THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. Paramount, 1933; Jean Hersholt, Wynne Gibson, Stuart Erwin, Frances Dee, Gordon Westcott, Robert Elliott, David Landau, William Janney. Screenplay adapted by Florence Ryerson from the play The Grootman Case by Walter Maria Espe Director: William Beaudine. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

   Jean Hersholt, a well-known “alienist,” comes to the police to beg them to arrest him. If they don’t, he is going to kill a man, one of his patients who works for a bank and whom he’s ordered while under hypnosis to bring him 100,000 dollars.

   (This would appear to contradict what I have always understood about hypnosis, which is that subjects won’t obey orders that are against their basic nature. But I suppose that the doctor knows his patient better than I do.)

   The cast of characters consists of an adulterous wife, a nosy reporter, two very incidental servants, a missing son, and the wife’s lover who seems to be almost everybody’s choice for the killer.

   This is not one of those legendary Paramount pictures that turn out to be long unseen gems, but a stagey, hokey melodrama that not even some good actors can save. Not a bomb, but a bottom-of-the-bill filler.

MAN IN THE VAULT. RKO Radio Pictures, 1956. William Campbell, Karen Sharpe, Anita Ekberg, Berry Kroger, Paul Fix, James Seay, Mike Mazurki, Robert Keys, Nancy Duke, Gonzalez Gonzalez, Vivianne Lloyd. Screenplay by Burt Kennedy, based on the novel The Lock and the Key by Frank Gruber. Director: Andrew V. McLaglen.

   I’m willing to bet that if you recognize more than two or three of the actors and actresses in this 1950s style crime movie, you’re somebody who looks up somebody on IMBD at least once a day. Casual movie viewers will know only one, and she’s barely in the movie, so if that’s why you might ever pick out this movie to see on DVD, say, you’re going to be out of luck.

   The star is William Campbell, and I’ll see if I can’t find a good photo of him. He plays a apprentice locksmith named Tony Dancer in the movie, and he’s hired by a gangster to help pull off a job for him. But getting back to Campbell, I learned a new word today:

   Quiff: “Popularized mostly by 50s rockabillys, a quiff is basically a forelock that is longer than the rest of one’s hair on top, and is usually combed upwards (and back), or to the side, or made to hang over the forehead. Depending on the wearers hair type a spot of gel or grease may be in order. Very stylish & manly. If done properly.”

   Campbell also looks something like Tony Curtis, and he’s had something like 80 appearances in movies and TV, the last one in 1996, and I don’t believe I’ve ever noticed him in any one of them. Whether that’s my fault or the movies he’s been in, you’d have to go to IMDB and look him up.

   The movie’s in black and white, and I’ve never seen it before. All of these years I thought this was one of those grand caper movies, in which a gang of crooks works out a precisely laid out plan to rob a bank. Not so. All Tony Dancer has to do is get inside the room where the safety deposit boxes are, make a key to get into one of the boxes, return and remove the contents.

   A little sweat on the brow, hoping the bank teller at the door doesn’t turn around, and there’s nothing to it. Problem is, Tony Dancer isn’t really crooked, but on the other hand he’s fallen for one of the girls (Karen Sharpe) he meets at a party thrown by the gangster (Berry Kroger), and all kind of complications ensue.

   Being filmed in various parts of 1950s Los Angeles is a plus, but bad pacing and a story line that moves in fits and starts are not. It’s a good example of what it is, though, a 1950s crime film – one not particularly noirish in theme, but filmed with the same amount of money in the till to begin with – that I somehow found both appealing and entertaining.

ELLERY QUEEN #1. Ziff-Davis, Spring 1952.

   Crime more than mystery and detection has been a staple of comic books from the beginning. Two-fisted gumshoes and tough cops have always outnumbered the more intellectual types, but a few did manage to sneak in both in comic strip reprints and original material.

   Among that small company who had multiple titles of their own over the years from multiple publishers are Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, and Ellery Queen.

   Ellery Queen may seem an odd choice for the comics, but having succeeded in every other media, there he was in Crackajack #23 (May 1940) from Dell Comics, running through issue #42 (December 1941) alongside Frank Thomas’s costumed hero, the Owl, and reprints of Tarzan, Red Ryder, Wash Tubbs, and Dan Dunn.

   Ellery next appeared in four issues of his own title from Superior in 1949 with art from EC horror comic staple Jack Kamen and L.B. Cole, then in 1952 Ellery returned in two issues from Ziff-Davis.

   In 1961 Ellery was back at Dell in Four Color Comics with art by Mike Sekowsky, a journeyman artist who also helmed Peter Gunn’s only comic book appearance and was the first artists on DC’s Justice League of America, as well as working on Wonder Woman and many other iconic characters.

   But here we are concerned with the Ziff-Davis issues from 1952. Ziff-Davis aimed its titles at older kids and adults and as a result has an eclectic run of titles from staples like science fiction, horror, and westerns to oddities like Sky Pilot about a missionary in the far North, Crime Clinic about a prison psychiatrist, and Captain Fleet about the captain of a freighter. Ellery would seem a perfect fit.

   Ziff-Davis was also set apart by its garish painted covers, often by pulp and later men’s magazine favorite Norman Saunders. Both issues of Ellery Queen sport Saunders’ covers with a muscular Ellery behaving more like Mike Hammer than Ellery Queen.

   Issue #2 even has a beautiful blonde being threatened by a brute with a red hot poker. Luckily the stories inside are a bit more subdued.

   Ellery Queen #1 for some reason has Ellery looking like actor William Gargan, who replaced Ralph Bellamy in the Columbia movie series. (In issue #2, again for no reason, he looks like Bellamy, though both are by the same artist.) The book features Ellery in two stories; the first a disposable crime tale “The Corpse That Killed” that Ellery ‘solves’ by simply trailing some hoods to a cemetery. (See below.)

   The second is more ambitious, and actually features some detective work on Ellery’s part in a fairly interesting mystery, “The Chain Letter Murders.”

   The story opens as an elderly woman walks into an office, pulls out a gun, and kills a man. She flees, but falls in front of a bus and before she dies is overheard to say: It’s better this way.”

   Inspector Queen is still baffled when Ellery shows up, and they have hardly begun to sort that one out when the new boxing champ is murdered in his shower after double crossing a gambling ring. Ellery follows damp footprints to the room of a man in the iron lung — who confesses he killed the boxer, his last statement before silence: “It’s better this way.”

   But this time they find a letter in the killer’s apartment and a list of names. Ellery tracks down the next man on the list and prevents his murder, but again the would be killer only says: “It’s better this way.”

   Hiding the fact he and his father intervened in time to save the next man on the list, Ellery persuades the potential victim’s wife to pretend to be grieving, and he and his Dad wait for the inevitable suspect to show up.

   They follow the man to the remote Temple of Hope, home of the Mighty Eye cult and watch as the man pays an unseen figure and leaves. Now Ellery has it figured out, and pretends to attempt and fail at suicide to draw out the cult leader. It seems the man was using the cult to front a clever murder racket.

   Taking advantage of people he knew were suicidal but lacked the courage to die, he enlisted them in “the Legion of the Damned,” telling them they would receive a list of others like them wanting to die, and when they killed that person they would move up on the list, their own death a little closer. Then he contracted out to people who wanted someone dead and put their name on the list for money. Send out a chain letter, and the deed was as good as done.

   Alas, I don’t know who the writer and artist were, but the art is good and the story a bit closer to an actual mystery than we had any reason to hope for. There’s no challenge to the reader (there is in at least one of the Dell Four Color comics), but there is a fairly baffling mystery, and to be fair, it’s a pretty good idea — for a comic book mystery.

   Okay, it wouldn’t hold up in print, but for a comic book of that period it isn’t bad, and I’ve seen and heard more preposterous plots on radio and television dramas and more than a few movies. For a comic book, it’s about as close to the real Ellery Queen as we could hope.

   Except that we did get the real Ellery Queen once. The Maze Agency (Comico, 1989) was a comic book about a pair of private eyes, and in issue #9 the creators, long time Queen fans, got permission to have Ellery help them out in a mystery.

   It’s a nice little coda to Ellery’s on-again off-again comic book career. It certainly beats Charlie Chan’s final bow in The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.

   Anyone interested can download the two Ziff-Davis Ellery Queen’s for free at goldenagecomics.co.uk where they will also direct you to free downloads of comic book readers (cbr and cbz) that are easy to install and use. There are also issues of The Saint available and much great old stuff from the early comics that is in public domain.

         

MERLDA MACE – Motto for Murder. Messner, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1943. Digest paperback: Crestwood / Black Cat Detective #17, 1945 (abridged).

   Motto for Murder was one of a trio of murder mysteries written by Merlda Mace during the 1940’s. The detective she deploys in this story is Timothy J. O’Neil better known as Tip to his friends. He is a 26 year old “special investigator” for Barnes and Gleason, a New York City investment firm.

   How he got this job is one of the big mysteries of this book since he readily admits that he is not much of an investigator and his performance during the story bears this out.

   This is, in essence, a country house mystery. The house is an isolated mansion located in the mountains of northern New York State near Lake Placid. The controlling and quite unpleasant matriarch of a wealthy family has gathered her extended family to tell them that she has screwed them out of their inheritances. A snowstorm descends on the region and several murders occur during a long Christmas weekend.

   This seems to me like a combination of a mediocre Mignon G. Eberhart mystery and a bad Ellery Queen mystery. The author can put words and sentences and paragraphs together in a coherent manner but the book, on the whole, is a disappointment.

   The physical and character clues are not first rate, and the author employs a HIBK technique that serves no valid storytelling purpose. Since the characters insisted on wandering around in the dark, leaving their bedrooms unlocked at night and napping in vulnerable spots, the killer did not have too much trouble carrying out the murders. The “mottos” from the title of the story refer to fortune-cookie type candies wrapped in little papers containing sayings which play a small part in the solution.

   Merlda Mace was a pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy. Apparently “Tip” O’Neil is not a series character, but according to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, Mace’s other two mysteries utilize a female sleuth called Christine Anderson (the ‘blonde’ in Blondes Don’t Cry).

     Bibliographic data:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV]

MACE, MERLDA. Pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy, 1910?-1990?

    Headlong for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [Christine Anderson; Connecticut]

    Motto for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [New York]
    Blondes Don’t Cry (n.) Messner 1945 [Christine Anderson; Washington, D.C.]

ELLERY QUEEN – The Origin of Evil.   Little Brown, hardcover, 1951. Reprinted many times. Paperback editions include: Pocket 926, 1953; Pocket 2926, 3rd printing, 1956 (both shown). Signet, 1972; Perennial, 1992.

   Years after his first two Hollywood books, Ellery Queen returned to Hollywood for a third novel, The Origin of Evil (1951). Once again, like The Devil to Pay, it deals with businessmen in L.A., not the movie industry. The central conceit of the story, “the household under siege from an avenger from the past”, is right out of the Sherlock Holmes tales.

       Mystery

   The Origin of Evil has an abundance of mystery plot. There are many separate mystery puzzle ideas:

   Early on, there is a nice if small example of an EQ specialty: an Impossible Disappearance (Chapter 4). It is solved right away. The disappearance plot is of a different, and perhaps simpler, structure, than those in many other EQ works. Instead, it shares a broad resemblance to another impossible crime involving footprints, the radio play “The Adventure of the Haunted Cave” (1939). Both tales have different puzzles and solutions, though.

   This multitude of mystery is good. However, many of the individual ideas are fairly simple. They are solid, but not at the peak of EQ’s ingenuity. The Origin of Evil is somewhere in the middle rank of Ellery Queen’s achievement: a decent book, but not a classic. Still, it is a pleasure to read a book focused so strongly on mystery and detection.

   The Finishing Stroke (1958) will also be an EQ novel with a major mystery in the Ten Days’ Wonder “find the pattern in a series” mode, and an “impossible disappearance of a person” subplot. The impossible disappearance will play a larger role in The Finishing Stroke than in The Origin of Evil, however.

   Some of the characters turn amateur detective in the middle of the book, recalling the amateur sleuths who assist Ellery in Cat of Many Tails. These sections involve some decent detective work, tracking down the origins of objects used in the attacks on the house (Chapters 6,8).

       Themes

   The book expresses pessimism over the arms race, and describes Yugoslavia and Iran and Korea as possible places where war could break out: 50 years later this seems frighteningly prophetic. The Origin of Evil shows the start of the Korean War on the US home-front, just as Calamity Town did for the beginning of World War II. One suspects that EQ chose the Los Angeles setting largely for these aspects of the novel.

   In addition to the arms race, there are two depictions of high tech environments in The Origin of Evil.

   The Origin of Evil is blunt in its depiction of sexuality, like some other later EQ novels. Mickey Spillane was dominating the best seller lists at this time, and EQ was clearly writing in tune with the zeitgeist.

   The Origin of Evil, like Ten Days’ Wonder, has a younger man in love with the beautiful wife of a powerful paternal figure of a man. In The Origin of Evil, the young man in love with the wife is Ellery himself. In both novels, the romantic triangle has undertones of an Oedipal conflict.

   These books, along with Cat of Many Tails, are the main products of EQ’s Freudian psychoanalytic period (1948-1951). One suspects that such Oedipal symbolism was consciously intended by the author. I confess I don’t believe in Freudian psychology at all, and don’t see the artistic value of such imagery in the novels.

       Characters

   I did like the young hero. His name, Crowe Macgowan, seems to be inspired by Cro-Magnon Man, suggesting he is an evolutionary throwback. Crowe Macgowan is one of the eccentric, non-conformist characters, that often make Golden Age mystery fiction so interesting. Such characters have almost disappeared from most contemporary English-language crime novels, which instead glorify conformity.

   Alfred Wallace is also an unusual character, who seems odder and odder as the novel progresses, and we learn more of his back-story.

   The suspect Mr. Collier wanders through The Origin of Evil, making recurring appearances, and sometimes philosophizing about life. A similar recurring philosopher character is the young black man in The Tragedy of Errors.

   I don’t know why, but sometimes the last (and the shortest step) in a project takes the most amount of time before it finally gets done.

   Case in point. I’ve been working on the Lending Library Mystery website for quite a while, and only over the weekend have I managed to get the last publisher’s page done.

   This is the website that Bill Pronzini and I have been doing in conjunction with Bill Deeck’s reference book Murder at 3 Cents a Day, which is a complete list of all of the publishers whose mysteries were published almost solely for the lending library market in the late 30s through the 1940s, with blurbs and descriptions of all their offerings.

   The best known of these may be Phoenix Press, but there were several others, including Hillman-Curl, Dodge Publishing Co., Gateway Books and more. Over the past year or more, Bill and I have been uploading cover images to the LLM website for almost all of the mystery and detective fiction put out by each of these small publishers.

   The last two to have been completed are Mystery House, about which some information about the man who founded the company has been added, and Arcadia House, the last publisher to be included and for which cover images are now available.

   Besides Bill, whose collection has been the source of all the cover images, thanks go also to Victor Berch, a tireless researcher into WorldCat and other arcane sources of publisher information.

   Follow the links and feel free to browse around!

NOTE: The two covers shown are both Arcadia House titles.

ELLERY QUEEN, Editor – Masterpieces of Mystery: The Supersleuths. Davis Publications, hardcover, 1976.

   Back in the early 1970s, the country of Nicaragua asked Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) “to set up a poll to establish the dozen greatest detectives of all time” in anticipation of that nation’s issuing a commemorative set of twelve postage stamps to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Interpol. This book is a result — or, perhaps, a by-product of that request.

   EQMM conducted three polls of mystery critics and editors, professional mystery writers, and mystery readers. It was from the last group that an unexpected (to Ellery Queen) result came:

    “Only one fictional detective was voted for unanimously by mystery critics, mystery editors, and mystery writers — not surprisingly, Sherlock Holmes. But, surprisingly, the vote for Sherlock Holmes by mystery readers was not unanimous: no less than 64 readers out of 1,090 failed to rank Holmes as one of the 12 best and greatest. Surprising, indeed. (Surprising? Incredible!)”

   Here are the poll results, in order of popularity:

1-Sherlock Holmes 2-Hercule Poirot 3-Ellery Queen 4-Nero Wolfe 5-Perry Mason 6-Charlie Chan 7-Inspector Maigret 8-C. Auguste Dupin 9-Sam Spade 10-Father Brown 11-Lord Peter Wimsey 12-Philip Marlowe 13-Dr. Gideon Fell 14-Lew Archer 15-Albert Campion 16-George Gideon 17-Miss Jane Marple 18-Philo Vance 19-The Saint (Simon Templar) 20-Roderick Alleyn 21-Luis Mendoza 22-Sir Henry Merrivale 23-Mike Hammer 24-James Bond 25-Sergeant Cuff 26-Inspector Roger West

    “This anthology … contains stories by 14 of the 15 top vote-getters in the three combined polls — 14 of the 15 most famous and most popular detective heroes of fiction.”

   Ellery Queen includes a note: “Why Charlie Chan Does Not Appear in the Volume.” Can you guess why?

   Each story in this volume is introduced by a short biographical paragraph and a cameo photograph of the author(s).

      CONTENTS:

1. “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” (1904) by A. Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Supersleuth: Sherlock Holmes.

    … our thoughts were entirely absorbed by the terrible object which lay upon the tiger-skin hearthrug in front of the fire. It was the body of a tall, well-made man, about forty years of age. He lay upon his back, his face upturned, with his white teeth grinning through his short, black beard.

Comment: When a rich but sadistic man is apparently murdered by a gang of burglars, Holmes and Watson are summoned; but the case quickly grows more complex. The solution lies in the presence of three wine glasses and a frayed bell-rope. Holmes remarks to Watson at one point: “Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.” Filmed for TV in 1986 with Jeremy Brett.

2. “The Dream” (1937) by Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Supersleuth: Hercule Poirot.

    “My laundress,” said Poirot, “was very important. That miserable woman who ruins my collars was, for the first time in her life, useful to somebody.”

Comment: When a man who dreams that he commits suicide is found dead in a watched room, only Poirot suspects murder. “Motive and opportunity are not enough …. There must also be the criminal temperament.” Filmed for TV in 1989 with David Suchet.

3. “The Case Against Carroll” (1958) by Ellery Queen (1905-1971; 1905-1982). Supersleuth: Ellery Queen.

    “The Fancy Dan who weaves an elaborate shroud for somebody else more often than not winds up occupying it himself. The clever boys trip over their own cleverness. There’s a complex pattern here, and it’s getting more tangled by the hour.”

Comment: The case against Carroll — accused of murdering a law firm partner — seems airtight; the noose tightens when someone who can support his alibi is also murdered. This story is a clever variation on alibi-breaking and is perhaps the penultimate example of that theme. Notice how the narrative’s focus shifts from Carroll at the start to Ellery at the end.

4. “The Zero Clue” (1953) by Rex Stout (1886-1975). Supersleuth: Nero Wolfe (with an able — but unwelcome — assist from Archie Goodwin).

    That was a funny thing. I’m strong on hunches, and I’ve had some beauts during the years I’ve been with Wolfe; but that day there wasn’t the slightest glimmer of something impending.

Comment: A mathematical genius is murdered and Archie unwittingly visits the crime scene, causing Inspector Cramer and a horde of policemen to invade Wolfe’s inner sanctum ( “The biggest assortment of homicide employees I had ever gazed on extended from wall to wall in the rear ….”) The dying clue involves eight pencils and a broken eraser, and the solution is found in Hindu mathematics — go figure!

5. “The Case of the Crimson Kiss” (1948) by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970). Supersleuth: Perry Mason (with Della Street and Paul Drake).

    “Ordinarily I’d spar for time, but in this case I’m afraid time is our enemy, Della. We’re going to have to walk into court with all the assurance in the world and pull a very large rabbit out of a very small hat.”

Comment: “… Carver L. Clements, wealthy playboy, yachtsman, broker, gambler for high stakes, was dead.” And good riddance, too. But why is Fay Allison, who never even met the deceased, on trial for his murder — especially when there are better suspects around like, say, Perry Mason and Della Street? Talk about your kiss of death! Filmed for TV in 1957 with Raymond Burr.

6. “Inspector Maigret Pursues” (1961) by Georges Simenon (1903-1989). Supersleuth: Inspector Maigret.

    Had the police one single clue? Nothing. Not one piece of evidence. A man killed during the night in the Bois de Boulogne. No weapon is found. No prints.

Comment: Slogging police work for Maigret and his detectives through the freezing streets and stuffy bars of wintertime Paris. “He didn’t know yet that this dreadful trail was to become a classic, and that for years the older generation of detectives would recount the details to new colleagues.” Yet Maigret came to view it differently: “As things turned out, this case was to be referred to at Headquarters as the one perhaps most characteristically Maigret; but when they spoke of it in his hearing, he had a curious way of turning his head away with a groan.”

7. “The Purloined Letter” (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Supersleuth: C. Auguste Dupin.

    “… I have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance has been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined it is known — this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession.”

Comment: The world’s first armchair detective chain smokes his way to a logical solution to a non-violent crime.

8. “Too Many Have Lived” (1932) by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961). Supersleuth: Sam Spade.

    “Who is this Eli Haven?” “He’s a bad egg. He doesn’t do anything. Writes poetry or something.”

Comment: The world’s first popular gumshoe chain-smokes his way to a logical solution to a very violent crime.

9. “The Man in the Passage” (1913) by Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936). Supersleuth: Father Brown.

    The three men looked down, and in one of them at least the life died in that late light of afternoon. It ran along the passage like a path of gold, and in the midst of it Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of green and gold, with her dead face turned upwards.

Comment: Actress Aurora Rome is murdered in her theatre dressing room amidst a group of admirers — and one nondescript Catholic priest. Considering that everyone but the clergyman had experienced amorous impulses exceeding adoration towards her, why would anybody want to kill her? In a courtroom finale, Father Brown clarifies it all, you could say, by holding up a mirror to human nature. (Defense counsel is named Patrick Butler — just a coincidence?)

10. “The Footsteps That Ran” (1928) by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). Supersleuth: Lord Peter Wimsey (with Bunter).

    “No use playing your bally-fool-with-an-eyeglass tricks on me, Wimsey. I’m up to them.”

Comment: Lord Peter Wimsey-cally solves it when a woman is murdered right over his head, one floor up. The assailant has apparently taken flight with the weapon, but the killer’s goose is cooked when Wimsey gets the bird.

11. “The Pencil” (1959; published posthumously) by Raymond Chandler (1888-1959). Supersleuth: Philip Marlowe.

    I had my pipe lit and going well. I frowned down at the one-grand note. I could use it very nicely. My checking account could kiss the sidewalk without stooping.

Comment: Marlowe is hired by “an ex-hood, used to be a troubleshooter for the Outfit, the Syndicate, the big mob, or whatever name you want to use for it.” As he wisecracks his way through the case, he receives — by Special Delivery, no less — the … pencil!

12. “The Proverbial Murder” (1943) by John Dickson Carr (1906-1977). Supersleuth: Dr. Gideon Fell .

    “You see,” [Dr. Fell] said, “this crime is very much more ingenious than it looks. A certain person who is listening to me now has created something of an artistic masterpiece.”

Comment: A simple case for Gideon Fell — simple, that is, if, like him, you can correctly connect up the disturbed window curtain, the disappearing stuffed wildcat, dried moss that’s gone missing, and a gun that couldn’t possibly have fired the fatal bullet but did. Archons of Athens!

13. “Midnight Blue” (1960) by Ross Macdonald (1915-1983). Supersleuth: Lew Archer.

    Her hair was in curlers. She looked like a blonde Gorgon. I smiled up at her, the way the Greek whose name I don’t remember must have smiled.

Comment: Archer goes target shooting and stumbles across the body of a high school senior, her neck in a noose. Did the crack-brained hobo do it, or the highway patrol dispatcher; or was it the grieving father, or maybe the restaurant cook (a proven killer), or the philandering teacher or his estranged wife? The motive is just about the oldest one in the book, as Sam Hawthorne has been known to say.

14. “One Morning They’ll Hang Him” (1950) by Margery Allingham (1904-1966). Supersleuth: Albert Campion.

    “It’s not a great matter — just one of those stupid little snags which has some perfectly obvious explanation. Once it’s settled the whole case is open-and-shut … It’s just one of those ordinary, rather depressing little stories which most murder cases are. There’s practically no mystery, no chase — nothing but a wretched liittle tragedy.”

Comment: On the contrary, Inspector Kenny, the “perfectly obvious explanation” you hope for is an illusion, as Mr. Campion goes on to prove. A shell-shocked war veteran is the prime suspect in the murder of his hot-tempered aunt, but the weapon is missing (it is, in fact, anything but sedentary). Once the killer and the gun are reunited, only then can you say “the whole case is open-and-shut.

KINGSLEY AMIS & ROBERT CONQUEST – The Egyptologists. Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1965. Random House, US, hardcover, 1966. UK paperback reprints: Penguin 2769, 1968; Panther, 1975.

   Who are the Egyptologists?

   Just what goes on behind the sedate doors of the Metropolitan Society for Egyptology of London?

   Women would like to know — no woman is allowed to join — especially wives.

   The BBC would like to know — their expose of the Society ended up in a virtual on air brawl.

   Egyptologists would like to know — no one with the least academic credentials is allowed to join.

   MI6 would like to know — you know how nosy spies are.

   Scotland Yard would like to know — the Vice Squad just raided the place, and now a society member has gone missing. Could it be foul play?

   Well, actually yes, but not the kind readers of this blog might expect.

   Funny too, the wives think, that all of their husbands suddenly developed an interest in Egyptology at the same time. Especially when they had never shown the least interest in the subject before. Or anything else remotely academic.

   Readers familiar with Kingsley Amis will no doubt have already developed a theory about just what the Society is up to, or what exactly their mysterious Project Nefertiti is. And just how did they break one of breasts off the bust of Nefertiti by attempting to put a bra on her? And why?

   Kingsley Amis was a literary gadfly who burst on the literary scene with Lucky Jim, a comedy of manners and sex at Oxford. The books that followed took him from dirty young man (That Uncertain Feeling — the basis for the Peter Sellers film Only Two Can Play) to dirty old man (One Fat Englishman), laughing, jibing, and harpooning the comfortable all the way.

   He also championed science fiction, writing one of the key works of criticism in the field (The New Maps of Hell) with the co-author of The Egyptologists, Robert Conquest.

   He championed Ian Fleming and James Bond in The James Bond Dossier and Every Man His Own 007 (as William Tanner), and penned the first and one of the best Bond pastiche in Colonel Sun, published as by Robert Markham.

   And he refused to sit still. The Alteration is a startling tale of an alternate world where a group tries to save a young boy from being made a castrati by the all powerful Catholic Church — it was chosen one of the 100 best modern science fiction novels.

   He wrote a coming of age novel in the form of a murder mystery, The Riverside Villa Murders, and a spy novel that was a meditation on morality, The Anti-Death League.

   His horror novel The Green Man was chosen one of the 100 best modern horror novels — it is also drop dead funny. It was made into a mini series and shown on A&E with Albert Finney in the leading role.

   I won’t give away the secret of the Metropolitan Egyptological Society, but nothing good lasts forever.

   Science fiction fans will also enjoy the many references to the genre from theories of alien invasion, to Professor Asimov, of Krakow who almost never publishes anything …

   If you aren’t familiar with Amis work, this is a perfect place to start. It reads much like one of the great British film comedies of the fifties and sixties (a few of which were based on Amis novels), you won’t be alone if you find yourself casting the novel as you read it with those great British character actors.

   You won’t forget the secret of The Egyptologists, alas for them, neither will their wives.

   Sadly membership is closed, but then your wife would never approve of your spending your Thursday evenings there.

   You know what those ancient Egyptians were like — well, actually, if you do, you couldn’t be a member anyway. You wouldn’t want an actual Egyptologist in the Metropolitan Egyptological Society — that would hardly be fair to the members.

   You wouldn’t want them to waste their Thursdays discussing ancient Egypt would you?

   That would be a complete waste of valuable time.

   And believe me, the Egyptologists have better things to do.

Editorial Comment:  For what it’s worth — and in case you were wondering — this book is NOT included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.

    Or should that be NOT YET?

ELLY GRIFFITHS – The Crossing Places. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, January 2010. UK edition: Quercus, hardcover, February 2009.

    The Crossing Places introduces Ruth Galloway, a forensic archeologist who teaches at the University of New Norfolk, and lives on the Saltmarsh in a cottage in the midst of a vast wasteland, with the sea only a line of dark gray against the milky horizon and dimly glimpsed in the distance.

    Two other houses huddle nearby, with scarcely a hint of current human habitation, a bleak expanse that serves as an apt setting for Griffiths’ first crime novel.

   Galloway is happiest when she’s working among her bones, until she is asked by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson to help with the excavation of remains he believes to be those of Lucy Downey, who disappeared ten years earlier. The bones are, in fact, two thousand years old, but when another girl goes missing, Galloway finds herself drawn deeper into Nelson’s investigation — which also brings back into her life her former lover and her mentor, whose ties to Nelson’s case may be more than purely circumstantial.

    Griffiths’ husband is an archaeologist, and she gives him and other sources full credit for their police and archaeological expertise. The attention to detail grounds the novel in solid realism, while the use of the present tense for the narration gives it a highly compelling immediacy.

    Like most female amateur sleuths in contemporary crime fiction Ruth prefers to follow her own investigative paths, paths that lead her into dangerous situations, with more than a hint of the traditional Had-I-But-Known technique in evidence.

    But that hint of conventional vulnerability only made the character more attractive for me, as I found myself both engaged by her determination and irritated by her lapses in judgment.

    The developing professional relationship between Galloway and Nelson, even if they are sometimes at odds, is a major factor in the novel’s appeal. The archaeologist and the professional investigator make an excellent team, and I suspect that the series, if it materializes, will take good advantage of this very fortunate pairing.

Editorial Comment:   Walter’s right. The second book in the series, The Janus Stone, is scheduled for publication in the UK in 2010:

DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Thin Man. Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and paperback, including Pocket #196, 1942; Vintage, trade pb, 1989.

   The Thin Man is Hammett’s last and weakest novel. By the time it was written, he had begun his affair with Lillian Hellman, been embraced and financially enriched by Hollywood, and adopted a freewheeling, alcoholic, pseudo-sophisticated life style not dissimilar to the one depicted in these pages.

   He had, in short, lost touch with everything that had made his earlier work so innovative and powerful — his background as a Pinkerton detective, his contacts in the underworld, the lean years spent in a San Francisco flat painstakingly writing stories for Black Mask.

   Hammett could not go home again, and he knew it. Unable to write about the Op or Sam Spade, he could only write about the likes of Nick and Nora Charles. They were phonies in comparison, and he knew that, too — if not during the composition of The Thin Man, then not long afterward.

   Nick Charles is no longer a detective, a reflection of the fact that Hammett was no longer a writer; he is an ex-sleuth, formerly with the Trans-American Detective Agency of San Francisco, having one last fling at his old profession. Nor is he tough any longer; he is a charming, fun-loving, nouveau riche alcoholic with a veneer of gentility.

   (His wife is just like him, the flighty type who forces him into his one last fling as a means of exorcising her own boredom — the kind of woman the Op or Sam Spade would have sneered at in the old days.)

   The plot has its moments, but on the whole it is merely a standard whodunit of the period. Inventor Clyde Wynant disappears and his secretary is found murdered; Nick investigates at Nora’s urging and encounters such characters as Mimi Jorgensen (his former girlfriend), Dorothy Wynant (Mimi’s daughter), a crooked lawyer named Herbert Macaulay, a gangster named Shep Morelli, a nightclub owner named Studsy Burke.

   There is more mayhem, considerable duplicity, and enough booze consumed to float the proverbial battleship; Nick solves the case; and at the end Nora says, “Let’s stick around San Francisco a while. This excitement has put us behind in our drinking.”

   Those two lines are typical of the book’s tone: light, witty, urbane. If anyone other than Hammett had written it, it would stand as an amusing piece of fluff. But compared to The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key, it is shallow and gutless.

   Ironically, Nick and Nora Charles, thanks to the six films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, join Sam Spade as Hammett’s most famous detective characters. The films, like the novel, are witty and sophisticated; unlike the novel, they work well because Hammett didn’t write them and because of the delightful interplay between Powell and Loy.

   The best are the first, The Thin Man (1934), based on the novel; After the Thin Man (1936); and Shadow of the Thin Man (1941). Peter Lawford starred in a popular TV series in the Fifties.

   It should also be noted that Hollywood is responsible for the widespread misconception that “the thin man” refers to Nick Charles. Not true. It refers to the disappearing inventor, Clyde Wynant.

         ———
   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.

Note: This completes this cycle of Hammett reviews on the Mystery*File blog, which began with Dan Stumpf’s earlier comments on The Thin Man, which you can find here.