ELLERY QUEEN – The House of Brass. Ellery Queen #32. [Said to have been plotted by Frederick Dannay and written by Avram Davidson. (See Comments #2 and #4.)] New American Library, hardcover, 1968. Signet, paperback, 1971. Several reprint editions followed.

   Ellery returns from an overseas vacation at the beginning of the last chapter, in which the case’s solution finally comes out, thanks to Ellery’s deductions. I might say that Ellery makes it too easy, without substantial indications pointing to the identity of the missing heir, but the mystery, artificiality and all, makes up for it.

   Before that, in the beginning, Inspector Queen and Jessie, his recent bride, receive a strange note inviting them to the ancestral home of the Brass family, The old man, the lone survivor, has brought prospective heirs-to-be together in one spot, before completing his will, with what he says is a legacy of $6,000,000. Once the will is made, you know he hasn’t long to live. Who is the murderer, and where is the money?

   Ellery’s father asks the assistance of several old cronies, like the Inspector, all required to retire from the force because of age, But the Inspector doesn’t fare very well.  He does discover the dream of gold is actually one of mere brass, but an alibi keeps the case from being closed.

   Now maybe Ellery, having read many mysteries, realizes that the missing heir has to be a clue, as should any devotee of the genre. But is this any way to solve a mystery?

Rating: ****

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece. Perry Mason #8. Morrow, hardcover, 1936. Pocket, paperback, 1944. Reprinted many times.

   Perry Mason is approached by a “peculiar” client-Edna Hammer, who seeks help for her uncle, Peter Kent. Kent has a bad habit of sleepwalking, and when he does, he heads for the carving knives and curls up in bed with one. Edna is afraid Uncle Peter will kill someone, and she wants Mason to prevent this.

   Kent has other troubles: a wife who instituted divorce proceedings on account of the sleepwalking but now wants to reconcile; a fiancee whom he wishes to marry but can’t unless the divorce goes through; a complicated business arrangement with a “cracked-brained inventor”; a hypochondriac half brother; and a woman tailing him in a green Packard roadster.

   Mason spends a night at the Kent home, and by the next morning there is a bloodstained knife under Peter Kent’s pillow, a corpse in the guest room, and a client in very hot water.

   The writing in this early novel is taut and lean — reflective of Gardner’s hard-boiled work for such pulp magazines as Black Mask. The dialogue is terse and packs a good impact, and there arc none of the long-winded conversations and introspections that characterize the later Perry Masons. A first-rate example of Gardner’s work in the Thirties and early Forties.

   Some other notable titles in the series are The Case of the Black-Eyed Blond (1944), The Case of the Lazy Lover (1947), The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister (1953), and The Case of the Daring Decoy ( 1957). After the late Fifties, the novels seem to lose something, possibly as a result of Gardner’s work on the Perry Mason TV series. Mason is less flamboyant, and the plots are not as intricate or well tied off as in the earlier novels.

   Gardner created other series characters, writing under both his own name and the pseudonym A. A. Fair. The best of these under the Gardner name are small-town prosecutor Doug Selby (The D.A. Calls It Murder, 1937; The D.A. Cooks a Goose, 1942), whose role as a hero is a reverse of Hamilton Burger’s; and Gramps Wiggins (The Case of the Turning Tide, 1941; The Case of the Smoking Chimney, 1943), an iconoclastic old prospector whose experiences reflect Gardner’s childhood travels with his mining-engineer father.

   In addition to his novels, Gardner wrote hundreds_of mystery and western stories under various names for such magazines as Argosy, Black Mask, Sunset, West, and Outdoor Stories.

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   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.

BLOOD WORK. Warner Bros., 2002. Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston, Wanda De Jesus. Based on the novel by Michael Connelly. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

   Clint Eastwood directs, and stars in, Blood Work, a rather captivating police procedural from the aughts. Based on the book by Michael Connelly, the film features Eastwood as a retired FBI agent who returns to work under highly unusual conditions. After suffering a heart attack a couple years ago while chasing the Code Killer, Terry McCaleb (Eastwood) is recovering from a heart transplant and living a slow-paced life on his boat in the Long Beach harbor.

   All that changes when Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) comes to him with a request: find the person who murdered her sister, Gloria. McCaleb is perplexed. Why him? He’s retired. Only when he’s told that he is the recipient of Rivers’ heart does he decide to take the case.

   He’s retired, of course. So all of this police work on his part is unofficial and puts him at loggerheads with the LAPD and with his physician (Anjelica Huston), who thinks he’s putting his life at risk. Still, McCaleb is determined to see this through to the very end. It’s only when he begins to dig deeper that he realizes that the Code Killer, his long time nemesis, may be back and playing a deadly game with him.

   Because McCaleb doesn’t drive, he has to rely upon his neighbor, Jasper “Buddy” Noone (Jeff Daniels) to ferry him around town while he conducts his unofficial investigation. The chemistry between these two leads is solid, with Daniels really leaning into the role of a boat bum with too much time on his hands.

   Aside from being a police procedural, Blood Work is very much a character study of a man at the end of his career who realizes that he has a lot of unfinished business to tend to. There’s a whole subplot about McCaleb’s guilt and belief that he is undeserving of the heart he has been gifted and his sorrow that there is a kid on a heart transplant waiting list, but it never adds up to very much.

   As it turns out, however, the heart transplant itself becomes the key to unlocking not only Gloria’s murder, but the dark machinations of the Code Killer. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even if it was slow in the beginning. The direction is lean and to the point, something for which Eastwood is known.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.” Novella. First published in Unknown Worlds, October 1942. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1959). Reprinted in 6 x H (Pyramid G642, paperback original, 1961), among others.

   Jonathan Hoag hires the husband-and-wife team of Randall & Craig, Confidential Investigation to solve the mystery of the dirty fingernails. The nails are his. Under them is a dried brownish blood-like substance. The doctor who analyzes it throws him out of his office, and Hoag discovers that he does not know what he does all day.

   The solution, as he sees it, is to have himself shadowed.

   But this is no mere detective story, but a powerful fantasy that creates doubts as to the reality of the world around us. Unfortunately is might have been a better story as a mystery, except that the explanation dies have to transcend the limits of everyday detection.

   Still, it is too easy to throw away the beginning for the less restrictive.

Rating: ****

It’s been one heck of a week, starting with

Tuesday, eye doctor.

Wednesday, lawyer.

Thursday, accountant.

Friday, foot doctor.

All regularly scheduled appointments. No emergencies. But…

I’m too old for this. But…

I survived.

Back to work tomorrow.

ROBERT J. BOWMAN – The House of Blue Lights. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1987. No paperback edition.

   It took me a while to decide what Cassandra Thorpe’s occupation is at the beginning of this book. She is not a private investigator, but rather an investigator for the public defender’s office. (A public investigator?) City: San Francisco.

   More specifically: the unappetizing skid row district south of Market. Her clients: winos, derelicts, and a crazy man who writes notebooks full of code in colors and ends up dead. It’s a busy kind of story, and not a very comfortable one. Maybe it was just me.

BILLIE HOLIDAY – Lady Sings the Blues [with William Dufty]. Doubleday, hardcover, 1956. Reprint editions include: Popular Library, paperback, 1958. Lancer, paperback, 1969. Avon, paperback, 1976. Harlem Moon, softcover, as Lady Sings the Blues: 50th Anniversary Edition, 2006.

   An ‘as told to’ autobiography. Legitimacy in question, but if you ask me, based on nothing but instinct, it’s pretty legit.

   Why? Because it makes her look bad. And it’s not very well written. And it makes you depressed just reading it. It’s not ups and downs. It’s mostly just downs.

   And certain tidbits, no one is making this shit up. For example: one of her earliest memories is of her great grandmother, who she loved. Who would regale her with stories from the days of slavery. Where she had 16 kids by the Irish master, and was set up in a little shack behind his home. Great grandma was never supposed to lie down, so she slept in a chair. She’d die if she ever lay down. And little Eleanora (she picked up the name ‘Billie’ later, for her screen girl crush, silent starlet Billie Dove), would wash her great grandma down with washcloths, and was the only one who paid any attention to her.

   So the little four year old bathes grandma one time and grandma begs: oh dear child, please lay down some blankets, I’m so tired, and snuggle up with me and I’ll tell you a story. So she does and wakes a few hours later, middle of the night, and great grandma is ice cold, rigor mortis has set in, and she’s holding the child with a death grip. The child screams and they have to call the fire department to break great grandmas arm to set her free. And she’s beaten for having let great grandma lie down, and was told she killed her.

   Yeah. And it doesn’t get much brighter. Hounded for addiction to opioids, imprisoned, raped aged 10; sent up for seducing the 40 year old man who raped her. Her life sucked.

   There were some good times, sure. And she has nice stories of Orson Welles and Bob Hope and Clark Gable and Artie Shaw standing up for her, standing up against racism.

   But overall it’s just a depressing pit of despair. And she’s frankly not that likable as she sinks. She takes no responsibility for her addiction, the black hole of her constant poverty, no matter how much she makes, her relationships with one abusive scoundrel after the next. And you can see she’s drowning. And it’s too late. But she still can’t see it in this book completed three years before her death. She still has a bit of hope that you know is doomed. And that voice, that fading beauty, the tremor in her reaching vibrato. She sings straight from her breaking heart. And you can feel it. But to no avail. You’d like to help but it’s just too late.

   It’s easy to remember. But so hard to forget.

   Forget it. It’ll just make you sad.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink. Perry Mason #39. William Morrow, hardcover, 1952. Pocket #1107, paperback, 1956. Reprinted several times since. TV adaptation: Perry Mason, CBS, 14 December 1957. (Season 1, episode 13; starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale.)

   The moth-eaten mink belongs to waitress Dixie Dayton — or at least it does until the night Perry Mason and Della Street stop in for dinner at Morris Alburg’ s restaurant. While they are there, something-or someone frightens Dixie and she runs out, without either her paycheck or the once-expensive coat.

   The restaurateur, Mason, and Street speculate about the woman’s hasty disappearance, but soon find out from the police that Dayton was struck down — not fatally — outside by a passing car while fleeing a man with a gun. Mason takes charge of the mink, and in its lining finds a ticket from a Seattle pawnshop. But before Paul Drake can investigate it, the police find a second ticket in Dayton’s possession; they inquire and find out it is for a diamond ring, and the pawnbroker remembers the other object left in his shop-a gun used in a cop killing one year before.

   The case becomes a tangle of falsehoods, assumed identities, cryptic clues, missing witnesses, missing clients. and murder. Mason and Drake work around the clock in the interests of their clients — Morris Alburg and Dixie Dayton, both now accused of homicide. And Lieutenant Tragg hands Mason a surprise in the last sentence.

   All the Mason books are talky, relying upon dialogue rather than description, action, or deep characterization, but this one is particularly so. Tragg, in fact, holds center stage with his long-winded speeches. The plot, however, is characteristically complex, and a true Perry Mason fan will relish its twists and turns.

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   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.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. November 1967. Overall rating: ***

HARRY KEMELMAN “Man on a Ladder.” Novelette. Professor Nicky Welt solves the murder of a scholar [committed to academic work.] I may be in the minority, but I found this story wordy and flat, and if I may, stagey, The chess analogy is good, but isn’t it clear? (2)

JACOB HAY “The Belkamp Apparatus.” A sales representative for a Grand Rapids firm is mistaken for a master spy. It is humorous. (4)

COLIN WATSON “The Infallible Clock.” If a wife disappears and a large clock stops working, what would you suspect? (2)

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “Mr. Strang Finds the Answers,” The key to Mr. Strang’s chemistry exam is stolen, but the mystery is outweighed by the human factors involved. (4)

RICHARD CURTIS “Odds Bodkins and the £1000 Wager.” The odds on breaking out of prison? Only in England. (3)

G. R. SPENCER “The Polite Mrs. Payne.” First story. A holdup man’s politeness is his downfall. (3)

JOYCE CARY “The Sheep.” Published earlier in Texas Quarterly Winter 1958. Tomlin is a sheep, helpless to speak out for himself; excellent characterization that collapses into nothingness. (3)

RON GOULART “Rink.” Parody. 1001st Precinct mystery. Funny. (3)

ELLERY QUEEN “Uncle from Australia.” First appeared in The Diners Club Magazine, June 1965. The Cockney aitch strikes again. Easy puzzle. (2)

THOMAS WALSH “Poor Little Rich Kid.” First appeared in Collier’s, 18 April 1936, as “The Boy on the Train.” A boy with an inheritance, and a weak father, befriends a couple of rodeo cowboys. Good story, but over-plotted. (3)

JAMES CROSS “The Man Who Called Himself James Cross.” Sebastian Nonesuch. A sequel to “The hkzmp gsv bzmp Case,” published in the November 1966 issue of EQMM (reviewed here). The revealed details of the exploits of  US agent Sebastian Nonesuch must be stopped. Often hilarious. (4)

MICHAEL HARRISON “The Fires in the Rue St. Honore.” Another “unpublished” story of C. Auguste Dupin. It seems to be better than the rest, but it turns out to be hopeless for the attentive reader. (2)

ARTHUR PORGES “The Nose of a Beagle.”That the detective is Charles Darwin is obvious from the title. (2)

CHRISTIANNA BRAND “Here Lies…” How to drown a wife who is a swimming champion, and how to build an atmosphere of suspense most effectively. (5)

DEAN R. KOONTZ – Star Quest. Ace Double H-70; paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Cover art by Gray Morrow. Published back-to-back with Doom of the Green Planet by Emil Petaja. Apparently never reprinted.

   The universe has been the scene of a centuries-long war between the Romaghians and the Setessins. On a restricted primitive planet Tohm is forcibly separated from his love Tarnilee by invading Romaghians. His search for her leads him to the slave planet Basa II, where he joins a group of hunted Muties, mutants caused by the effects of nuclear warfare,

   The latter have learned the power of shifting between divided universes, and have successfully rid their universe of warring worlds.

   Shallow on first reading, but Dean says there are allegorical points. The warring enemies are descendants of the radical right and the radical left; the mutants are “soulbrothers” – the victims of the attempted cleansing of guilt – who have succeeded in ending war, But who are the mutants with white eyes, tangible lust creatures, who periodically appear and disappear?

   This will probably not rate well with others, sorry to say. Dean does have a good picturesque style.

Rating: ***