ARMITAGE TRAIL – Scarface. Edward J. Clode, hardcover, 1930. Dell #D336, paperback, December 1959. Reprinted several times in various editions. Film: United Artists, 1932 (starring Paul Muni & Ann Dvorak; directed by Howard Hawks).

   Story of the rise and fall of a Sicilian gang boss in Chicago. And the concurrent rise and rise of his brother to Chief of Police who must stop him! And his sister, seduced by his #1 gunman!

   Tony “Scarface” Camonte is a rising star in the Irish mob. Then he pulls a job, killing a rival mob boss, and things get too hot for him at home. So he enlists in the Army in the War to End All Wars (I only recently realized that the reason that Veteran’s Day is always November 11 (as opposed to, say, the second Monday in November), is that it was originally Armistice Day. Armistice literally means to stop fighting. So after the War to End All Wars ended — there of course would never be another war! That’s what the holiday was celebrating! No more war! So anywho, when that name began to get too silly they changed the name to Veteran’s Day, celebrating the armed services rather than the end of war.)

   In any case, it turns out that a hitman can make an excellent soldier. He shows real leadership ability during a battle where as a mere Sergeant he is forced to take control of his unit when all of the higher ranking officers are slaughtered. And he makes a good showing of it, winning the battle with strategic, fearless leadership. He’s already seen plenty of life and done plenty of killing before the war — unlike his brother at arms. He’s cool as a cucumber and twice as dangerous (assuming, of course, that the cucumber had botulism (a recent groaner I heard: ‘In the old days plastic surgery was frowned upon. These days when you hear about Botox, no one raises an eyebrow’).

   While leading his troop, a shell fragment slices his face, blood pouring out like a turnip. His face forever maimed, he is unrecognizable by even his closest family! (i.e. sis and bro mentioned above).

   When he returns to Chicago, he finds out that the papers had reported him a casualty of war and his family’s already grieved his passing. He figures to just go with it, gets a fresh identity, and resumes his path to ‘greatness’. Prohibition is now a thing and all the punks are getting rich. The City is divided into four rival gangs. But each one, like any business, would rather have a monopoly. If you’re not growing you’re dying. So they’re all out to get each other. Scarface deigns to choose to join the mob he figures strongest.

   He proves his worth right away, volunteering to sever of the head of their 2nd strongest rival. This he does, in a daring assassination at a fancy gala, in front of the Mayor and all the best people robber and their purchased politicos, everybody who’s anybody.

   It’s, to me, the best scene in the novel by a longshot. And it’s where I first learned the importance of a ‘gun girl’. A ‘gun girl’ is a cool, good looking, classy dame, in fancy threads, with silky tone, who carries your gun for you. She hands you the gun when you give her the sign, and she takes it right back when you’re done with it so you can escape unscathed. No evidence in tow.

   Here’s how it works:

   Tony “nodded slightly. She gave him a look of understanding, then, with every appearance of affection, caught his right hand and gently maneuvered it beneath the table. His hand found her knee, rested there. And he thrilled at the contact. But she did not shrink. Then he felt cold steel against his flesh and his eager fingers clutched an automatic. His thumb slipped off the safety catch and he waited. Some woman sang a comic song that made Tony laugh – even in the tenacity of the moment then the chorus came on…the jazz band blared madly….The din was tremendous…..Tony took careful aim and fired three times, so rapidly that the reports almost merged into each other. He saw Hoffman slump forward as he jerked the pistol under the table and slipped it back to Jane. Her fingers were cool and steady as she took it from him.”

   Tony ends up taking over the mob and then taking over the city: the bosses, the cops, the booze, the whores. Til his brother, chief of police, is told to clean the place up.

   And the showdown.

      —————–

   Armitage Trail, the pen name of Maurice Coons, died aged 28 in 1930, the same year he published Scarface and sold the film rights to Howard Hughes for 25 grand. Immediately moving to Hollywood, screenwriter W.R. Burnett relates that Trail drank heavily and lived flamboyantly, getting fat, wearing wide-brimmed Borsalino hats, and hiring a servant, only to die of congestive heart failure in the Paramount Theatre. The only info I found on him was on Wikipedia (if you can call that a source) and this great website I happened upon: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=303

   The book is okay but not great — and is soiled by Scarface developing a conscience by the end, naming names and setting the table for a cleanup of the city. I’d put it on par with Burnett’s Little Caesar — the latter which maybe wins by a nose by the protagonist’s consistent immorality. Better than both is Louis Beretti, reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=79372

BONANZA. “The Spanish Grant.” NBC, 06 February1960 (Season 1, Episode 21.) Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, Michael Landon. Guest cast: Patricia Medina (Isabella Maria Ynez Y Castra De La Cuesta / Rosita Morales), Sebastian Cabot, Celia Lovsky. Director: Christian Nyby. Currently strreaming on YouTube (see below).

   Bonanza was one of the most popular and long-lived TV westerns of all time – but not, of course, the most – we all know what that one was – and by this far into the first season both the audience and players knew who was who without a lot of (or any) explanation or preparation for their characters.

   This episode begins with a gang of things on horseback attacking a pair of homesteaders, and killing the husband, under the guise of the law. It seems as though a claimant (female) to an old Spanish grant has appeared, and she, under her uncle’s guidance, is asking all of current residents to clear out, or pay the price. Among those resisting are the men of the Ponderosa (father and three sons), a part of whose holdings is among those claimed by the stunningly beautiful (as it so happens) Isabella Maria Ynez Y Castra De La Cuesta, played by the stunningly beautiful Patricia Medina.

   A question quickly arises in the viewer’s mind – and soon enough the Cartwrights as well — is she who she says she is? Adam (Pernall Roberts) takes the lead on this one, romancing the lady while investigating the possibility that she is not.

   Standard enough western affair, even if stolen from other sources (e.g., the Anastasia controversy). But what makes the story line so enjoyable is that it manages to never quite answer the question, even after Adam locates the grand old lady of the Spanish family who, under the law, own the land. Bringing her to Virginia City to settle matters leads, quite surprisingly, to a most satisfactory ending anyway.

   Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novel Murder by the Book (1951) marks Archie’s first reference that I’ve noted — insert fallibility disclaimer—to his weighing a “seventh of a ton” (285.7 pounds). I’ll continue to monitor the situation, but I think this became the standard after, e.g., “two hundred and sixty-some pounds” (“Help Wanted, Male,” 1945), a quarter of a ton (i.e., 500 pounds, perhaps figurative; “Instead of Evidence,” 1946), close to 340 (Too Many Women, 1947), and an even 300 (“Door to Death,” 1949). With its metafictional publishing theme, it is set in motion when Wolfe is hired by the father of Joan Wellman, an editor at Scholl and Hanna who died in an apparent hit and run in Van Cortlandt Park.

   Peoria grocer John R. Wellman believes otherwise, due to her appointment that day with Baird Archer to discuss a novel she’d rejected; no trace is found, but Wolfe recalls seeing the name on a list of tentative aliases among the effects of Leonard Dykes, whose murder led Cramer to consult him six weeks earlier. He had been a law clerk at Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs, formerly O’Malley, Corrigan and Phelps until O’Malley’s disbarment. Conjecturing that Joan was killed because she’d read the manuscript, Wolfe has the ’teers canvass typing services and sends Archie to Scholl and Hanna, where he merely confirms that she’d read, rejected, and returned Put Not Your Trust to Archer via General Delivery.

   Joining the hunt, Archie arrives at the office of typist Rachel Abrams just after her plunge from the window, pocketing the notebook recording Archer’s payment on his way out the door; reaching Rachel’s mother before the news, he gets the names of her friends William Butterfield, Hulda Greenberg, and Cynthia Free, on whom he sics the ’teers. Shifting his focus, Wolfe has Archie cultivate the law firm’s female staff of 16, with ten accepting his invitation to dinner when he sends them orchids. Archie produces Mr. Wellman and Mrs. Abrams to stir sentiment, eliciting steno Helen Troy’s controversial assertion that Conroy O’Malley killed Dykes for getting him disbarred because he bribed the foreman of a jury.

   She notes that others believe her uncle, new partner Frederick Briggs, ratted Con out, and killed Dykes to prevent his revealing that fact; Eleanor Gruber, secretary to Con and now Louis Kustin, posits that his death was unrelated to the others, and as the party breaks up, Archie takes Sue Dondero, Emmett Phelps’s secretary, dancing. Senior partner James A. Corrigan brings his current and former colleagues to Wolfe’s office, where they submit to fruitless questioning, and he requests samples of Dykes’s writing. On a resignation letter, offered due to gossip (but declined), is a scribbled notation directing them to Psalm 146, verse 3: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”

   Switchboard operator Blanche Duke identifies the handwriting (via a ruse by Archie) as Corrigan’s, and says that writing a book was one way she’d suggested the smitten Dykes might attract Sue’s attention. Regarding the notation as a trick, Wolfe sends Archie out to California to have Dykes’s sister and heir, Peggy Potter, search his letters to confirm that he wrote the novel, and solicit the firm’s advice about having literary agent “Walter Finch” sell the film rights on her behalf, hoping to panic the killer. Archie hires Nathan Harris from Ferdinand Dolman’s Southwest Agency to pose as Finch, and another man to hide within earshot when Peggy meets with Corrigan, who immediately flies out to L.A.

   Archie himself hides in Finch’s closet when she sends Corrigan to the South Seas Hotel, where he tries to insist on a look at the (nonexistent) manuscript, saying he has reason to believe it is libelous, and leaves after an altercation. Stymied again chez Potter by Finch, then left on guard, Corrigan infiltrates his room, only to find Archie, who puts Southwest man Phil Buratti on his tail; when he calls from the airport, Archie asks Phil to get him a seat on Corrigan’s flight back east. The fivesome revisits Wolfe, demanding to know the contents of the manuscript or offering to buy it, but Wolfe merely says he is not yet ready to act, while Kustin correctly thinks that “it’s a ten-cent bluff,” and he has no knowledge.

   That night they get a call, ostensibly from Corrigan, who says he has sent Wolfe a letter, followed by an apparent gunshot; after they alert the police, Archie gets there in time to witness the discovery of his body, consistent with suicide. The unsigned letter confesses to blowing the whistle anonymously on Con without identifying the information’s source, and to stumbling on the “Modern Novel of a Lawyer’s Frailty,” which made it clear that Dykes knew he had done so. Claiming to have destroyed all copies of the roman à clef, he admits killing Dykes after a blackmail attempt and the others to cover his tracks, but while the details are obviously accurate, Wolfe believes that the killer framed Corrigan.

   The D.A. is satisfied that it was suicide, yet after an undisclosed report from Saul, Wolfe has Cramer and Purley Stebbins assemble the ten women and four surviving partners for a “risky but resolute effort to expose a murderer,” to which Archie invites Wellman. Wolfe deduced the truth because the “confession” asserted that Corrigan knew the manuscript’s contents, when his behavior in L.A. clearly indicated that he did not. He had informed on O’Malley, who targeted him for murder to avenge that fact and “killed three people so he could safely kill a fourth,” and made the notation in Corrigan’s handwriting — assumed by Cramer et alia to have been a trick by Wolfe or Archie — as the first step in framing him.

   An episode of NBC’s Nero Wolfe series starring William Conrad, “Murder by the Book” (3/13/81) was directed by Bob Kelljan, best known for Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and its 1971 sequel, and written by David Karp, an Emmy-winner for a two-part 1964 episode of The Defenders, using his “Wallace Ware” byline. Jean Wellman (Delta Burke) refuses to believe that her sister Claire — a reader for Wainwright Press — committed suicide with alcohol and sleeping pills, which she did not use, and the hunt is on for the elusive Blake Ritchie. Karp also renames the lawyers Phillip Corrigan (David Hedison), Robert Phelps (Edmund Gilbert), George Briggs (Walter Brooke), and Ryan O’Malley (John Randolph).

   The episode opens as Cramer (Allan Miller) reports that an unknown man killed in a hit-and-run a block from the brownstone bore a slip of paper with Wolfe’s name and address and the mysterious list, which includes “Ritchie”; by the time this ties him in to Claire, he has been identified as Leonard Dart, a member of the firm. When Jean takes Archie (Lee Horsley) to her apartment to retrieve a contact number that may have been Ritchie’s, his instincts save her from a booby-trapped door with minor injury, so Saul (George Wyner) guards her at the hospital. Wolfe suspects that she was targeted because, per Archie, “she knows something she doesn’t know she knows,” a sentiment worthy of Donald Rumsfeld.

   The editor who turned down the first novel supplies the title, and Jean recalls being told it was about the members of a law firm. At O’Malley, Phelps, Corrigan and Briggs, Archie tells Dart’s secretary, Elizabeth Marsh (Jennifer Leak), that he was murdered, which Miss Johnson (Elizabeth Halliday) quickly reports to Briggs — who gives him the bum’s rush — and Phelps, yet retiree O’Malley wants to protect the reputation of the firm he made, and Wolfe finally gets a well-heeled client. For safety, Jean is moved to the brownstone, and a visit by Corrigan leads Wolfe to invite the three active partners to dinner, before which Liz, whose information suggested that Ritchie and Dart were the same man, is strangled.

   Wolfe learns of a prior scandal, the embezzlement of $2 million — unproven and repaid — from an estate the firm represented, which he theorizes may have been the subject of Put Not Your Trust. Liz was found in the computer room, suggesting that Dart kept the book there; it is unlocked with the code “146 P 3,” and the list of names were for characters, to protect him from libel. Wolfe had suspected since being hired by him that the embezzler and killer was O’Malley, who asks before Cramer takes him away to make a summation: his theft, which they concealed, gave his partners “the shock of righteous men, meaning those who haven’t been caught yet with their hands in the till…[and so] they retired me.”

   Kelljan was blessed with a strong guest cast, including Burke, known for the CBS sitcom Designing Women, and Randolph, one of the former blacklistees — along with Will Geer, Jeff Corey, and Nedrick Young — cast by John Frankenheimer in Seconds (1966). David Hedison, who starred in The Fly (1958) and Irwin Allen’s series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, became the first actor to play James Bond’s CIA buddy, Felix Leiter, in multiple movies, Live and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989). Giving ammunition to those who disapprove of Conrad’s casting, the episode ends with the jaw-dropping sight of the grinning Wolfe returning Archie’s thumbs-up, which Stout fortunately did not live to see.

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: “The Cop-Killer”

Edition cited:

      Murder by the Book: Bantam (1954)

Online source:

   This one is a very unique trailer. AIP released this comedy-horror cult film with a particularly compelling trailer that horrifies with humor. Notice one of the stars of the film is Eugene Levy, who went on to a stellar comedy career. The director is Ivan Reitman, who later went on to do Ghostbusters.

CLUB HAVANA. PRC, 1946. Tom Neal, Margaret Lindsay, Isabelita (Lita Baron), Marc Lawrence, Ernest Truex. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Currently available on YouTube (see below).

   A typical night at a Latin-American night club, with lots of intertwined stories: young love, a broken heart or two, attempted suicide – and a piano player who can break a gambler’s alibi for the slaying of a showgirl, and calls the police.

   The budget was skimpy. No expensive location shots here. All the action takes place in the night club or just outside the front door. I could have done without the floor show; it’s the characters that make the story, brought to a smashup conclusion.

   I did a requested Windows 11 update on my new laptop last night, and I thought all went well until I tried to use the keyboard and … nothing. Dead as a dinosaur. The laptop is new, but the wireless keyboard is well, ancient.

   Spent most of the morning talking to some friendly fellows at Geek Squad but after more than an hour later, they gave up too. They said it was a hardware problem. Make an appointment and bring it in, they said.

   I decided to say goodbye to it instead. The new laptop I have is tiny, and the keys are even smaller, and it’s been a long day. Off to Best Buy tomorrow to get a new keyboard, one large enough for me to be able to use. I’ve started this post three times already. I keep hitting keys I don’t mean to and which do all sorts of strange things I didn’t know computers ought to be able to do, including making everything I’ve written so far get wadded up and vanishing on me.

   I’ll be back as soon as I can, but with some doctor’s appointments coming up, it may be a few days. Stay well, stay safe everyone!

CHRISTIANNA BRAND – Heads You Lose. Inspector Cockrill #1. John Lane/Bodley Head, UK, hardcover, 1941. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1942. Reprint editions include Bantam, paperback July 1988. July 1 13.SO>

   As you might deduce from the title, murder by decapitation, three times over. Not exactly what you’d call a “cozy” mystery, although all the trappings are there: a small English village, the squire’s manor, only six suspects. Inspector Cockrill investigates.

   Patterned after John Dickson Carr, although there’s no locked room — the body found in the snow with no footprint$ around has an easy explanation. But with events bordering the bizarre, and with every word and scene full of extra meaning, it’s Carr a11 right.

TALES OF WELLS FARGO. “Shotgun Messenger.” NBC, 07 May 1957 (Season One, Episode 6). Dale Robertson (Jim Hardie).  Guest cast: Michael Landon, Walter Sande, Kem Dibbs. Story consultant: Frank Gruber. Teleplay by Sloan Nibley and Dwight Newton. Director: Lew Foster.  Currently available on Starz and free on YouTube (see below).

   A new gold mine means that Wells Fargo needs to set up a new stagecoach route in the area, which means that men must be found right away to be drivers and to ride shotgun. While barely a man, young Tad Cameron (Michael Landon) is hired by Jim Hardie decides to hire him as the latter, even though the boy’s father was fired by Wells Fargo eight years earlier under suspicion of being in cahoots with two outlaws who held up one of their stages.

   And guess what? The same two owlhoots are still around are trying their best to get young Tad to join up with them. Does he? Of course not.

   All in all, a small morality play, as weren’t most adult westerns that overpopulated the nation’s TV screens in the late 50s and early sixties?

   Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

   What was an extra huge viewing bonus was looking back in the YouTube time machine to see Michael Landon as young as he was then and not yet the TV star he was to become.

   That he was a natural is obvious.

RICHARD DEMING – Kiss and Kill. Zenith ZB-36, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1960. Armchair Fiction, softcover, 2016 (published back-to-back with The Dead Stand-In by Frank Kane). Wildside Press, softcover, 2017.

   Two beginners in the confidence racket meet, join forces, get married and go on to bigger and better things. Including murder. Preying on lonely women with more money than sense, Sam and Mavis make a nasty pair, cutting a wide path through rural America.

   They eventually get their comeuppance, of course, one that was obvious long before I caught on. It also makes an amusing social statement. Sam is boss in his family, you see, and it’s that double standard inherent in their operation that catches up with them.

JANE DENTINGER – First Hit of the Season. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1984. Dell, paperback, 1985. Penguin, paperback, 1993.

   Critic Jason Saylin used his typewriter like a machete, hacking bits and pieces off the reputation of his least favorite actress almost daily. The lady in question, Irene Ingersoll, hated him so much she once dumped a plate of fettucini on him in a restaurant. Which was absolutely no reason to suspect her of doing him in — even though she had excellent opportunity and ample motive.

   Or such is the theory of Ingersoll’s pal, actress and amateur sleuth Jocelyn O’ Roarke. O’ Roarke happens to be the girlfriend of Phillip Gerrard, the detective assigned to the case, who wants her of course, to mind her own business. And that, luckily for Dentinger’s readers, is about as likely as Sarah Bernhardt’s return to the stage.

   Dentinger introduced the likable O’Roarke in her first book, the very well-reviewed Murder on Cue, published in 1983. She’s plucky, smart, and deliciously caustic: “The muscles in Maxine’s face twitched as much as two face jobs would let them.” Dentinger, an actress herself, writes with an insider’s knowledge of Manhattan’s theatrical subculture and with a literacy obviously achieved by voracious reading of books as well as plays. Fans of witty, witchy dialogue will find themselves laughing out loud.

         ———
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.

      The Jocelyn O’Roarke series —

1. Murder on Cue (1983)
2. First Hit of the Season (1984)
3. Death Mask (1988)
4. Dead Pan (1992)
5. The Queen is Dead (1994)
6. Who Dropped Peter Pan? (1995)