to borrow money from?

Even when I had the money, I often blew it before the convention by visiting local bookstores like Bonnett’s and Dragon’s Lair in Dayton, Ohio. If not in the bookstores, then in the hotel rooms of friends who let me see what they were bringing to sell. I learned to go without much cash but I brought a few boxes of pulps to trade and sell at my table.

2–I’m in poor health and too sick to attend. Sorry again! I had a friend who had a terminal illness and came to Pulpcon anyway. Another friend actually collapsed at the convention and died soon after. I myself once threw my back out three days before the show and my doctor and chiropractor both told me to forget making the long drive to the convention.

I felt like I was crippled for life but I managed to squeeze into the car and drive out even though I had to stop numerous times near hotels because I thought I was not going to make it. I could then rent a room and lay there for a couple weeks until I could stand. It took me 16 hours instead of the usual 9 hours but I made it. I spent the entire convention standing because sitting down caused back spasms.

3–I have no space or I live in a small apartment. Collectors always make space for the things they love! When I first crossed the threshold of Bob Lesser’s home in the 1970’s, I found myself immersed in a world where his collection and architectural home styles met. His NYC apartment, although compact, was ingeniously organized—a testament to maximizing small spaces in a city known for its diverse dwelling designs. A path led from the front door to the bed and another to the bathroom, with every other inch occupied by toys, robots, and paintings, all coexisting with the character of his unique urban habitat.

I once ran out of space and I hunted for over a year until I found a bigger house. I went to dozens of open houses and looked at hundreds of houses. I finally found a big house. Unfortunately I soon filled it up with books and now I need a bigger place! The old story…

4–My wife is a non-collector and forbids me to go. Tell me about it! I’ve been married over 40 years and I’ve heard it all. I still go and I still collect. Once Les Mayer told me in 1990 at Wayne, NJ that his wife thought he was a business meeting. If she knew he was at a Pulpcon she might burn his pulps.

Collectors have to become masters of deception and great liars to defeat the non-collector. Many a time I’ve lied and many a time I’ve smuggled books into the house in the dead of night while “she who must be obeyed” slept the innocent sleep of the non-collector. Non-collectors exist to be ignored…

5–I can’t get off from work. Sorry but not a valid reason. My employers always knew I was a rabid book collector who always without exception took off a week during Pulpcon in the summer. I made sure that my vacation request was in as early as I knew the convention dates.

Once they sorrowfully told me I couldn’t go because of some work bullshit. I went anyway and left it to them to ignore my absence without leave or put up with one pissed off book collector. I realize the employment situation is different nowadays but which is more important, your job or your collection, your marriage or your collection? Right, your collection.

6–Who cares about the convention. I can buy my pulps off ebay, etc. Once in the 1920’s and 1930’s the dime novel collectors existed. But they didn’t have a convention and died off. Now I know of only a few in existence and dime novels are just about worthless. If I had a table full of dime novels priced at a buck apiece, most collectors would scurry by in disgust.

We have to support the two big pulp conventions: Windy City in Chicago and PulpFest in Columbus. If we don’t, then one day we will wake up and the pulps might be dead. These shows garner a lot of attention and people keep talking about the pulps because of the efforts of Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, Doug Ellis, John Gunnison, and others.

7–And finally the best reason for attending! They are a hell of a lot of fun. Not only do you get to roam around a gigantic dealer’s room full of books and pulps but you get to meet and talk to some of the greatest collectors and dealers.

These will lead to future deals and contacts. Plus you can eat and drink with these guys! Though I seem to be one of last of the drinkers. And the panels! All day and all night we will be discussing pulps and books. What’s cooler than that?

8–Walker, it’s too late! Like hell. There are hotels with rooms available nearby. What’s the most important thing in a serious collector’s life? His collection without a doubt.

We work, we slave, we march on to the bitter end where we will eat dirt in the boneyard. We live lives of quiet desperation and worry about the afterlife. Go to PulpFest and collect some books and pulps! You only live once…

“Galahad.” An episode of Front Page Detective, Dumont, 1951-53. Actual date of this episode unknown, perhaps the pilot for the series. Edmund Lowe, with (possibly) Emory Parnell, Frank Jenks, Helen Brown, John Phillips.

   The only member of the cast that I recognized, other than Edmund Lowe, was Frank Jenks. The credits were clipped on the DVD I watched this from, so I’m relying on IMDb until proven otherwise.

   I have no idea what persuaded Lowe to come out of a long hiatus from movie-making to star in this bare-bones budget of a TV series. Between 1945 and this series, he was in one movie in 1948 and nothing more. It is possible that the show I watched was trimmed here and there. Quite often the transitions between scenes seemed to skip over parts of the story.

   Which may have been a good one. It is hard to tell from what I saw of it. Lowe plays a newspaper reporter named David Chase in this series, and in this episode he gets mixed up with an heiress who wishes to marry the brother of her deceased husband, against the wishes of the rest of his family, and a former photographer for Chase’s paper who has blackmail on his mind.

   The rest is a muddle, and a mystery to me, though not the one they intended, I’m sure.

Note:   Mike Nevins had more to say about the series itself in his column for this blog back in September 2012.

THE HOUSE OF FEAR. Universal, 1945. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Aubrey Mather, Dennis Hoey, Paul Cavanagh, Holmes Herbert, Harry Cording, Sally Shepherd. Screenplay: Roy Chanslor, based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director: Roy William Neill.

   Yet another in the superior “B” series produced and directed by Roy William Neill, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. This one — very loosely based on “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips” — offers a disparate group of bachelors sharing their fortunes at a remote Old Dark House somewhere on the Gothic Coast of England until they start getting murdered one by one, their gruesome demises presaged by anonymous missives filled with orange seeds.

   Purists at the time complained loudly about this — Watson actually solves the case before Holmes does — but I found it charming, with the skillful interplay of the leads set neatly off once again by Neill’s off-noir lighting and intelligent pace.

GEORGE C. CHESBRO – Dark Chant in a Crimson Key. Mongo the Dwarf #11. Mysterious Press, hardcover, April 1992; paperback, May 1993.

   Och, Mongo, ah harrdly knew ye. This is the eleventh book about Dr. Bob Frederickson, aka Mongo the Dwarf, his brother Garth, and other assorted characters who pop up now and again. I’m not going to keep you in suspense: it’s not much. Chesbro’s tales of the dwarf detective just keep getting sillier and sillier.

   Mongo is hired by a philanthropic foundation to go to Switzerland and report on a recent swindle that’s cost them 10 mil. The criminal is reported to be John Sinclair, aka “Chant,” (a character in three books written by Chesbro as [a villain] who is supposedly hemmed up in Switzerland by a police net).

   Chant is (oh, yes) the ultimate ninja. Mongo is warned by various agencies and individuals (including his own version of Robert E. Parker’s Hawk, Veil Kendry) to stay out of it all, but doesn’t, natch. There are secret Oriental societies, deadly drugs, mystic rites, torture, and more, more, more! It’s a bummer, folks. Really. Bad stuff.

   The sad thing is that Chesbro can be and has been a very capable writer. There was room in the field for a different sort of PI, one who handled cases that slanted a tad toward the unbelievable, and in the first few books Mongo and brother Garth were both enjoyable and not too far removed from reality for some of us to relate to.

   No longer the case, I’m afraid. I don’t know how you’d classify the series now; I guess, he said reluctantly, as unreadable. ’bye, Mongo. ’bye, George.

GEMINI MAN. Made-for-TV movie. NBC, 2 hours, 10 May 1976. Pilot for the series which began the following fall. Ben Murphy, Katherine Crawford, Richard Dysart, Dana Elcar, Paul Shenar. Based on the novel The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. Director: Alan J. Levi.

   I must not have been paying attention to the opening credits, otherwise I would have known a lot more about what to expect of this pilot film when I started watching — or perhaps H. G. Wells wasn’t mentioned. I haven’t gone back to look, but I will. (Later: The reason I didn’t remember the credits is that they are at the end of the film, and even more, no, H. G. Wells is not mentioned.)

   The phenomenon of invisibility has been around in fiction for a log time, including both TV and the movies, whether it’s physically possible or not, and Gemini Man is yet another attempt.

   Ben Murphy plays Sam Casey in both the pilot and the series that came afterward. Casey is an easy-going secret agent who’s caught in an underwater explosion while he’s examining a secret Russian satellite that has come down from orbit and landed in the Pacific. It is in the aftermath of the explosion that he discovers he has new powers.

   The only drawback? He can stay invisible only 15 minutes a day, added up cumulatively over the 24-hour period. This is a necessary plot device, since otherwise, of course, he’s Superman without the Kryponite.

   It was difficult to watch this and see Dana Elcar as the villain, working secretly for the Russian government, but so he is. Nor am I revealing anything to you you won’t know with he first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. Unfortunately this is about all there is to know about the plot. The rest consists of jokey references to Sam’s new ability, cars driving here and there, and a serious attempt at misadventure aboard an airplane in the sky.

   I haven’t checked to see what shows that Gemini Man, the series, was up against in the fall, but of the eleven episodes filmed, only five of them were ever aired. Neither Ben Murphy nor Katherine Crawford (as scientist Dr. Abby Lawrence, also Sam’s mentor) have enough charisma to overcome what I imagine were some rather ordinary stories.

   All of the shows filmed do exist, and are available on collector-to-collector DVDs, but all in all, I don’t think I’ll pony up the $25 asking price for a set I discovered online in pristine picture quality.

DANIEL SILVA – The Rembrandt Affair. Putnam, hardcover, July 2010. Signet, paperback, July 2011.

   There is no question Daniel Silva’s spy novels featuring ex-Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon are among the best written and most literate thrillers written today. The world Silva creates is both deeply realized and vividly portrayed and he orchestrates suspense and action as well as any major spy writer in a generation.

   Which is a really strange way to begin a bad review.

   This novel begins with Allon, recently retired from his employers the mysterious Office, in Cornwall with his Venetian born wife, Chiara, and visited by art dealer and friend Julian Isherwood, who is concerned with a missing Rembrandt and a murdered art restorer in Glastonbury whose latest project, a long lost Rembrandt portrait, has been stolen.

   The trail of the missing masterpiece leads Allon from haunted holy Glastonbury to Amsterdam, the center of the illegal art trade and forgery capital of Europe as well as home of Rembrandt himself, to Buenos Aires, and finally the lovely but duplicitous shores of Lake Geneva, where he finds the painting once again draws him into the world of international espionage and terrorism.

   Involved in the affair are a mysterious Swiss billionaire altruist who may also be behind the threat of modern terrorism, a guilt ridden art thief, and a beautiful London journalist, with a mistake of her own to redeem, who is key to Allon’s plan.

   And thereby hangs a tale, specifically my tale, or at least my review of this tale, because in Moscow Rules he recruits a beautiful woman to help him bring down a wealthy Russian secretly financing terrorism, and in Portrait of a Spy he recruits a beautiful woman to help him bring down an American born cleric in Yemen, and in The English Assassin…

   In each Allon has tried to quit the business, in each he stumbles onto a terrorist plot, in each some piece of art work is involved, in some the woman from the previous book helps him recruit the woman in the next. The women are all sophisticated, beautiful, and willing to use their minds and bodies to aid in the dangerous game afoot.

   In short, of the six books I’ve read by Daniel Silva they all have the exact same plot. Virtually no variation worth mentioning.

   It’s more than that though. Of the six books I have read he mentions a Mercedes Maybark on virtually the same page with virtually the same description.

   I have no problem with formula. Most great genre fiction is by nature formulaic. The gimmick on the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. series was that each week an innocent person would be drawn into the mission and be key to its success; but it wasn’t the virtually same person every week and no one was charging me close to $30 to read the damn things.

   Silva writes undeniably well, and his research and atmosphere are first rate, but he repeats the same book over and over and over, and it doesn’t matter if the characters have new names and some of the details and locations vary, each and every book is about a powerful untouchable shadow figure in the world of terrorism brought down by the reluctant spy Allon by pimping out a beautiful successful worldly woman.

   You would think someone would catch on eventually when he does damn near the same thing on the same page every book. This is as bad as S. S. Van Dine introducing the murderer in every Philo Vance mystery on the same page and line in every book.

   I can’t help but think that Silva is a better writer than this and his readers deserve more. I may be wrong. Perhaps they want to read the exact same book at $30 a pop over and over and over. Maybe they have short term memory problems. Maybe they don’t care and it is the world Silva portrays they love and plot and story and character don’t matter to them.

   Over time all writers repeat themselves, fall back on familiar phrases (James Bond’s ‘authentic comma of black hair’), revisit certain places, but even prolific John Creasey at the least managed to move the milieu from the Toff, to the Baron, to Patrick Dawlish, to Gideon, and so on and not do the exact same plot in the same series every time.

   It’s not that Silva repeats himself, it’s that he makes no effort to disguise it. He simply writes the same damn book over and over and expects his readers either to not notice or accept it, and no matter how talented he is, that is the work of a hack and not a writer. I have no problem with a writer selling out to success, but I do have a problem when he sells out his audience as well.

   Yes, it does matter for those of you who say so what. It matters because success like his breeds more bad books that do the same thing, and more lazy writers who think they can get away with it, and in the long run readers across the board are cheated, the genre is hurt, and good writers who try harder find it more difficult to break into a field where all the audience honors are reruns.

   Silva is worse to me than any hack because he is talented and writes well and has had success thanks to his fans, the ones he is shortchanging them even if they are too blinded to know it.

   In any case, now you at least know the plot to his next book — and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one …

   Ad infinitum, ad nauseum — literally.