Fri 27 Nov 2009
Capsule Reviews from TAD (1968), by Allen J. Hubin – Part 7.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
Commentary on books I’ve covered in the New York Times Book Review. [Reprinted from The Armchair Detective, Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1968.]
Previously on this blog:
Part 1 — Charlotte Armstrong through Jonathan Burke.
Part 2 — Victor Canning through Manning Coles.
Part 3 — Stephen Coulter through Thomas B. Dewey.
Part 4 — Charles Drummond through William Garner.
Part 5 — Richard H. Garvin through E. Richard Johnson.
Part 6 — Henry Kane through Emma Lathen.
NORMAN LEWIS – Every Man’s Brother. William Morrow, US, hardcover, 1968. UK edition: William Heinemann, hc, 1967. Bron Owen, an epileptic released from a prison sentence served for unremembered crimes, runs unresistingly into a murder charge in this compelling novel set in Wales.
ROBERT MacLEOD – The Iron Sanctuary. Holt Rinehart & Winston, US, hardcover, 1968. UK edition: John Long, hc, 1966, as Lake of Fury. This is a cut or two above the run-of-the-trenchcoat spy story, featuring Talos Cord’s second peace-keeping mission for the UN, this time in East Africa where rumbles of arms buying have been heard.
A. C. MARIN – The Clash of Distant Thunder. Harcourt Brace & World, US, hardcover, 1968. Paperback reprint: Pinnacle, 1971. UK edition: Wm. Heinemann, hc, 1969. This is a compelling first novel, a vividly believable search for revenge for an ancient wrong and the resulting encounter with some contemporary Nazis in Europe.
STEPHEN MARLOWE – Come Over, Red Rover. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1968. A splendid novel about a double agent, a willful daughter and East German machinations, with the added treat of fine characterizations.
Editorial Comments: Three cover images out of four this time, and which was the one I was sure was going to be the easiest to find? Right.
Norman Lewis, no relation, I’m sure, wrote 15 espionage and adventure thrillers between the years 1949 and 1987, five of them listed as marginal in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. He’s a brand new name to me, though, until today.
Nor had I heard of Robert MacLeod, or so I thought until I looked him up in CFIV. MacLeod is a pen name of the much more well-known (and extremely prolific) Bill Knox, who also wrote as Michael Kirk and Noah Webster. This is the second of six recorded adventures for Talos Cord, out of some 24 mysteries written by Knox under this name.
Another pseudonym is A. C. Marin, whose real name was Alfred Coppel. After three books as Marin, Coppel had another eight books in CFIV under his own name, all apparently thrillers of one subgenre or another.
Collectors of vintage Gold Medal paperbacks will certainly recognize Stephen Marlowe‘s name, as he wrote a long list of “Chester Drum” detective and spy novels for them between 1955 and 1968. When paperback series spy fiction showed signs of slowing down, he switched over to hardcover thrillers like this one. A tribute to Stephen Marlowe by Bill Pronzini appeared here on this blog at the time of his death.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Norman Lewis was also a noted travel writer. During the Second World War he and Michael Gilbert were prisoners in an Italian POW camp. Escaping together, when they reached safety they decided to share the exploit — Gilbert would write a fictional account and Lewis the non-fictional. Both books are classics of their kind, Gilbert’s a fair play murder mystery set in an Italian POW camp — basis for the film Danger Route with Richard Todd.
Robert McLeod is better known as Bill Knox under which name he wrote the adventures of Inpector Thane, and those of Webb Carrick of the Fisheries Protection Service (yes, the fish police). The Talos Cord books had a fairly successful run though.
A.C. Marin is a familiar name, but one I never read. He was well received from the reviews I read though.
Stephen Marlowe turned to writing big spy novels for a while before taking up more serious historical fiction. His Colossus about he painter Goya was critically acclaimed and his Light at the End of the World, a novel about Edgar Allan Poe, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His career went back to the pulps as Milton Lesser. Among other things he wrote the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not mystery series.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:50 am
I’ve been recovering from the after effects of too much turkey over a two day period. I could have looked Norman Lewis up, but I simply got too lazy and I didn’t, even though he could have been a long-lost relative.
He even has his own Wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lewis_%28author%29 and I recommend it to anyone who thinks that mystery writers are a dull lot who do nothing but sit around all day writing mysteries.
— Steve