Sat 8 Oct 2016
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: OCTAVUS ROY COHEN – Star of Earth.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
William F. Deeck
OCTAVUS ROY COHEN – Star of Earth. D. Appleton & Co., hardcover, 1932.
While in Hollywood investigating possible irregularities in the financial department of New Art Pictures Corporation, Jim Hanvey is called upon to deal with the star of New Art’s current movie. Tanse Wilson, a young man recently from the Kentucky backwoods who was big hit in silent film and now has graduated to talkies, is on the set, apparently terrified and carrying a props revolver loaded with live ammunition.
(Some years ago I would have scoffed at the live-ammunition claim, but I have heard James Cagney say — and if you can’t believe James Cagney, who can you believe? — that in his early movie, real bullets were used in scenes requiring gunfire. It apparently did not take him long to stop this practice, at least for his movies.)
The gun is no defense for Wilson, for he is also shot dead with it between scenes. Since there are a fair number of people at the studio who might have wanted Wilson out of the way, Hanvey has a difficult task in spotting the murderer.
Not a particularly well-written novel, with uninteresting characters and an implausible plot. Still, the early talkie atmosphere should appeal to some.
October 8th, 2016 at 11:28 am
Says Kevin Burton Smith about private eye Jim Hanvey on his Thrilling Detective website:
https://www.thrillingdetective.com/hanvey.html
“Jim’s an intriguing combination of Jed Clampett and Sam Spade, part-conman, and full-time good ol’ boy. He’s fat, slow-moving, has fishy eyes, smokes nasty little black cigars, wears cheap, shabby clothes that always seem to be on the point of bursting and is constantly fiddling with a gold toothpick he carries on a chain around his neck, a gift from a criminal he helped convict. […]
“But he’s actually more like a sort of backwoods Nero Wolfe, a shrewd, highly-regarded detective and the terror of crooks from coast to coast,’…
STAR OF EARTH is the third of three novels Hanvey appeared in, along with three collections of short stories, mostly reprinted from the pages of “slick”magazines such as Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post.
Should you be interested enough in Bill Deeck’s review of the book to follow up on it, you will have two online copies to choose from: one for $50 and an inscribed one for $250.
October 8th, 2016 at 12:59 pm
I MIGHT pay two bucks.
October 8th, 2016 at 1:06 pm
That’s probably what Bill Deeck paid for his copy. Back in the 90s, when used book stores were still common, so were books like this one.