This one flew under the radar and was generally perceived to be a box office flop. Adapted from the eponymous Jack London adventure novel, The Call of the Wild is equally part spectacle and part sentiment. The trailer does a fairly accurate job in conveying the general story. This is to be a tale about a dog, Buck, as he leaves the comforts of northern California and embarks on a new life in the Yukon. And as you can quickly ascertain, Buck is a CGI creation and not a “real dog.”

   But that doesn’t stop the movie from being emotionally resonant. The moments in the movie in which Harrison Ford’s character bonds with Buck are quite powerful. It’s nice to see Ford back in a major motion picture. The cinematography by Janusz KamiÅ„ski, a frequent collaborator with Steven Spielberg, is quite striking and shows how much investment, financial and otherwise, was put into this overall family friendly film.

   Unfortunately, despite the filmmakers’ best intentions, this cinematic adaptation of a classic work simply does not rise to the level of greatness to which it clearly aspired. There’s something flat about the whole affair, despite the moments in which it shines bright. I think that flatness is fairly well captured in the trailer as well.
   

RICHARD FORREST – The Death at Yew Corner. Bea & Lyon Wentworth #5. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1980. Dell / Scene of the Crime #76, paperback, 1984.

   Connecticut’s own amateur sleuthing team of Bea and Lyon Wentworth are back at it again. This is the fifth case they’ve tackled in tandem, which doesn’t yet put them into the superstar category of a Mr. and Mrs. North, but it is enough to start attracting them some attention.

   In this one Bea, who has just lost her bid for a state congressional seat, finds a place to vent her energies when an old friend dies in a mysterious nursing home accident. Joining her in her investigation is her husband, Lyon, author of all those marvelous children’s stories about the Wobblies.

   Murphysville, which may or may not be Middletown in disguise, is also the scene of an ugly ongoing confrontation between the management of the convalescent home and its angry, militant employees. There is a connection, as Bea soon discovers.

   A surprising number of other bizarre deaths follow, culminating in the fascinating puzzle of a murder committed in a locked bathroom. Just as you begin to think that the book has gone off the deep end completely, however, author Richard Forrest suddenly snaps everything into place, and what’s more he makes it look easy.

   Bea Wentworth, as the star of the show, may remind you a bit of TV’s ultra-liberal Maude, from the series of the same name. Bea, however, is not nearly as prone to loud histrionics to make her point. In spite of various and sundry temptations, she manages to stay her level-headed best in this outing, and she helps pull it off rather nicely.

Rating: B

      The Lyon and Bea Wentworth series —

1. A Child’s Garden of Death (1975)
2. The Wizard of Death (1977)
3. Death Through the Looking Glass (1978)
4. The Death in the Willows (1979)
5. The Death At Yew Corner (1980)
6. Death Under the Lilacs (1985)
7. Death On the Mississippi (1989)
8. The Pied Piper of Death (1997)
9. Death in the Secret Garden (2004)
10. Death At King Arthur’s Court (2005)

BILLY TWO HATS. United Artists, 1974. Gregory Peck, Desi Arnaz Jr, Jack Warden, David Hudddleston, and Sian Barbara Allen. Written by Alan Sharp. Directed by Ted Kotcheff. Currently available for viewing online here.

   An unjustly neglected western well worth your time.

   Gregory Peck, portly, bearded, and sporting a Scots accent, charms the screen as a principled outlaw on the run, partnered with Desi Arnaz Jr (don’t laugh; he’s not bad at all here as the eponymous mixed-race youth.) and, briefly, Vic Armstrong, an actor-stuntman blasted into a hotel wall early on by lawman Jack Warden.

   Warden captures Desi, Peck escapes, then rescues Desi at a lonely wayside stop on the edge of the desert, wounding Warden in the process. But Warden’s old buffalo-hunting pal (a surprisingly grizzled Huddleston) shoots Peck’s horse out from under him, breaking Greg’s leg.

   The ensuing chase — wounded lawman & fat buddy, riding after crippled bad guy & partner sharing a horse — feels not so much leisurely as repressed. Every time one party or the other starts to make progress, something stops them dead, sometimes literally.

   Fortunately, Alan Sharp’s witty script and Ted Kotcheff’s nimble direction keep things from getting dull. The sparse action scenes are well-handled, and the characters consistently engaging, particularly Sian Barbara Allen as a pioneer woman whose speech impediment provides a thematic bond with the disabled antagonists.

   And I found a cute sidelight on IMDb: Billy Two-Hats was filmed in Israel, standing in for the rugged terrain of Arizona. Years earlier, when Gregory Peck starred in David and Bathsheba, Arizona stood in for Israel. That means something, but I don’t know what.
   

MR. & MRS. NORTH “Weekend Murder.” CBS, 03 October, 1952 (Season 1, Episode 1.) Barbara Britton (Pamela North), Richard Denning (Jerry North), Francis De Sales (Lt. Bill Weigand). Guest Cast: Margo Wood, Rita Johnson, Paul Cavanagh, James Kirkwood. Writer: DeWitt Bodeen, based on the characters created by Frances & Richard Lockridge. Director: Ralph Murphy.

   The TV version of Mr. & Mrs. North lasted for two seasons, the first on CBS from 1952-53, and the second, only 18 episodes long, on NBC in 1954. They were also on the radio from 1942 to 1954. Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin had the title roles for most of the run. And of course before that, there were the books, 26 of them, before Frances Lockridge’s death in 1963. After her passing, her husband Richard continued writing, but he never produced a Norths novel on his own.

   It surely must have helped that so many people knew who the Norths were, because this, the first TV episode jumps right into the story without so much of an introduction. (I think this was common, however, back in the early days of television.) In any case, it is Jerry, a book publisher who has to be persuaded by his wife Pam to take a weekend off and spend it at a famous actress’s country home, somewhere outside Manhattan and their usual city environs.

   But as chance would have it, when they all arrive, the housekeeper is missing and there is a dead man in the kitchen closet. As in all the books and their other adventures, it is Pam who decides that she needs to solve the case. Jerry would just as soon let the police handle it. I don’t know whether (or how many) other married sleuths tackled their cases in this same particular way, but this was the usual Norths’ modus operandi, with Pam always sticking her neck out a little too far along the way. And so it is here.

   I don’t think that most readers of the books had too much to complain about in terms of the casting. Richard Denning does ham up the comedy a little too much for my tastes, but that’s just me. As for the case itself, the clue to the killer is way too obvious, although the writer does try to gloss it over as it happens. Not enough so for a long-time TV crimesolver such as myself, though.

RAYMOND J. HEALY & J. FRANCIS McCOMAS, Editors – Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time And Space. The Modern Library G-31; hardcover, 1957, xvi + 997 pages. First published as Adventures in Time in Space, Random House, hardcover, 1946. Bantam F3102, paperback, 1966, as Adventures in Time and Space (contains only 8 stories). Ballantine, paperback, 1975, also as Adventures in Time and Space.

Part 3 can be found here.

LEWIS PADGETT “Time Locker.” Galloway/Gallagher #1. Novelette. This time Galloway (the prototype of Gallagher) invents a locker which leads into another space-time continuum and the usual type of plot-juggling. (4)

Update: First published in Astounding SF, January 1943. First reprinted in this anthology. Also reprinted in The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Harry Turtledove (Del Rey / Ballantine, trade paperback, 2005). First collected in Robots Have No Tails (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1952). Henry Kuttner’s wife C. L. Moore may have collaborated with him on this story. This is the second story by “Lewis Padgett” in this anthology. (Follow the link above.) I haven’t been reading as much SF lately as I should have, so I don’t know if anyone in the field today is writing anything as funny as a good deal of what Kuttner wrote back in the 1940s.

CLEVE CARTMILL “The Link.” Short story. The first step of man above the ape level on the evolutionary ladder may have happened this way, but it’s not likely. (1)

Update: First published in Astounding SF, August 1942. First reprinted in this anthology, then later in Political Science Fiction: An Introductory Reader, edited by Martin Harry Greenberg & Patricia S. Warrick (Prentice-Hall, trade paperback, 1974). From Wikipedia: “He [Cartmill] is best remembered for what is sometimes referred to as ‘the Cleve Cartmill affair,’ when his 1944 story ‘Deadline’ attracted the attention of the FBI by reason of its detailed description of a nuclear weapon similar to that being developed by the highly classified Manhattan Project.”

MAURICE A. HUGI “Mechanical Mice.” Short story.” A time machine leads to the construction of a world-destroyer. Too old. (0)

Update: First published in Astounding SF, January 1941. First reprinted in this anthology and (among others) Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited Terry Carr (Harper & Row, hardcover, 1978) and The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 3, 1941, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books, paperback, 1980). Hugi perhaps comes closest to being a Little Known Writer as anyone in this anthology, with only a handful of stories to his credit. SF writer Eric Frank Russell is said to have worked extensively with Hugi on this story before it could be accepted for publication.

TO BE CONTINUED.…

BILL PRONZINI – A Killing in Xanadu. “Nameless” PI. Waves Press, hardcover [?]; softcover, 1980. Frontispiece by John Exley. 21 pages; limited to 150 copies signed by the author.

   The recent publishing silence from Ross Macdonald may indicate that he has laid down the Hammett-Chandler crown of private eyedom. There is no shortage of claimants to the succession. One the one hand there are the Chandler Lookalikes who adopt Chandler’s view of the world and, less happily, his loose approach to plot construction; in short, many detectives walk down pale imitations of Chandler’s Mean Streets. On the other hand are the Violent Voyeurs who confuse sex with social comment and violence with action.

   It seems to me, however, that there is one obvious candidate. In powers of characterization, sense of pace, compassion and stylistic excellence, the crown ought to belong to Bill Pronzini and his “Nameless” detective.

   Pronzini’s Nameless series may be most noteworthy in its relative lack of violence and explicit sex. Unlike other authors who try to hide a lack of invention by tossing in gratuitous killings and irrelevant beddings, Pronzini lets his plot and characters create the interest. Part of Pronzini’s ability is, of course, that he is inventive His plots move well, and they contain good detection. He gives the reader the same clues that Nameless has, and he revels in twists and turns leading to a final unexpected conclusion. In some ways, the Nameless series connects the private-eye tale with its emphasis on realistic description, and the classical detective tale with its emphasis on plot. (Most other claimants to the crown provide plenty of realistic detail but a rather predictable story,)

   Above all Nameless is vividly depicted; in his mid-50s, the moody, self-consciously sloppy, slightly paunchy private detective is a most sympathetic character. Unlike more pretentious authors, however, Pronzini does not have Nameless represent Everyman or summarize the human condition. But in many ways, Nameless’s weaknesses are ours as well, and we identify with him – as obviously Pronzini identifies with him. (We now know that Nameless’s first name is “Bill” and that his last name has a “z” in. the middle.)

   It is a sign of Pronzini’s stature that he is one of the few mystery writers to have a privately printed, limited edition to his credit. A Killing in Xanadu is a miniature summation of the strengths of the Nameless series. It begins with a deftly drawn portrait of a posh resort called Xanadu, made up of “a whole series of pleasure domes.” Nameless is there to deliver a subpoena: “No rich client, no smoky-hot liaison with a beautiful woman, no fat fee.”

   This is followed by a quick but precise characterization of a black attendant: “His eyes said that I would never make it up that hill over yonder … but then neither would he and the hell with it.” Nameless tracks down the cottage of the alcoholic recipient of the subpoena, but as he heads towards it he hears a single shot. After breaking down the door he sees a woman bending over a body. With the door locked and under observation, and all the windows locked, it seems obvious that he has located both the victim and the murderer.

   But based on the clue of a photographic negative (the subject of the negative makes no difference), Nameless discovers a particularly clever plot and quickly resolves the locked-room crime. Indeed, the plot is strong enough for a full-length novel (since Pronzini sometimes bases his novels on earlier short stories, it may eventually become a novel). The Solution to the locked room is as far as I know, new in fiction. Some may object to the fact that Nameless’s reconstruction of the murder takes 5½ pages, but – if it makes any difference – I approve. Pronzini’s narrative skill stops the explanation from dragging.

   This limited edition is. of high quality. It is typeset, rather than photo offset, and it is printed on slightly offwhite paper. The version in paper wrappers (which is the only one I’ve seen) comes with a dust jacket printed on much too white paper which will quickly show any signs of reading. Whether the pamphlet will eventually command a premium on the rare-book market, I don’t know, But how much would a limited edition of Hammett or Chandler or Macdonald from early in their careers go for now?

   After reading Steve’s recent review of “No Rest for Soldiers,” the first story in the October 1936 issue of Black Mask, I pulled out my copy and just finished reading it cover to cover. Not a stinker in this issue. Giving a rating of four stars for the highest, I rate them as follows:

   â€œNo Rest For Soldiers” – John K. Butler – 4.

   â€œJail Bait” – Roger Torrey – 3. Although a complete rip-off of the The Maltese Falcon without the “Falcon” to look for (main tec’s partner is killed and he’s going to find the killer, though they didn’t like each other), this is still a pretty good story. I’m not a great Torrey fan but this story works for me.

   â€œHeat Target” — Russell Bender — 4. Really well written! I don’t think I’ve ever read a story by Bender. I’ll now go see what else I can find that he wrote for Mask.

   â€œSail” — Lester Dent — 4. I can’t count the times I’ve read this story over the years. I still wish that he had written more than two stories for Mask before Shaw got the boot. As good as it gets!!

   â€œA Ride In The Rain” — W.T.Ballard — 4. One of my favorite Mask writers. If anyone out there has not read Ballard, do yourself a favor and try him. Holds up continuously, time after time!

   I really think this is a top issue of Mask from beginning to end. Steve, let us know how you feel after you finish your copy.

   Added later: Just checked on Russell Bender. He only wrote two others for Mask, though lots more for other titles: October 1938 and July 1940. I have both and will be checking them out soon.

COLONEL MARCH INVESTIGATES. Criterion Films, UK, 1953. Starring Boris Karloff as Colonel March. Screenplay by Leo Davis, based on three stories written by John Dickson Carr. Director: Cyril Enfield.

   The master of the locked room mystery was, inarguably, John Dickson Carr, one of the most popular crime writers of the Golden Age. His masterpiece, The Hollow Man (1935), retains an almost legendary status among crime fiction fans, but he is now sadly forgotten by the wider public. The books have long been out of print in the UK, and I’m always hoping that some publisher will bring them back.

   Perhaps they are so obscure because Carr’s most famous sleuths, Dr Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, never made it to the screen. One of his lesser characters managed it, however, in the early 1950s, with the television series Colonel March of Scotland Yard.

   Carr had used the character only in his 1940 short story collection The Department of Queer Complaints, in which there is a subdivision of Scotland Yard that specialises in crimes of a curious or apparently impossible nature. The series was financed by the Americans and starred international film star Boris Karloff – famous for playing the Chinese-American detective Mr Wong and, of course, even more so, Frankenstein’s Monster.

   At this point in his long career, Karloff was a frequent guest on American radio series and even had his own show for children in which he read stories and told riddles. In 1952, he returned to England and made three episodes for ITV which acted as pilots for a longer series. Eventually, twenty six were produced, all of which were a brisk 25 minutes long.

   The first three made were stitched together for release to cinemas in 1953. This was not uncommon for a TV show at the time and the practice would continue into the next decade, particularly with The Saint.

   Colonel March Investigates is a taut 70 minute anthology of three slight, though entertaining, mysteries with the twinkly-eyed Karloff. He gives the character an eye-patch, which he didn’t have in the stories, but it adds something to the character, as we can imagine he may have lost it in the First World War. This, perhaps, is someone who has witnessed untold horrors and has come to terms with the world by engaging with its more whimsical wonders.

   Unsurprisingly, there is a framing device which helps tie the three tales together, in which March stands in his office and inspects a cupboard stocked with souvenirs of his cases before leading the audience into the corresponding story.

   The first of these, aired as “Hot Money,” revolves around a bank robbery in which a clerk is incriminated. He follows the criminal to an office, where the money is seemingly stored. However, when the place is searched, the money has apparently disappeared. Despite the clerk being framed in the silliest of ways, the resolution is pretty decent, but nothing too special. Joan Sims appears here in an early role, and March reveals a John Steed-like umbrella sword!

   The second story was aired as “Death in the Dressing Room,” which is probably the weakest of the three. Set in a nightclub, it features an exotic dance routine which acts as a clue, while the always reliable Richard Wattis plays the manager. The running time to these is so short that there is virtually no time to set up a number of suspects, so the culprit tends to be the person who has been in it the most.

   No matter, as it’s all about how March gets his man, which he does here in a tense confrontation. As usual, March’s sparring partner is the Scottish Inspector Ames (Ewan Roberts), though you wonder why he’s there as March seems to be a famous genius.

   The third story, intriguingly titled “The New Invisible Man,” features a peeping tom who has apparently witnessed a pair of animated gloves committing murder, and a scene of a crime with no evidence of a crime. It’s the best one, I think, though there are a couple of problems. We get the opportunity to see the gloves in action ourselves, but it doesn’t look much like the way it’s shown to us in the reveal.

   The trick is good, nonetheless, and it certainly had me baffled. The reason behind it all is pretty shaky, however, and involves stolen paintings and, eventually, a kidnapped March. It’s all good fun, though, which is what I’d call the film as a whole. And an interesting peek, as ever, into bygone England. Eight episodes of the series itself are available on DVD. It’s just a pity the complete series isn’t available.

Rating: ***

ARTHUR J. BURKS “Death of the Flute.” Dorus Noel #1. Short story. First published in All Detective Magazine, April 1933. Collected in Grottos of Chinatown (Off Trail Publications, softcover, 2009).

   This is the first story that prolific pulp writer wrote about super sleuth Doris Noel. In a way it’s too bad that he didn’t write any of Noel’s earlier adventures that took place in China fighting the evil ways of Chu Chul, obviously a Fu Manchu wanna-be also known as The Cricket, because they do sound interesting. What we have here in “Death of the Flute” is a continuation of their mutual struggle against each other, ending, perhaps, in the death of one of the combatants, and it isn’t Dorus Noel.

   It may or may not be Chu Chul’s either, because the latter shows up in “The White Wasp,” Noel’s next adventure. I’ve not read that next tale yet, though, so it may only be an imposter that Noel has to face down.

   But not wishing to get ahead of ourselves, “Death of the Flute” begins with Noel under the firm belief that he saw Chu Chul die. He’s back in New York City now, and in Chinatown in particular, working for a unidentified benefactor with the charge to wipe out crime and corruption in that section of the big city.

   But of course Chu Chul is not dead, and before Noel can get to work on his real mission, he must deal with that particular evil genius and end his dream of world domination once and for all.

   This is no easy task, of course, but after some setbacks, including the agonizing death of his faithful servant at the hands of Noel’s archenemy, the latter does indeed prevail, in good pulpy fashion.
   

      The Dorus Noel series —

Death of the Flute (ss) All Detective Magazine Apr 1933
The White Wasp (ss) All Detective Magazine May 1933
Bells of Pell Street (ss) All Detective Magazine Jun 1933
Red Tassels (ss) All Detective Magazine Sep 1933
The Golden Cocoon (ss) All Detective Magazine Oct 1933
Cloisonne (ss) All Detective Magazine Dec 1933
Spheres of Cathay (ss) All Detective Magazine Jan 1934
Design for Murder (ss) All Detective Magazine Mar 1934
Tinkling Bells (ss) All Detective Magazine Jun 1934
Black Snow (ss) All Detective Magazine Sep 1934
The Blood Screen (ss) All Detective Magazine Dec 1934

ROBERT L. FISH РIsle of Snakes. Captain Jos̩ da Silva #2. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1963. Avon G1241, paperback, [1964?]; Ace, paperback, circa 1971.

   It was never merely that Robert L. Fish was an accomplished writer of suspense, a gifted purveyor of mystery plots, and had a wry sense of humor that ran through his work. He was always something more: a damn good writer who chose to work in the mystery genre.

   Isle of Snakes is in Fish’s best known series featuring Brazilian policeman Captain José ‘Zé’ de Silva, a charming, intelligent, and often swashbuckling adventurer liaison between the local police and Interpol (*), a swarthy pock faced figure in a red Jaguar who is often aided by American Wilson (just Wilson “He was a stocky, nondescript man…”) security officer at the Embassy who is also tied to Interpol, and who, while a valuable ally, always may have his own goals and motives (spelled CIA) in any collaboration with da Silva.

   The book opens with a man on the bus/truck above headed for the coast. He notices killers are after him, but manages to reach Rio before he is murdered. His body ends up in the morgue (the Instituto Medico-Legal in the Rua dos Invalidos), a case for Zé, and a weird one when a package shows up delivered by the dead man to an American hotel containing a stuffed coral snake.

   Nothing directly ties the case to Interpol and da Silva, but he is intrigued, as Wilson notes,“Speak of having imagination! You could start with a damp bar rag and build up a distillery!” He’s soon proved right though when it becomes clear someone is willing to kill for that deadly little stuffed snake and his beloved red Jaguar is blown up in the garage when the attendant starts it.

   Before it is over Wilson and Zé will realize why a man was murdered for a stuffed snake, smash a powerful criminal conspiracy, and of course find themselves on that island of snakes from the title before a rapid paced finale and chase.

   It must be mentioned that the very best of Fish’s books move so rapidly you can hardly catch your breath. The da Silva novels come in around sixty thousand words, this one only has seven chapters, and the action, repartee between Zé and Wilson, and unveiling mystery will leave you breathless.

   They are one of the best Holmes/Watson teams in the genre, only below Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, their wry humor and fast paced action still a model of the perfect way to write a modern thriller.

   If you like your mystery novels clever, funny, fast moving, and delightful Fish is the right mix for you, and he goes perfectly with red or white wine.

      __

    (*) Interpol in these books is an entirely fictitious version of the real private police organization whose troubled past as a Nazi front organization who then helped Nazi War Criminals escape after the War and has since had a checkered history with many of its top officials charged and convicted of various crimes has never had active agents and was mostly useful for issuing information on Persons of Interest (Yellow Sheets) and wanted criminals (Red Sheets) to member organizations. Contrary to television and movies many Federal police agencies have never subscribed to Interpol here because of their history.