ALISA CRAIG – A Pint of Murder. Doubleday Crime Club, reprint hardcover, 1980. Detective Book Club, reprint hardcover, 3-in-1 edition. Bantam, paperback, 1981; Avon, paperback, 1988 (shown).

   Of all the detective murder mysteries that have ever been committed in fiction, a small but sizable number of them have been tackled by a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Tackled and solved, of course. The Mounties always get their men, as everyone well knows.

   Ms. Craig does nicely in adding to the total. The case is that of the food-poisoning death of a crotchety but scrupulously careful old lady in the New Brunswick town of Pitcherville. Inspector Madoc Rhys (a Welshman!) is the Mountie who is called in to investigate.

   The story, well, it could be likened to a breath of fresh clear Canadian air, containing only the slightest bit of pollution, and that of the sort produced by the gossipy thoughts and attitudes of small village minds with nothing to rein them in.

   This is also a book for those who do not mind a little romance mixing it up with their mystery fiction. By book’s end it quite definitely is clear that the Mounties almost always get their women as well.

Rating:   C plus.

Bibliographic Notes: This was the first of five books in the Alisa Craig’s Madoc Rhys series. Since I did not mention it at the time, I suspect that I did not know then what I know now: that Alisa Craig was a pen name of Charlotte MacLeod (1922-2005), who under her own name wrote both the Peter Shandy and the Sarah Kelling & Max Bittersohn series — among many other works of mostly humorous mystery fiction.

JAMES CURTIS – They Drive by Night. Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1938. John Lehman, UK, hardcover, 1948. Ace, paperback, date unknown (shown). London Books, UK, 2008. No US edition.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT. Warner Brothers-First National (UK), 1938. Emlyn Williams, Shorty Matthews, Ernest Thesiger, Anna Konstam, Allan Jeayes, Anthony Holles. Based on the book by James Curtis, who also wrote the screenplay. Director: Arthur B. Woods.

   They Drive by Night is one of those rarities: a uniquely enjoyable book turned into a rather different but equally fine film.

   The book details the travails of Shorty Mathews, a petty crook just out of gaol and anxious to return to his larcenous ways. He looks up some old mates, makes a few disparaging comments about a lady-friend currently working the streets and pays a call on said lady, only to find her brutally murdered.

   Fearing the Police, Williams turns to his old partners in crime for help, is spurned by them, and takes it on the lam, hitching rides from friendly truck drivers plying the north and southbound roads through the rain-drenched night (hence the title of the piece) and narrowly escaping the pursuing authorities.

   He runs into a co-worker of his murdered girlfriend — a hooker named Molly who works truck stops, hence a “Lorry Girl” — and eventually persuades her to help him. As they work to evade the law, thief and whore begin to develop feelings for each other and then . . . well that would be telling.

   Curtis spins the tale in lively first-person cockney rhyming slang (as in loaf = head because bread would rhyme with head if you said bread so you say loaf instead. Get it?) dealing out action and suspense in equal measure along with some colorful characterization. One measure of an author is how much care he takes with the bit players, and Curtis meets the mark and then some, filling his tale with sharp cops, hard-edged crooks and working stiffs so real you can smell the sweaty armpits.

   He also throws in one of the most real-seeming psychopaths I’ve ever encountered in literature or film: a character suffused with the shabby narcissism one finds in real-life criminals, brilliantly translated into prose. The chapters dealing with his lethal stalk through a seamy city offer a poetic realism and tense energy I’ll remember long after lesser (but better-known) serial slayers have gone their loony way. And if the wrap-up of the books is a bit prosaic, perhaps it’s all the more memorable for its tough-but-tender realism.

   The British subsidiary of Warner Brothers filmed this the same year and turned it into a fast-moving, moody little thriller directed by someone named Arthur Woods, who was set to replace Hitchcock when the Master of Suspense moved to Hollywood, but was an early casualty of World War II.

   Like Woods’ career, this film came to an untimely end when Warner Brothers decided to use the title and the truck-driving elements for their umpteenth remake of Bordertown two years later and “buried” this little gem for the next few decades.

   Be that as it may, this version of They Drive by Night is an enjoyable bit of work. Emlyn Williams plays Shorty with just the right touch of superficial toughness. Released on the morning when another inmate is executed for murder, he casually tosses off a flip comment about the dead man, then turns movingly repentant when he finds he’s talking to the man’s brother — a haunting stretch of cinema.

   For purposes of censorship, his lady-friend hooker is now a taxi-dancer (called Dance Hall Hostess over there) but she’s just as dead and the ensuing chase is just as lively, played out across a countryside that seems permanently hostile, wet and windswept. Of course Molly the Lorry Girl is now another dime-a-dance girl (played tough-but-not-brassy by Anna Konstam) and in another departure from the book, she helps him return to London to find the real killer.

   At which point the film shifts gears, concentrating on Molly’s efforts to find the killer by getting to know the dead woman’s regular customers, a theme that was (coincidentally?) developed into a memorable short story by Cornell Woolrich. One of the “regulars” played with customary gothic relish by Ernest Thesiger, is a learned eccentric, fond of reading and stray kittens, and with his entry, the movie glides smoothly into the realm of the horror film, right up to a moody, memorable finale.

   Existing prints of They Drive by Night are not of the best quality, but the film has enough action and intelligence to reward the viewer patient enough to give it the occasional squint. And the book is definitely worth your time.

Note: Another review of this film, the earlier one one written by Walter Albert, was posted here on this blog some four years ago.

  DYLAN THOMAS & JOHN DAVENPORT – The Death of the King’s Canary. Viking, US, hardcover, 1977. First published by Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1976.

   According to the publishers, it was the intention of Dylan Thomas, with the help of John Davenport, to write “the detective story to end detective stories, introducing blatantly every character and situation — an inevitable Chinaman, secret passages, etc. — that no respectable writer would dare use now, drag hundreds of red herrings, false clues, withheld evidences into the story, falsify every issue, make many chapters deliberate parodies, full of cliches, of other detective writers.”

   As a frank and fervent philistine, I probably should not be reviewing this book, which presumably is also a parody of poets. Since the last poet I admired was Simon Templar, you will have some idea of my inadequacies in this area.

   In his introduction, Constantine FitzGibbon says that Thomas and Davenport intended the novel “to be a good joke, and to make money, but of course it was quite unpublishable while the main characters were alive.” From my point of view, it was a bad joke and it is still quite unpublishable.

   In what did the authors succeed? The parodies are there, but they are, as far as I can tell, only of poets and poetry. I have no idea — see my earlier comments — whether they are successful, but I can at least say that the poetry is god-awful. If that was the authors’ intention, I give them credit. For the rest, I was unable to recognize any mystery writers.

   What little I understood of the plot, if plot it can be called: the Prime Minister has chosen a new poet laureate, a man he viewed as the lesser of the bad, who proceeds to gather together all the major poets who were not chosen and insults them lavishly, following which they adjourn to attend a fair. The murder is on the last page,

   How I managed to reach the last page is the only mystery to be found here.

“Puzzlelock.” From Ironside: Season 2, Episode 23 (52nd of 196 installments). First aired: 13 March 1969. Regular cast: Raymond Burr (Ironside), Don Galloway (Det. Sgt. Ed Brown), Barbara Anderson (Officer Eve Whitfield), and Don Mitchell (Mark Sanger). Guest cast: Simon Oakland (Mel Grayson), Dennis Cooney (Paul Dekes), Ned Glass (Benjie), Jocelyn Brando (Etta Gibbs), Gene Lyons (Commissioner Dennis Randall), Dabbs Greer (Thomas Gibbs), Alvin Hammer (Mush Shelby), Jennifer Gan (Chickie), Barry Cahill (Sgt. Miller). Writer: B. W. Sandefur. Director: Allen Reisner.

   It was a dark and stormy night when Mel Grayson murdered his wife. Sure, they’d had their disagreements, but for Mel it was time to leave their relationship — or more precisely, it was time for the wealthy woman to depart this vale of tears and leave all her worldly goods behind for him to enjoy.

   It’s no secret that he kills her. The first act shows how Mel meticulously executes his plan, cleverly establishing his alibis (yes, more than one) with sticky tape and by being punctual with a dinner date (which will prove his ultimate undoing, for his dining companion is an old friend from Mel’s time with the police department, none other than Ironside himself).

   No, this isn’t a whodunnit type mystery; it plays more like a highly compressed Columbo episode, in which the murderer’s cover story is slowly but surely worn away to nothing.

   Mel does deserve some credit for ingenuity, though. He uses the sticky tape to convince the servants that his wife is still alive before — and even after — he leaves the house for dinner, although she’s been dead for some time. (Watch the episode here.)

   He drags his wife’s body from the bed, but only after having changed her clothes to a nightgown, over to the French doors, pockets all of her expensive jewelry, leaves the house in the rain storm, furtively doubles back to their second story bedroom, and breaks the glass, with rain pouring over her prostrate form, making it look as if a burglar did it.

   So far, so good (for Mel, anyway) — but as the show progresses, we learn that he seems to have made two rookie mistakes. When he murdered his wife, Mel strangled her with her necklace, but most of the time women don’t wear heavy, expensive jewelry to bed; and then there’s that dry spot under the body. If a burglar had broken the window panes and killed her in the struggle, the floor beneath her should have been covered with glass fragments and rain water, which it isn’t.

   But were these really mistakes, or did Mel incorporate them into an even more ingenious plan to make a burglar coming from the outside look like a murderer coming from the inside? And is it more than just a coincidence that dwelling with the unhappy couple is the ideal patsy, someone who is always broke and always arguing with Mel’s wife, someone who can’t alibi himself on the night of the murder? All Mel has to do is feign sympathy for the poor sap while pointing Ironside & Co. in his direction.

   It looks as if Mel has pulled off the perfect murder — and so he has . . . almost.

GEORGE BAGBY – Country and Fatal. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1980.

   Need further proof that riding the Manhattan subway system can be dangerous to your health? On page one of Bagby’s latest mystery-adventure, you’ll find him being pushed off the Times Square station platform smack into the path of an oncoming train.

   A series of such attacks has surprisingly nothing to do with Bagby’s friendship with Inspector Schmidt of Homicide, and the many cases they’ve worked on together. Rather it has everything to do with an ex-con country singer named Shad McGee (almost married to the phenomenally shelf-bosomed Lucinda Belle), who wants Bagby to give him a hand with his memoirs.

   Names and any resemblances etc. etc. entirely coincidental. Not your usual background for a detective murder mystery, but it’s fun, and what’s more, the clues are fair. In fact, there’s one in particular that should have been obvious, and I missed it. I really don’t know what I was thinking of.

Rating: B minus

UPDATE [08-14-13].   George Bagby, pen name of Aaron Marc Stein, (1906-1985) was an extremely prolific mystery author who also wrote as Hampton Stone. I think I’ll repeat my update of my review of another of Bagby’s works of detective fiction, I Could Have Died, which you’ll find here:

    “I don’t believe that George Bagby — in real life Aaron Marc Stein, under which name he wrote an equally long list of other detective novels — got nearly the critical attention that I always thought he should have, and he’s definitely forgotten by all but a few devoted aficionados now.

    “Perhaps he was too prolific, and maybe the endings didn’t match the cleverness of other writers’ mysteries (nor perhaps the openings of his own books), but I always admired the way he had for descriptive passages, making the most prosaic actions — such as taking the cap off a toothpaste tube or hunting for a set of lost keys — seem interesting.

    “George Bagby, by the way, if the review wasn’t quite clear on this, was both the pen name and the character in the Bagby novels who tagged along with Inspector Schmidt and chronicled his cases for him.”

    I don’t remember who I was referring to in the first sentence of the third paragraph. It was 33 years ago when I wrote it, and while you may think everything you say or do will stay with you forever, it doesn’t. Thank goodness.

CRAIG JOHNSON – A Serpent’s Tooth. Viking, hardcover, June 2013.

Genre:  Police procedural. Leading character:   Walt Longmire, 9th in series. Setting:  Wyoming.

First Sentence: I stared at the black-and-orange corsage on Barbara Thomas’s lapel so that I wouldn’t have to look at anything else.

   Sheriff Walt Longmire and his deputy encounter a bare-assed young man and the, supposedly, 200-year-old-man watching over him. In looking for the young man’s mother, he finds himself tangling with a polygamous group buying up large areas of land in several states.

   But where are the wives and children? While they are stockpiling weapons, they are also buying things that are less expected. Walt, and his team, becomes involved in a case that starts simple but ends up much bigger and more dangerous than he expected.

   Although I’m less cranky about prologues than I used to be, it is delightful when an author takes you straight into the story from page one. Not only does Mr. Johnson take you there, but he keeps you there until you’ve finished, having a complete disregard for your desire to sleep.

   There is no question that Johnson’s greatest strength is his characters. He balances their personalities off beautifully. Walt is well-read and has a strong belief in justice. Vic, his deputy and occasional lover, has all the sass and impatience of an East-Coast Italian.

   It’s always nice to be reacquainted with the other recurring characters surrounding Walt, too. In this story young Cord and the older Orrin add both interest and humor and provide the bridge in the plot. Johnson develops the characters and brings them to life through excellent internal narrative and spoken dialogue. I did enjoy his nod to famous Wyoming defense attorney Gerry Spence.

   There is room for criticism with this book. There seemed to be an assumption that readers had read the previous books. Even being a faithful fan, some of the nicknames for the recurring characters became confusing and wanting a cast of characters. There was a very minor story line that seemed superfluous and completely unnecessary as it was never developed.

   Still, in all, I expect a lot from a Craig Johnson book, and I was not disappointed. A Serpent’s Tooth is a wonderful read that takes you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Don’t miss it.

Rating:   VG Plus.

“Collateral Damage.” From Stargate SG-1: Season 9, Episode 12 (185th of 214 installments). First aired: 13 January 2006. Regular cast: Ben Browder (Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell), Amanda Tapping (Lt. Col. Samantha Carter), Christopher Judge (Teal’c), Beau Bridges (Major General Hank Landry), Michael Shanks (Dr. Daniel Jackson), Gary Jones (Chief Mst. Sgt. Walter Harriman). Guest cast: Anna Galvin (Dr. Reya Varrick), Warren Kimmel (Dr. Marell), Benson Simmonds (Dr. Amuro), Ian Robison (Frank Mitchell), William Atherton (Emissary Varta). Writers: Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie. Director: William Waring.

   Our galaxy is on the verge of complete destruction, as a race of super-powerful beings called the Ori equipped with hypertechnology have begun their campaign to force all sentient beings to succumb to their will or be exterminated . . .

   . . . but you’ll see none of that in this particular show. Instead, “Collateral Damage” is one of those series episodes which back away from the main story arc to do a little character building. The character being built in this case is Colonel Mitchell. He is, in fact, the focus of the entire show.

   Mitchell and his SG-1 team are on another planet trying to establish diplomatic relations in hopes of stopping the Ori advance. These people have developed an educational device which could drastically reduce learning times — and its potential for military use against the invasion isn’t lost on the Earthmen.

   The very first scene, a flashback, however, shows Mitchell committing a cold-blooded murder and being arrested for it. The victim is the very research scientist who developed the learning device, only to have it taken away from her by her government — specifically, by the military. Mitchell is sympathetic to her situation, and it isn’t long before he and this woman become romantically involved.

   The next morning the SG-1 team is informed that the colonel has been taken into custody, with the victim’s blood on him, his fingerprints on the murder weapon, and a confession on his lips.

   Although Mitchell instinctively knows better, he must reluctantly admit that he remembers killing her, but his hosts want only to send him back home to Earth. Incensed, he stubbornly refuses their offer to sweep the whole disruptive thing under the rug and demands the matter be cleared up, one way or another.

   Exactly how the crime was committed and how well the actual killer’s identity is submerged will come to light only when, in a nice bit of irony, the victim’s learning machine is employed to ferret out the real murderer.

   The whole plot of this show is an ingenious riff on detective fiction’s Golden Age trope of “the least likely suspect,” and in this instance could only be played out in a science fictional setting.

———————————————

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0709060/

Transcript with SPOILERS: http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s9/transcripts/912.shtml

And here is a review by someone who didn’t like it, also with a SPOILER alert:

          http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s9/reviews/912.shtml

MILES BURTON – The Man with the Tattooed Face. Doubleday Crime Club,US, hardcover, 1937. First published in the UK as Murder in Crown Passage, Collins, hardcover, 1937.

   Immediately preceding the first page of The Man with the Tattooed Face you’ll find a map of the “downtown” section of the village of Faston Bishop, including all the salient details that describe the locale where the dead man is found, and believe me, it — the map, that is — gets a full workout.

   The victim is — not too surprisingly — a man with a tattooed face. While he had earned his living as a common laborer on several of the farms surrounding Faston Bishop, he also seems to have been working very much below his true station in life. Rumors are also that he was not averse to carrying on an affair or two with some of the wives in the local area.

   The detective on hand is Inspector Arnold of the C.I.D., and within the first 100 pages he has a theory that fits all the facts. Obviously it doesn’t, though — “obviously,” that is, if you’ve read as many mysteries as everyone else has who’s reading this review — and on page 173 is a timetable that leads soon to the discovery of the fatal flaw in his hypothesis.

   Arnold’s good friend Desmond Merrion insists that the solution to the crime must come from the dead man’s unknown past. Arnold’s stubborn obstinacy to this plan of thought is quite inexplicable. And other than these two divergent approaches to the investi gation of the murder, the two amicable crime-solvers leave little to distinguish themselves, one from the other — or from countless other featureless detectives from the “Golden Age.

   But the seductive lure and the leisurely pace of the classical mystery novel, told in simplest terms here as a puzzle in pure detection, these are what you’ll find in abundance, on every page.

Rating: B.

SAMUEL SPEWACK – The Skyscraper Murder. Macaulay, hardcover, 1928; Bleak House #17, no date [1947/48?].

   When the reader is informed by the publisher that the writer of a mystery is also the author of “a long list of Broadway and Hollywood hits,” some nervousness about the quality of the mystery may be aroused. In this instance it is definitely justified.

   An alleged bridge expert, Oliver Sewell has four closets in his apartment devoted to female attire for his four lovers of the moment and his lovers, he hopes, to be. After having attended a nightclub with one of his paramours and her former husband, Sewell is found shot dead in his apartment.

   His body, although he was killed elsewhere, had been placed in a chair three feet from a mirror. Sewell should not have been in his apartment, dead or alive, because he was not seen returning from the nightclub, nor could his killer have escaped without being noticed.

   The butler reports having served meals for two, although no one lived with Sewell. A Sewell paramour is spotted coming out of a concealed room. Do the authorities scratch their heads puzzledly, then exclaim “Eureka!” and search for another hidden passages? Nope.

   The assistant medical examiner, who aids the police detective in the case, tells the detective that Sewell had been dead two hours. “That means — if it means anything — Sewell was killed just before midnight, ha?” the detective asks brightly. The doctor does not disagree.

   A short while later it is confirmed that Sewell had been in a nightclub at 1:00 a.m. Any consternation on the part of the doctor or the detective? Nope. It turns out that the murder took place about 2:00 a.m. and that this mistiming is merely the author’s bewilderment.

   The gun used to kill Sewell was taken from Sewell’s business associate while he was sleeping at Sewell’s apartment. It was employed in the dirty work and then returned to the associate in the hope of framing him. When the associate discovers that his gun was the murder weapon, he gets rid of it. Nonetheless, when another character is shot, the bullet, according to the police laboratory, came from the original gun.

   Possible, you say; yet the killer in his confession mentions in passing that he had his own revolver and that he used it, not the original pistol, to shoot the second victim. Show biz has obviously taken its toll on our author.

   Under the name of Leonard Slater, Sewell had planned to sail to Europe with one of his lovers. Later the killer goes to Europe on that same ship, and he cunningly uses the name of Leonard Slater. Why? Otherwise our fine pair of detectives would still be nonplussed.

   Another completely absurd plot development takes place, but to describe it in all its inanity would be giving away who the killer was. And there may be someone who cares, although it would be hard to understand why.

Bibliographic Note:   According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, Samuel Spewak was the author of one other work of detective fiction: Murder in the Gilded Cage (Simon & Schuster, 1929). Based on the novel was a film entitled Secret Witness (Columbia, 1931). For more on the author himself, his Wikipedia entry can be found here.

MARIA, A HUNGARIAN LEGEND. Hunnia Filmstúdió (Hungary), 1932. First shown in the US: 1935. Also released as Spring Shower; original title: Tavaszi zápor. Annabella, Ilona Dajbukát, Erzsi Bársony, Steven Geray, Karola Zala, Margit Ladomerszky. Director: Pál Fejös. Shown at Cinefest 19, Syracuse NY, March 1999.

   One of the most anticipated films [of this convention] was Paul Fejos’ Maria, a Hungarian Legend (1932), starring Anabella (later to have something of a Hollywood career and marry Tyrone Power) as a servant who is sent packing when she becomes visibly pregnant and begins wanderings that include a brief period of peace at a brothel where she scrubs floors until she gives birth to her daughter.

   The film was presented without subtitles, but this is a sound film where the story is carried by the visuals. Only a brief scrolled prologue (in Italian) and the reading of an official document depriving her of her daughter (in Hungarian) provoked some momentary nervousness in the otherwise linguistically unchallenged audience.

   A lovely film that in other hands could have been a mawkish disaster. The final sequence when Maria reaches down from heaven to prevent her daughter from making the same mistake she had made glows with a serene beauty that is extraordinarily moving.