DAVID GERROLD “The Thing in the Back Yard.” First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept-Oct 2014. Collected in Entanglements and Terrors (DG Media, softcover, 2015).

   For an author who’s been around for almost 50 years (I believe his firs published work was “Oracle for a White Rabbit,” which appeared in the December 1968 issue of Galaxy SF), why has it taken so long for me to have read anything he’s written? (I have seen the Tribbles episode he wrote for Star Trek, but then so has every SF fan in the world, at least those of a certain age.)

   Better late than never, I say, and “The Thing in the Back Yard” begins in very familiar territory: Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in Toluca Lake CA, a true landmark of its kind. I’ve never stopped in, but I’ve passed by in a car many, many times. This is where the narrator of the story tells his friend Pesky Dan Goodman about the problem he’s been having with burglars getting into his home and stealing stuff.

   Pesky Dan Goodman’s solution: hire a troll. Not a mere garden gnome, but a real life troll. Big mistake. Trolls grow, and the more you hate them, the more they grow. And the more territorial they get.

   This falls into the category of Famous Last Words. This also is the funniest story I’ve read so far this year.

VALERIE WOLZIEN – Murder at the PTA Luncheon. Susan Henshaw #1. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1988. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback, 1st printing, July 1990. TV movie: CBS, 4 December 1990, as Menu for Murder (with Julia Duffy as Susan Henshaw).

   From the title you probably already know if there is a chance in the world you’ll read this one or not, but just in case, I’m here to tell you that the title really is all that you need to know. (The person who wrote the cover blurbs, front and rear, apparently never did read the book.)

   To solve the case, two Connecticut state police troopers (one male, one female) engage the assistance of a local housewife to help them dig into the seamier side of suburbia. The emphasis is on personalities and motivation; the mechanics of the murder are all but ignored.

   To add to this, while it’s not entirely unexpected, Wolzien does have a sitcom sense of humor about life in the country club set. So much so that if you’re not ready for it, the confusion it also produces can be awfully distracting. The third or fourth time our lead protagonist Susan Henshaw knocks over a glass of wine of a cup of coffee in the presence of the handsome young policeman from Hartford — and she’s supposed to be happily married — I was ready to heave a brick at the screen. Figuratively, of course. (Picture Susan St. James in the role.)

   It does pick up from there, however.

      The Susan Henshaw series —

1. Murder at a PTA Luncheon (1988)
2. The Fortieth Birthday Body (1989)
3. We Wish You a Merry Murder (1991)
4. All Hallows’ Evil (1992)
5. An Old Faithful Murder (1992)
6. A Star-Spangled Murder (1993)
7. A Good Year For a Corpse (1994)
8. ‘Tis the Season to Be Murdered (1994)
9. Remodeled to Death (1995)
10. Elected For Death (1996)
11. Weddings Are Murder (1998)
12. The Student Body (1999)
13. Death at a Discount (2000)
14. An Anniversary to Die for (2002)
15. Death in a Beach Chair (2004)
16. Death in Duplicate (2005)

ROBERT L. FISH – The Wager. Kek Huuygens #4. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1974. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition. No paperback edition. Expanded from the short story “The Wager” appearing in Playboy, July 1973.

   Though he is best remembered today for writing the book that the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt was based on under his Robert Pike pseudonym, Robert L. Fish in his day was one of the genre’s great success stories, author of the popular Captain Jose de Silva mysteries, the outrageous Schlock Homes parodies, and bestselling suspense novels such as Pursuit and The Gold of Troy.

   For my money, though his best work were his tales of smuggler par excellence Dutchman Kek Huuygens (K Hi-gins is my best guess on pronunciation), a handsome and charming gentleman adventurer in the vein of Arsene Lupin. Huuygens stars in a collection of short stories and several novels, having made his debut in the latter form in The Hochman Miniatures.

   The Wager opens with Kek living well in New York with his latest beautiful mistress Anita, involved in a low stakes game of Blackjack with a fellow member of the exclusive Quinleven Club in Manhattan. Watching the game on the side is one Victor Girard, a former dictator of the French-speaking Caribbean island of Ill Rocheaux, and only recently allowed in the country after being deposed and escaping narrowly.

   The unpleasant Girard accompanied by his ever present gunmen bodyguards has a proposal for Kek, the wager of the title: He will bet fifty thousand dollars against Kek’s five thousand that Kek cannot smuggle a valuable Chinese artifact, “the Village Dance,” into the United States and deliver it to him.

   Girard has already laid on a thief to steal the object from the museum in Ill Rocheaux, who will deliver the object to Kek for the next step in the operation. It seems almost simple, and Kek can resist anything but a challenge and an almost certain profit.

   It isn’t simple, of course. There is an American named Ralph Jamison aboard Kek’s ship, and he is almost certainly a policeman of some sort, and the thief turns out to be Kek’s old friend André Martins, who has not succeeded in stealing the object and is in desperate trouble. Kek has no choice now but to steal the object himself.

   To a book, the Kek Huuygens books are slender, fast-paced and intelligent reads with a charming protagonist who is a clever updating of the gentleman crook of yore. The writing is smart, the dialogue clever, and Huuygens one of the more attractive protagonists of his era. Better still there is no bad place to start in the series and they are all available in e-book form from Mysterious Press.

Fish makes it all look so easy, you may have to stop along the way just to recognize how effortlessly all the elements have been juggled into the perfect mix, the literary equivalent of one of those summer umbrella drinks served on a cruise.

        The Kek Huuygens series —

The Hochmann Miniatures. NAL, 1967

Whirligig. World, 1970
The Tricks of the Trade, Putnam 1972
The Wager. Putnam, 1974
Kek Huuygens, Smuggler. Mysterious Press, 1976 (collection)
    — Merry-Go-Round. Argosy, Nov 1964
    — Counter Intelligence. Argosy, Sep 1965
    — The Hochmann Miniatures, Argosy Mar 1966
    — A Matter of Honor. MD, Win 1969
    — The Wager. Playboy, Jul 1973
    — A Collector.
    — Sweet Music.

NEAL BARRETT, JR. – Dead Dog Blues. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. Kensington, paperback, 1997.

   Barrett is the author of “nearly 30” (28? 29?) mostly science fiction/fantasy books including The Hereafter Gang, which if you haven’t read by now, shame on you. His first mystery, Pink Vodka Blues, got good ink and is soon to be a Whoopi Goldberg/Ted Danson movie. Would I lie to you?

   Jack Track (catchy, ain’t it?) is Town Marshal of tiny Pharaoh, Texas, returned there after a fourteen year absence during which bad and mysterious things happened to him. The book opens with a dead electric dog (who barks real loud) belonging to the town’s richest man, a real *sshole (in Jack’s opinion) who is pretty upset by the liberties taken with his dog, which was a Lab before it got dead and electrified.

   Other characters include Jack’s current amour, Cecily the Yogurt Queen, Earl Murphy, the self-styled “N*gger of Wall Street,” who hasn’t built his house yet and sleeps in an Aston Martin Lagonda, and cast of tens. Then man follows dog.

   The back cover calls Jack a private investigator and makes this sound like some sort of PI novel, but neither is true in the slightest. What it is, as usual with Barrett, is unclassifiable. Nobody does Bubba-talk like Barrett; nobody. If you don’t like the voice you’ll have a hard time liking the book.

   It’s mostly a straight story, though he can’t resist tossing in several off-the-wall touches and characters, and it’s funny and serious both. That’s a hard line to walk, but for me, at least, Barrett is one of the few who can walk it.

   Old Jack is an interesting, fairly realistic, and not altogether admirable character, and I’d like to see more of him. He’ll have to relocate, though — there aren’t enough people left in Pharaoh for another by the time this one’s over.

Editorial Comments:   Barry’s review of Pink Vodka Blues appears here. In the comments following that review is a list of some of Barrett’s other work, including his science fiction, and some information about the screenplay for the never produced movie based on the book. The asterisks in this review are mine, not Barry’s.

JESSICA JONES “AKA Ladies Night.” Marvel/Netflix. 10 October 2015 (Season 1, Episode 1). Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones), Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Rachael Taylor (Trish Walker), Erin Moriarty, Eka Darville, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Tennant (Kilgrave). Created and written by Melssa Rosenberg. Based on the Marvel comic book character created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos. Director: SJ Clarkson.

   To tell you the truth, I’ve already watched the first three episodes of this series, mostly since it took me a while to be sure I had a solid grip on the story line. The goal of a first episode of a TV series is to get viewers interested enough to be sure come back for the next one, but not necessarily to reveal all of their secrete at once, especially if there is a long connected story line, and not just a bunch of one-off episodes.

   Maybe it’s me, and I haven’t adjusted to a new type of storytelling, but I think the producers of this series may have erred in not telling enough, or (perhaps) telling it too subtly. It could also be that they expected viewers to be more familiar with the characters from their background in comic books than I think they are. (It’s certainly not one of Marvel’s best known titles.)

   Jessica Jones, currently a private eye working on her own, is a flawed character, there’s no doubt about that. Something has happened in her past that makes it difficult for her to sleep at night, and worse, requires her to have a bottle or a flask of whiskey within arm’s reach whenever she’s awake. The first episode is designed to get us intrigued into learning more about what’s tormenting her, but it did take me all three episodes before I decided that, yes, I finally was sure was the overall story is about and the possible ways it could be going.

   I’ll get back to that. In this first episode she’s hired by a man and woman from Omaha, Nebraska, to find their daughter, who has dropped out of school and has gone missing. I don’t want to spoil anything to anyone who would like to see the show and hasn’t yet, but I will have to leave some hints, such as saying the same thing has happened to the missing girl that happened to Jessica, only in Jessica’s case, the consequences were so bad that that is the reason she is in the severe funk she is in.

   Another hint. The ending of this first episode makes it emphatically clear how bad the situation is for the missing girl — in a word, horrific — and if so, how bad was the experience for Jessica?

   Other characters in the story are brought in, including a sexual dalliance between Jessica and the black owner of a bar. I don’t believe his name comes up, but he will be important in episodes to come. The female lawyer who often hires Jessica to do jobs other PI’s can’t do is having a lesbian affair with one of her staff while she already has a full-time relationship with another. A talk show host named Trish seems to be (or have been) very close to Jessica, but if it was stated what the relationship is, I still didn’t catch it after three episodes.

   The other thing that is shown is that Jessica has superpowers. Super strength at least; perhaps super speed and/or agility. She doesn’t hide her powers, but she doesn’t go out of her way to show them off, either. Superpowers are, of course, only to be expected with a Marvel Comics heroine.

   The whole episode is filmed in what I call “comic book noir.” Brightly colored, with lots of off-kilter angles in what are some of the toughest areas of Manhattan, and they mean to show you exactly that every time they can.

   There is a lot of potential here. I have not gone into several other threads of the plot, many of which come to light only in the second and third episodes.. I’m sorry for rambling on the way I have, but if my objective to help you decide whether to watch this series or not, if you haven’t already, have I succeeded?

HARRY IN YOUR POCKET. United Artists, 1973. James Coburn, Michael Sarrazin, Trish Van Devere, Walter Pidgeon. Music by Lalo Schifrin. Producer-Director: Bruce Geller.

   Bruce Geller is best known for his work on the television series Mannix and Mission: Impossible. He also directed one feature film: Harry in Your Pocket, an offbeat study of the lives and times of a coterie of high-end pickpockets as they make their way from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, and eventually to Salt Lake City. Filmed on location, the movie defies easy categorization.

   With a prominent score by Lalo Shifrin, one that occasionally overwhelms what’s happening on screen, the film at times seems to be as much a musical as a crime drama. At the end of the day, the movie is best understood as a drama, even a tragedy. It’s a study of human frailty and character flaws, wrapped up in a package with the words “quirky crime film” written in black marker.

   The plot. Harry (James Coburn) is a pickpocket, living a luxuriously itinerant life on other people’s money and credit cards. Joining him for the proverbial ride is Casey (Walter Pidgeon), an aging pickpocket with a cocaine habit.

   They eventually join forces with Ray (Michael Sarrazin), an ambitious young pickpocket, and his girlfriend Sandy (Trish Van Devere). Soon, however, each of the gang’s personal flaws begins to take a toll on the group’s cohesion. Harry’s too rigid and is a womanizer. Casey has a drug habit and is ashamed that he is no longer as steady on his feet as he used to be. Ray is too ambitious for his own good and becomes increasingly jealous of Harry’s infatuation with Sandy. And Sandy. She’s the linchpin in all this. Even Harry says that he thinks she’s going to be trouble.

   While it’s not what I would call an excellent film, Harry in Your Pocket is a quite captivating work. It’s subtle and Coburn puts in a solid performance. It’s Pidgeon, however, in one of his last leading roles, that made the most memorable impression on me. Look for the scene in which he is instructing Ray on the “art” of being a pickpocket. He reminisces about the good old days before mugging, when pickpockets took their craft seriously and there was a code and honor in the “profession.”

   It’s that sense of melancholy and nostalgia that stayed with me. A product of the 1970s, Harry in Your Pocket could be easily interpreted as an extended cinematic metaphor for the generational divide in early 1970s American society.

  JOHN RHODE – Dead of the Night. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1942. Popular Library #99, no date stated [1946]. First published in the UK as Night Exercise, Collins, 1942.

   There are not many detective novels written during wartime, and World War II in particular, in which the war effort at home (England, in this case) is such an integral part of the story as it is in Dead of the Night.

   The first 60 pages are taken up with a detailed description of a night drill conducted by the local company of the Home Guard set up for the small fictitious town of Wealdhurst. In charge of the mock operation is Major Ledbury, who has his finger on everything, except for the “invading force,” who have orders to act totally by surprise and on their own. Even the women in the town have their jobs to do, manning water pumps and tending to the fallen.

   This is fascinating. If scenarios such as this were covered in my high school history classes, I wouldn’t have slept through them.

   At the close of the simulated invasion, it turns out that a much disliked Group Commander named Colonel Chalgrove has gone missing. The next 70 pages are spent in wondering where he may have gotten to, with suspicion falling largely on Major Ledbury, especially by the men under his command. Not so much so by Inspector Kilby, who has been put in charge of the case, although he does has to keep an open mind about the matter.

   The investigation that follows, as much as I hate to say it, is as dull as dirt, consisting mostly of conversations about reports that have come in to headquarters. It’s talk, talk and more talk, the same limited ground trampled over, over and over. If the reader can’t pinpoint the killer on his or her own 30 pages before the end of the book, he or she simply wasn’t paying attention. Or had snoozed off long before.

   Not every relic of the Golden Age is a gem. Not a keeper.

JEFF ABBOTT – Adrenaline. Sam Capra #1. Grand Central, hardcover, July 2011; paperback, 2012. First published in the UK: Sphere, trade paperback, 2010.

First Sentence:   Once my wife asked me: if you knew this was our final day together, what would you say to me?

   CIA agent Sam Capra is deeply in love with his pregnant wife. However, his life turns into a nightmare when his office is blown up, killing everyone but him, thanks to a call from Lucy telling him to leave the building, and she then disappears. The CIA accuses Sam of treason and murder, yet he remains determined to prove both his, and Lucy’s innocence. But first he needs to finds her and their child.

   It is sometimes hard to start a book with a rather sad opening. It requires the author to have a strong voice and the making of an interesting character. Abbott has both.

   To have a protagonist who does Parkour, aka extreme running, is not something we’ve seen before. What is even better is that the author truly gives one a sense of it, of the movement. But then, Abbott is a very visceral writer. He doesn’t just make one see, he makes on feel. While this is a very good trait, it can also be painful for the reader. The descriptions of the interrogation are real, uncomfortable, and disturbing as you know they are utilized.

   The information on nanotechnology — the study of the control of matter on an atoms at the molecular level—is fascinating and frightening. The inclusion of Patty Hearst and the techniques of the Symbionese Liberation Army brings one back to a terrible period in time.

   Abbott has a very good voice and uses humor in a subtle, wry manner to offset the darkness of the plot:

      â€” “Then he flicked open a switchblade. A switchblade? The eighties want their weapon back.”

      â€” And shades of the television show Sherlock Holmes: “She’s not a traitor.” “I should get you a T-shirt with that on it,” Mila said. “And then my Christmas Shopping is done.”

      — The sense of place is always apparent: “The Grijs Gander wasn’t just a dump bar. It was a karaoke bar. That made it about a thousand times more evil.”

   Sam Capra is an interesting character whose background is very neatly provided as he finds himself in various situations. He is neither an amateur, nor a professional at dealing with his situation. Although he has some actual experience in what he must do, he is not a fully-trained field agent. This heightens the suspense.

  &nbusp;The plot is definitely one of high action and suspense. However, it is unfortunately that there needs be the stereotypical bad guy. The story is filled with very effective plot twists, yet it is still fairly predictable. Even so, Abbott statement about mankind is true and quite pitiable

      — “God or nature of biological accident gives us these awesome brains and this is what we do with them. We think of better ways to kill. Ways that make murder as easy as taking a breath.”

   Adrenaline is an exciting, sometimes painful, read with an ending that’s a perfect set up for the next book, and the series.

Rating:   Good.

      The Sam Capra series —

1. Adrenaline (2010)
2. Last Minute (2011)
2.5. Sam Capra’s Last Chance (novella, 2012)
3. Downfall (2013)
4. The Inside Man (2014)
5. The First Order (2016)

Editorial Comment:   This is LJ’s first review to be posted on this blog in quite a while. There will be more to come. You can also read many more of her reviews on her own blog: https://booksaremagic.blogspot.com/. Do check it out!

THE QUEEN OF SPADES Associated British-Pathé, UK, 1949; Monogram Pictures, US, 1949. Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, Yvonne Mitchell, Ronald Howard, Anthony Dawson, Miles Malleson and Ivor Barnard. Written by Rodney Ackland and Arthuir Boys, from a story by Alexander Puskin (first published in the literary magazine Biblioteka dlya chteniya, March 1834). Directed by Thorold Dickenson.

   Probably the most splendid ghost story ever filmed: lavishly produced, directed with moody elegance, intelligently written, and acted to a fare-thee-well, this is a film I can recommend to anyone who loves a fine, gothic chiller, with ghosts, obsession and satanic bargains. And it also has a used book store.

   Anton Walbrook stars as Suvorin, a frugal Russian Army Captain absorbed by a passion for money and how to get it. It’s a one-dimensional part, but Walbrook plays it with a fruity obsession worthy of George Zucco, which fits perfectly into Director Dickenson’s gothic milieu. Ronald Howard is the less interesting Decent Sort one usually sees played in horror films by John Boles or David Manners.

   Be that as it may, both men are pursuing Yvonne Mitchell, the ward/companion/indentured servant of Edith Evans, a lady of advanced years who looks more like Kharis than anybody’s guardian — she even drags a foot as she walks. Of course Ronnie is in love with the lady, but Anton has his own uses for the niece.

   Did I call Evans a “Lady of advanced years?” In this movie she’s so old, Suvorin finds her mentioned in an old book (found of course in a creepy used book store run by Ivor Barnard, who looks like a cross between Satan and a Pulpfest dealer) and learns that in her youth — sometime in the last century — she was rumored to have sold her soul to the Devil for the secret of wining at cards.

   Consumed with a desire to worm his way into the household and learn the dowager’s secret, Suvorin romances the niece from afar, arranges an assignation, and once inside breaks into Evans’ bedroom and wheedles, cajoles, bargains and threatens her until …

   I won’t give anything else away, but I will say that what follows resonates with surprising emotion, as we explore the feelings of the characters involved. It’s also elaborately creepy, a ghost tale set in magnificent surroundings that somehow add to the macabre atmosphere of the story, and leads to the strangest ending I have ever seen in a scary movie.

   Try this one; you won’t regret it.
   

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. Universal International, 1953. Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson, Kathleen Hughes. Screenplay by Harry Essex, based on a story treatment by Ray Bradbury. Director: Jack Arnold.

   When an amateur astronomer named John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his girl friend (Barbara Rush) see a giant fireball fall from the sky and land nearby, they rush to investigate. As one of the first two on the scene, Putnam goes down into the hole alone and so is the only one to see a huge metallic spaceship that has crashed deep into the earth. He then escapes before the ground crumbles around it and covers it up.

   Is he believed when he tells his story to the first responders, including the local sheriff (Charles Drake)? In a word, no. Not until a series of strange events begins to occur, including people disappearing only to return walking around as if in a daze.

   Originally filmed in 3-D, the first such for Universal, not even the unusual camera work (designed to show off the medium and no other reason), makes this movie anything more than slow-moving. It may have been extremely innovative at the time — including the fact that the aliens turn out not to be hostile — but I’m sorry to say that I found it a yawner today.