ELIZABETH BACKHOUSE – Death Came Uninvited. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1957.

   You can find unusual items on eBay, and for me, this is one I recently ended up winning. My copy is a rather shabby ex-library edition which cost me perhaps a pound, plus double that for shipping from England.

   Elizabeth Backhouse, the flap of the jacket says, is a young Australian writer, and this is her first novel. This sends me to Al Hubin’s [Crime Fiction IV] almost immediately, mostly out of curiosity to see if she ever wrote another.

   And indeed she did. Here are all her books of crime fiction, at least, in chronological order:

         Death Came Uninvited. Hale, 1957. [Inspector Christopher Marsden]
         The Mists Came Down. Hale, 1959.
         The Web of Shadows. Hale, 1960. [Inspector Prentis]
         The Night Has Eyes. Hale, 1961. [Inspector Marsden]
         Death of a Clown. Hale, 1962. [Inspector Prentis]
         Death Climbs a Hill. Hale, 1963. [Inspector Prentis]

   Inspector Marsden is her English policeman, while Inspector Prentis, about whom I know nothing else, is Australian. It may be that Ms. Backhouse’s story-telling techniques took on extra dimensions as she continued to write, but in at least her first book, we see and follow Marsden when he’s on the job, and nowhere else, so as it turns out, I know very little about him as well.

   No wife, girl friend, no home life, nothing at all except — it’s not much, but it will have to do — he does have a dog, one who follows his master around with him as he interviews suspects and follows clues. The dog’s name is Spodge, which sounds terribly authentically British to me.

   In pure pulp fashion, you might say — not the hard-boiled Hammett stuff — but the gentleman-adventurer-slash-drawing-room sort of tale, the murderer kills his first victim using a sealed envelope filled with ammonia, leaving a calling card for the crime, signed “The Uninvited.”

   And so the pursuit is on. There are lots of suspects in an increasingly complicated plot, but what Marsden and his men failed to do, it seems to me, is to ever ask the question, “Why such a complicated means to do murder?” and “Why did the murderer feel that he was uninvited?”

   Or, where is Ellery Queen when we need him? As for me, I let Marsden and his men do all of the legwork, I concentrated on the second question (the first one has no answer), and I worked out the entire solution before any of them.

   I don’t brag. I only tell it how it is. The case is still entertaining, save for a small amount of muddled telling toward the end, and I could see why. The author was trying to keep the surprise ending up her sleeve for as long as she could, and there wasn’t nearly room enough for her to maneuver.

GIL DODGE – Flint. Signet #1414, paperback original, 1957. Included in 3 Steps to Hell as by Arnold Hano, Stark House, softcover, October 2012, along with So I’m a Heel and The Big Out.

   Flint offers some fine Western characters and a terse, hard-boiled opening, but ultimately it’s more interesting for the story behind it than the story within.

   Arnold Hano, the editor-in-chief at Lion Books back in the 1950s ought to be legendary for the quality of the work he sustained. While not every Lion Book was a classic of its time, Hano gave work to writers like Jim Thompson, Robert Bloch, David Goodis and Richard Matheson when they needed it most. And he didn’t just give them work, he gave them free rein to indulge their pulpy passions on the printed page.

   Books like The Kidnaper, The Killer Inside Me, The Burglar and Someone Is Bleeding teem with genuine artistry inside their gaudy covers that would be admirable anywhere, and simply amazing inside a cheap paperback.

   So when I learned that Hano himself wrote a western based on Jim Thompson’s Savage Night (with Thompson’s blessing) I came to it with high expectations — maybe too high. It starts well, with Flint, a notorious Hired Gun, previously lung-shot and in hiding, making his painful way across barren countryside to keep a rendezvous with a mysterious cattle baron named Good who needs a job done right—very close to the same situation the tubercular Charlie Biggers walks into in Savage Night.

   And in short order, Flint finds himself working a run-down ranch with his intended target, a rancher named Thomason (get it?) romancing a buxom wife and playing cat-and-mouse with Good’s henchman and a slovenly sheriff.

   And then [SPOILER!] everything just kinda stops as Flint gets sucked into an elaborate, nay byzantine, game with the man who hired him, trying to figure out his place in the scheme of things and the roles and motives of the various other players. Every move Flint makes, Good has seen coming, everything he tries gets him nowhere, or leads him to where Good has figured he’d go… and nothing really happens as several chapters go by with Good’s schemes getting more complex and Flint’s efforts more futile.

   Okay now, maybe this is a personal thing with me, or maybe it’s the vision and talent of the writers in question. I’ll entertain both possibilities, but in Savage Night, Jim Thompson conveys the notion of a cruel and mocking universe through which his doomed characters must wander.

   And this to me was more compelling — more convincing, even — than Arno/Dodge’s picture of a nasty old man cooking up murderous plots just for the fun of seeing folks squirm. I guess the difference is that Thompson’s characters do battle with nightmares while Arno/Dodge’s simply grasp for the banal — and find it all too readily within their reach.

ALICE MacGOWAN & PERRY NEWBERRY – The Million Dollar Suitcase. Stokes, hardcover, 1922; International Fiction Library, hardcover reprint, n.d.

   Impossible-crime fanciers get a bonus and a debit here. The bonus: There are two locked-room situations. The debit: They aren’t very good.

   The first occurs when a San Francisco bank teller absconds with nearly a million dollars. Close on the teller’s heels is the bank’s private detective, Jerry Boyne. He arrives at the teller’s hotel room to find the windows latched with burglar-proof locks and the door closed with the usual spring lock.

   In front of the door is a woman repairing a rug, and she had been there since the teller had entered his room. The teller had not left by the door, but neither he nor the money was in the room.

   Worth Gilbert, whose father has stock in the bank, offers the bank’s board $800,000 for the contents of the suitcase. It seems he needs a challenge. While Gilbert can raise most of the money, he has to ask his father to provide the rest. After a fight with his father, he doesn’t get the money. Shortly thereafter his father is found shot to death in the second locked room.

   Fortunately for Boyne, who would not have been chosen by his predecessor to head the detective agency and one can see why from the many mistakes he makes in this investigation, he has the aid, on the rare occasions he’s sensible enough to use it, of a young woman whose psychologist father trained her from childhood to be a lightning observer and reasoner. She figures out the first locked room; Boyne, after having the solution shoved under his nose, solves the second.

   This novel apparently appeared first in the Saturday Evening Post as “Two and Two.” As far as I can recall, the Post printed no bad stories, but it did publish some mediocre material, in which category this falls, despite an occasional good observation such as “A financier’s idea of indecency is something about money which hasn’t formerly been done.”

   Since this is the first in a series of books featuring Jerry Boyne, I’ll be looking for the other novels by MacGowan and Newberry but only to establish who solves Boyne’s other cases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Alice MacGowan & Perry Newberry —
             [All with Jerry Boyne.]

      The Million Dollar Suitcase. Stokes, 1922.
      The Mystery Woman. Stokes, 1924.
      Shaken Down. Stokes, 1925.
      The Seventh Passenger. Stokes, 1926.
      Who Is This Man?. Stokes, 1927.

   For my last column I revisited one of the Bertha Cool/Donald Lam novels written by Erle Stanley Gardner as A.A. Fair, and for this one I tackled another. Fools Die on Friday (1947) is more straightforward than Bedrooms Have Windows and the plotting more under Gardner’s control.

   The firm is hired to protect a real-estate tycoon from having his food poisoned by his second wife, who married him after his first wife died of, you guessed it, food poisoning. Donald quickly catches on that his new client isn’t who she claims to be. Then he devises a scam to delay the poison plot by posing as PR man for a manufacturer of anchovy paste and offering to put Wife Two in ads for the product.

   The realtor is poisoned anyway — with arsenic in the paste Donald left at his house as samples — and so is his wife. He recovers but she doesn’t. Then his secretary is strangled and Donald finds the body. Mixed into the ragout are a devious dentist, a machine that handicaps horse races, and a wandering package of arsenic.

   There’s very little detection in this opus, but the pace is furious (as usual with Gardner) and the climax, with one character literally getting away with murder, would never have been allowed in a contemporaneous Perry Mason novel since the Masons were being serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and the Cool/Lam books weren’t.

   Among other dividends in Fools Die we get to learn a new word. In Chapter 5 Cool tells Lam she’s trying to get the firm’s client “in a position where she has to pungle up more money.” In Chapter 15 she asks him: “You pungled up a hundred bucks in cold cash on the nose of one pony on the strength of it [i.e. the handicapping machine]?”

   I’ve never seen the word before in my life but Webster’s New International Dictionary assures me that it’s a genuine verb, meaning to pay or contribute. I wonder where Gardner came across it.

   Ever hear of Walter Kaufmann? He was born in Germany of Jewish parents in 1922, left his homeland on a scholarship to an American college just before Hitler launched World War II, returned to Germany with Military Intelligence during the war, and eventually was hired by Princeton University as a professor of philosophy. I discovered him in my teens and have been reading him all my life.

   Why am I recounting all this here? Because in one of his best-known books, Critique of Religion and Philosophy (1958), he tossed off a comment about our genre that is well worth preserving:

   The balance of this sentence is for our purposes (if I may cite a Gardnerism) incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that among Kaufmann’s favorite whodunits were those in which the detective acted as historian, for example Ellery Queen’s The Murderer Is a Fox (1945) and Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1952).

   We’ll never know for sure. Kaufmann died horribly in 1980 at age 58. Anyone interested in the details can access his brother Felix Kaufmann’s account of his death by googling both men’s names.

   Still bogged down as I am in the index for The Art of Detection, I’ll pad out this column to its usual length with the help of that nonpareil, that nonesuch, that Ed Word of the written wood, Michael Avallone.

   Over the decades I’ve culled from his 200-odd novels well over a thousand prime specimens of the Avalloneism. Both Bill Pronzini and I as well as some others have offered samples taken from his Ed Noon PI novels, but readers of this column are less likely to have seen those he perpetrated in the dozens of paperback Gothics he wrote under female bylines back in the Sixties.

   From The Second Secret, as by Edwina Noone (Belmont pb #B50-686, 1966) I’ve harvested 7½ single-spaced pages of howlers, which I hope to dole out over the next several columns. Page numbers are provided in case anyone wants to quote these in an academic journal. Hold onto your hats and here we go:

   Of course, any number of Avallone’s Gothics are utterly devoid of such gems. When I find one of these I usually fling it across the room, snarling: “Why did I pungle up good money for this garbage? Someone edited it!” But so many of his immortal works are so lavishly studded with verbal cow pies that I could keep quoting like this till at least my 90th birthday. If there should be one.

[Editorial Comment.]   11-7-12.   By the time Dell got around to reprinting their 1951 edition of Fools Die on Friday (#542), the first cover was considered risque enough that some changes had to be made. See below:

THE WEB. Universal, 1947. Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, William Bendix, Vincent Price, Maria Palmer, John Abbott, Fritz Leiber, Howland Chamberlin. Director: Michael Gordon.

   Films beget films. At least the popular ones do. In a process not unlike evolution, successful films breed films like themselves which in turn permutate into others like themselves, and on and on until the trend overpopulates itself and dies off.

   But along the way, some interesting specimens pop up. Case in point: The Web, a nifty little semi-noir mystery that deserves to be better known. Unpretentious, fast-paced and intelligent, this was scripted by a team of writers (William Bowers, Bertram Milhauser and Harry Kurnitz) with solid credentials, and directed by Michael Gordon (who he?) with an eye for personality and atmosphere.

   The forebears of this film are of interest: Back in 1944, Fox came out with Laura, a mega-hit starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, with meaty roles doled out to Clifton Webb and Vincent Price as a pair of soigné suspects. Two years later, Fox decided to rework the motif with The Dark Corner, featuring Clifton Webb again as a cultured criminal type, this time backed up by William Bendix as mindless muscle. Then for its own variation on the theme, Universal populated The Web with Vincent Price and William Bendix — and did quite nicely by them both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThW7t0kYHnY

   Edmond O’Brien (back when he was merely chubby) stars as a struggling young attorney hired by wealthy industrialist Vincent Price (back when he was merely nasty) as a bodyguard. So, all obvious jokes aside, why hire a lawyer as a bodyguard?

   Well, there’s a complicated story about an ex-partner (Fritz Leiber) convicted of stealing bonds, now out of jail and maybe carrying a grudge — though Vinnie assures us he himself had nothing to do with the whole messy business. To further complicate matters (he goes on, in his most urbane manner) there’s a business deal pending, and if word got out his life was threatened it might scare away investors. So what more natural than to have a lawyer on his staff who happens to carry a gun?

   Yeah, any mystery fan can see something phony coming down the road like a float in a Macy’s parade, and O’Brien senses it too, but he takes the job anyway, mainly because of Price’s Personal Assistant, played by Ella Raines, one of the most uniquely alluring femmes of the 40s. The script says there’s a romantic spark between them, but frankly, she looks so far out of his class he might as well be in another movie.

   And it seems Price has another personal assistant, this one more appalling than appealing, played by John Abbott, a 40s character actor who projects a prissy ghoulishness all his own. Just what work he does for Price ain’t exactly clear, but one quickly gets the impression it’s nothing very saintly.

   So with some misgivings, O’Brien sees his old cop-pal (William Bendix, surprisingly bespectacled and cerebral here) gets a gun permit, and the show is on. What follows is a splendid game of move and counter-move involving murder (or is it?) blackmail (or is someone bluffing?) and carefully-plotted traps that seem to snare those who set them. Or as Bendix puts it to O’Brien, “Don’t you see? If you prove it’s murder, then you’re the murderer.”

   This is an unusually intelligent film, with stops along the way for well-realized minor characters, like Leiber’s bitter daughter, broodingly portrayed by one Maria Palmer, an actress who should have gone further. And we also get the patently unsympathetic Howland Chamberlain — you may recall him as the loathsome druggist in Best Years of Our Lives or the smarmy hotelier in High Noon — as a pretentious author with clues to Price’s past. Fleeting pleasures in a film that provides an engaging and entertaining eighty-seven minutes well worth your time.

HARRY O. ABC / Warner Brothers. Season 2, Part 1. Fall 1975, Thursday at 10-11pm. Created by Howard Rodman. Cast: David Janssen as Harry Orwell, Anthony Zerbe as Lieutenant K.C. Trench, Paul Tulley as Sergeant Roberts. Recurring Cast: Farrah Fawcett-Majors as Sue Ingham, Bill Henderson as Spencer Johnson, Les Lannom as Lester Hodges, Margaret Avery as Ruby Dome (aka Ruby Lawrence), Barbara Leigh as Gina, Richard Stahl as Pathologist Dr. Samuelson, Susan Adams as Police lab tech Jean Parnell. Executive Producer: Jerry Thorpe. Producers: Robert Dozier and Alex Beaton.

   From the beginning what made Harry O special was David Janssen and how the series used his talents to explore both the dark and comedic side of his character. Howard Rodman’s dark social noirish stories from the first half of Season One had been replaced with the more typical TV melodrama. Happily, the second season continued to take advantage of the special chemistry between Janssen and Anthony Zerbe and the relationship between Harry and Police Lieutenant Trench.

“Anatomy of a Frame.” (9/11/75): Trench is framed for the murder of one of his informants. One of the best episodes of the series, it showed how important great characters and chemistry between the actors is to any TV series.

   The episode has a wonderful scene where Trench comes to Harry for help. We learn Trench is married with two young children, one boy and one girl. We enjoy watching Trench open up and reveal more about himself such as his shared interest in Harry’s unfinished boat “The Answer.” The boat was meant to be an allegory for Harry’s endless search for answers in life. The two men may have opposite views of how to work and live, but they shared the same purpose and dreams.

“One for the Road.” (9/18/75): A brilliant lawyer (Carol Rossen), who denies a drinking problem, hires Harry to find out if she was behind the wheel of a car in a hit and run accident. This episode as a weak melodrama saved by a decent mystery.

“Lester Two.” (9/25/75) features the return of Harry’s biggest fan Lester Hodges. An international jewel thief (Clifford David) hides some stolen diamonds in a bottle of cologne that the unknowing Sue brings back from Paris for Harry. It is Sue’s birthday and all she wants is some quiet time with Harry, but those plans change with the arrival of the thief who wants his diamonds (that are not in the bottle).

   The series had a fondness for having odd scenes dropped in for comic relief. In this episode, we have a scene where Trench introduces Harry to Professor Kroner (Paul Harper) a mad scientist working for the police department creating gadgets James Bond’s Q would admire. The story is full of flaws from the actions of the thief to Lester at his most annoying, but Janssen as Harry makes the episode watchable.

“Shades.” (10/2/75): Harry is hired by a rich woman (Anjanette Comer) to clear her maid (Maidie Norman) of murder. Set against the backdrop of racial prejudices of the time, Harry unites with the local bookie, Cleon (Lou Gossett) who has his own reasons for finding the true killer.

   A good episode made better by Lou Gossett and a strong mystery. One fun scene features Harry’s mechanic Spence escorting Harry through the “black” section of town.

   Trivia: Harry was born in Philadephia. After the Korean War, he looked around and found he liked San Diego. And while Harry can run with no problems, the bullet is still in his back.

“Reflections.” (10/9/75): Harry’s ex-police partner in San Diego, now a Los Angeles PI is found dead. Harry discovers the man’s client is Harry’s ex-wife Elizabeth (Felicia Farr) who is being blackmailed.

   A welcome look at Harry’s past, weakened by the lack of logic in the bad guy’s actions and Harry’s car. In the beginning the car was a symbol of Harry’s beach bum lifestyle, then it became a comedic device. But here the car breaks down and lets the killer escape. Why does Harry continue to use the car when his and others lives are on the line? And after this, how can we still find Harry’s choice in transportation funny?

“The Acolyte.” (10/16/75) Harry is hired to find a woman (Kristina Holland) who will soon inherit her family’s fortune. He finds her taken in by a religious cult. She is convinced the cult is protecting her from being charged with murder.

   The episode had a nice subplot about old movie actors, but it was wasted in this predictable mystery with some of the worse acting by guest stars in the series.

“Mayday.” (10/23/75) A Senator (Geoffrey Lewis) is nearly killed when his private plane crashes. Harry gets involved because the plane’s pilot, who died in the crash, was a buddy from his time in Korea. When the dead pilot’s wife (Maggie Blye) returns from the funeral to find her home trashed, Harry suspects the crash may not have been an accident.

   Highlights of the episode include the choice of murder weapon and the scenes between Harry and Trench. Harry’s love life has a setback as he spends time protecting his female client rather than with his girlfriend, DMV contact and neighbor Gina. Gina is less forgiving than Sue.

“Tender Killing Care.” (10/30/75): Spence asks Harry for help as his father (Jester Hairston) had escaped from a senior care center and broke into a small convenience store. Meanwhile, Sue asks Harry to find the missing father of three Korean children.

   Cheap melodrama at its worst. You have a white doctor (Kenneth Mars) with a thick Southern accent mistreating seniors such as Spencer’s father (who is black). Meanwhile, the story of the missing daddy was a pointless waste of time. Then we have an important part of Harry’s character (he has no family except his friends) ignored for a condescending ending.

“APB Harry Orwell.” (11/6/75) Its Harry’s turn to be framed for murder. Trench is forced to balance his sense of duty as a policeman with his friendship to Harry. Harry escapes from jail, an innocent man on the run for a murder he did not commit. This time we know the one-armed man didn’t do it.

   Harry is fun to watch again. This is the episode that won Anthony Zerbe the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor. The humor is typical for the series, such as the reason Harry gives Trench to why he is innocent, “As an ex-cop charged with murder is bad enough, but to leave clues as big as billboards is down right embarrassing.”

“Group Terror.” (11/13/75) Lady psychiatrist (Joanna Pettet) thinks one of her group therapy patients killed another member of the group. Trench is pleased to learn Harry has joined the group (he goes undercover). Harry’s love life gets some attention as he beds the client.

   A weak attempt at a locked room murder, as the only way the killer could have gotten out is through a small window in a third floor apartment. As with too many of this season’s episodes, the story fails to take us anywhere unexpected. Fortunately, because of Harry and Trench (with Roberts), we enjoy the ride.

“Portrait of a Murder.” (11/20/75) Harry is hired by the parents (Lou Frizzell and Katherine Helmond) of a mentally challenged 19-year old boy (Adam Arkin) to find out where the boy had snuck out to the night before. Harry makes friends with the boy who becomes a suspect in the murders of three young women.

   This episode handles the issue of the mentally challenged with sensitivity, though some of the language and attitudes are dated.

“Exercise in Fatality.” (12/4/75) Hotheaded cop (Ralph Meeker) hires Harry to find his runaway teenaged daughter (Nora Heflin) who is also a pregnant junkie. Before Harry finds her, his client is framed for the murder of the daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter believes her father did it but had seen the two real killers leave the scene of the crime. Harry tries to find the girl before the real killers can. Meanwhile, an ex-lover of Harry shows up and asks to stay while she hides from her mobster boyfriend.

   Two separate plots for one episode was rarely used in the series and never worked. None of the characters were developed enough for us to care about them and the use of the pregnant junkies is too over the top melodramatic. But watch Janssen, he makes you care about what happens to Harry.

“The Madonna Legacy.” (12/11/75) An eight-year old murder is the key to the death of an alcoholic ex-cop turn PI, and friend of Harry. Harry is driven by guilt as he realizes he was the last of four people the PI tried to call before he was killed. The names of the other three are from the same family, each is in danger from someone who wants them dead. This episode was the best mystery of the season so far.

   ABC made major changes in its midseason schedule with seven new shows, six cancelled and three moved. Harry O would remain behind the successful Streets of San Francisco on ABC’s Thursday night schedule. But CBS and NBC changed its Thursday schedules with CBS dropping CBS Thursday Night Movies for Hawaii Five-O followed by Barnaby Jones, and NBC moving Ellery Queen and dropping Medical Story for NBC Thursday Night Movie. The year 1976 would bring major changes to the TV network world, changes that would not be good for Harry O.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS BLOG: HARRY O: Season 1, Part 2.

NEXT: HARRY O: Season 2, Part 2 (Midseason, 1976).

We were quite lucky. Storm Sandy gave us only a glancing blow, as it turned out, although that was bad enough. We had lots of rain and high gusty winds, 45mph or so, but our power stayed on — the lights flickered twice, and that was all. We were well prepared with food, bottled water, flashlights and a portable battery-operated radio, but we didn’t need them. I haven’t turned on the TV yet to see what damage was done along the shore here in CT and farther south along the East Coast, including New York City. Horrendous, I imagine. I know lots of people are in a lot more trouble than us.

There is one huge branch of a tree in our back yard that missed our deck by several feet, otherwise we might have lost it. The storm was essentially over by 10 pm, although it was supposed to last for several days, it was so large. I looked out it see if were raining, and I saw the moon shining brightly between the clouds. That was a great relief!

Today it is still windy with lots of gray clouds but the sun is also out, shining brightly for the first time in several days. I don’t know if you remember the date of our snowstorm last year, when we had no electricity for five days, but it was exactly a year ago. I really didn’t want to do that again!

JAMES ANDERSON – The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks. Poisoned Pen Press, hardcover, November 2003; trade paperback, February 2006.

   Here’s something I’ve noticed before, but it seems to have registered only in the back of my head, never to have been mentioned before to anyone. By me, at least, until now. The titles of each of the first nine mysteries written by James Anderson start with the letter “A” — ignoring the occasional “The,” as in the first two books of this particular series:

      The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg-Cosy, McKay (hc) 1977, Avon (pb) 1978, Poisoned Pen Press (trade pb) 1998.

      The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat, Avon (pb) 1981, Poisoned Press (trade pb) 1999 as The Affair of the Mutilated Mink.

   Anderson’s other titles, in alphabetical order, are: The Abolition of Death, Additional Evidence, The Alpha List, Angel of Death, Appearance of Evil, Assassin, and Assault and Matrimony.

   In the late 1980s Anderson also wrote the first three Jessica Fletcher paperbacks, tie-in’s with the Murder, She Wrote television series. (These do NOT start with the letter “A.”) And that seems to have been all, until just recently.

   But other people than myself seem to have remembered the first two affairs taking place at Alderley with great fondness, and several years ago Poisoned Press reissued them as part of their Missing Mystery series. Then, according to the publisher, the manuscript for this, the third adventure of Detective-Chief Inspector Wilkins arrived, unexpectedly to everyone.

   And so the Earl of Burford, George, his wife Lavinia, and their daughter Penelope are back again, which is good, no, terrific news. Nor I should fail to mention their stalwart butler Merryweather, who steadfastly aids the family throughout all three murder cases.

   But as Wilkins implies on page 129, it was inevitable. “You know the old saying, ‘Never two without three’.” Lord Burford had tried earlier to resist. “After the last two house parties, we agreed no more.” But Great Aunt Florrie’s wishes are not be denied, and since she expressed the desire to be buried at the parish church, there is no getting around it, and after the funeral the mourners have to be invited to their country house, Alderley.

   Not only that, the reading of the will is to take place there as well, necessitating overnight guests again, all distant relatives. In the securely locked house, someone, it turns out, has murderous intentions upon another.

   This magnificent throwback to the 1930s, which of course is when it takes place, is filled with people who have both hidden secrets and secret desires, none of which they wish known; witty (and often cutting) dialogue; near farcical encounters in the night; and almost more clues than you can imagine.

   Behind a rather sanguine facade, Wilkins is quite a detective, and at the end he patiently and impressively goes through each of the small hints and other pieces of evidence that brought him to his final conclusion — who did it and how, and how he found out.

   It’s quite a challenge for an author to produce a period detective novel that’s also humorous and a fair play mystery as well, and two out of three is not bad. I was very suspicious of one of the characters, and rightly so, but after the explanations are over, it’s clear that not even the cleverest of armchair detectives could have worked the solution out on their own. Wilkins has the resources, the reader doesn’t, and the reader is not told of the crucial details until too late.

   In summary, then, it’s an “almost, but not quite,” which is still better than 90% of the detective novels written today. And unless Mr. Anderson can be persuaded to write another, or he has one locked away in a trunk somewhere, I also have the feeling that this may be the end of the series. I hope I’m wrong.

[UPDATE] 10-26-12.   Unfortunately I was not wrong. This was the last of three cases to be solved by Inspector Wilkins. The author, James Anderson, died in 2007.

   Jeff Meyerson’s review of The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy can be found here earlier on this blog.

   Nowadays, weird movies are so numerous as to pass unnoticed; it is, in fact, common practice lately to layer a certain amount of weirdness deliberately onto quite ordinary films to increase their appeal to trendy movie-goers and boost the box office.

   But in my youth, the truly weird movies were something subversive filmmakers got away with, mainly in the B-features when no one was looking. Hence, the old weird movies played at neighborhood grind-houses to audiences of uncomprehending kids and drunks, then on local TV stations at obscure hours of the morning, diced up with ads for used cars and the amazing veg-O-matic.

   Hold that thought. I’ll get back to it.

   The things I read, given world enough and time, begin to amaze me. A few weeks ago, f’rinstance, I found myself somewhere deep inside Thomas DeQuincey’s memoir (sensationally serialized in the London papers circa 1821-22) Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

   This is not a book I’m going to recommend to lovers of Junkie or Musk, Hashish & Blood. The density of DeQuincey’s prose is such as will daunt most readers, and I don’t blame ’em a bit. Take one typical sentence —

    — and you’ll see it takes a Sherpa guide to get through some of these passes, and the reader with any sense at all for brevity and clarity may justifiably fling deQuincey’s book across the room.

   Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself not just enjoying this thing, but actually pursuing the tale (such as it is) eagerly to its end. For those who can fight through the dense prose, Confessions holds some powerful bits of sheer writing: harrowing descriptions of starving in London; stark descriptions of beggars and streetwalkers going desperately down winding, shadowy streets; gaudy evocations of wild opium dreams, and even the odd bit of humor jumping out from hiding, as his advice on taking Opium:

   Now to return to that thought you’ve been holding, DeQuincey’s title, somewhat abbreviated into Confessions of an Opium Eater was used for a film completely unrelated (or almost completely; the hero’s name is Gilbert DeQuincey) to the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoRBNxuweP0

   Released by Allied Artists (formerly Monogram) in 1962, produced and directed by that wild card of the Cinema, Albert Zugsmith (look him up) this was a cult film before there were cult films, a movie that emerges as simply weird for its own sake, rather than aimed at any particular audience. Spawned by a filmmaker known equally for his work with geniuses and for his own trashy bad taste, Confessions will easily boggle the mind of anyone unprepared for its tawdry neo-surrealism.

   Vincent Price stars as a black-clad and bemused soldier-of-fortune charged with ending the Oriental slave trade in San Francisco, circa 1920s — an action hero if you will, and if the mantle seems to rest a bit awkwardly on his shoulders, he still bears it manfully, jumping from rooftops, hatchet-dueling with Tong assassins, freeing fair young maidens and trading repartee with the Dragon Lady — in short, everything you expect from a two-fisted hero, but done with a sardonic lyricism never seen outside this cheap little movie, with lines like: “They say in every drunkard there’s a demon, in every poet a ghost. So here am I ghost and demon…”

   There are other surprises along the way, including an oriental den of iniquity filled with several hundred doors, sliding panels and secret passages; a tiny slave girl locked in a cage who turns out to be a jaded and diminutive old woman; an extended slow-motion dope-dream fight sequence, and an ending that made me doubt my senses. In short, this is the goods: a genuine Old Weird Movie and like nothing else you’ll ever see.

DIRK GENTLY. BBC Four/ITV Studios in association with The Welded Tandem Picture Company for BBC Cymru Wales, 2010 and 20123. Created and executive produced by Howard Overman. Cast: Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently, Darren Boyd as Richard MacDuff, Lisa Jackson as Janice, Jason Watkins as DI Gilks, and Helen Baxendale as Susan Harmison. For a more complete list of credits and an in depth look at the series visit the official BBC Four website.

    Douglas Adams’ (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) private detective Dirk Gently first appeared in the comedy fantasy mystery novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. His adventures continued in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) and in the unfinished Salmon of Doubt (2002).

    “But right now on BBC Four, its murder most random with Dirk Gently,” proclaimed the network’s announcer.

    Dirk Gently believes in “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things,” the quantum mechanics of Physics applied to all life.

    The series takes place in a modern day London. However, there are occasional moments when we realize the action is in an alternate universe, such as when Dirk fails to keep a computer program out of the hands of the Pentagon and America conquers Mexico.

    The mysteries are played fair with clues, some obvious while others not. Everything is connected. When Dirk takes things from anyplace, know it will play a role in the case, unless it is cash from the dead person’s pocket – that will be for pizza.

    The series was less interested in adapting Adams’ books than attempting to capture the spirit of his work and characters. Considering how impossible it would be to film the books, it was a wise choice, if not always successful.

    Stephen Mangan may not fit the image of Dirk from the books but he plays the character convincingly. A self-centered con man with the social skills of Sherlock Holmes, Dirk may or may not believe in his detective skills but is satisfied that things always work out in the end. He drives a broken down car worthy of Harry Orwell’s admiration. He is a deadbeat whose primary joy in life is eating fatty foods.

    Darren Boyd plays the spineless “Watson,” Richard MacDuff. But it is this character where the series goes most wrong. MacDuff appeared in the first book only. Lacking a narrator (though a narrator would have improved the TV series much as it did Pushing Daisies and Dragnet), the series needed a second character to help reveal exposition to the audience. The result was the series became less Dirk Gently and more a funny spoof of Holmes and Watson, as well as police procedurals.

    Helen Baxendale was wasted as Susan Harmison, MacDuff’s girlfriend. The writers really didn’t know what to do with the character except use her as a story device to threaten MacDuff and Dirk’s partnership (while MacDuff considers himself a partner having invested all his money into the agency, Dirk considers him his assistant).

    Lisa Jackson plays the one note character, Dirk’s secretary Janice. Janice sits in the outer office refusing to do any work, such as answer phones or show clients into Dirk’s office, until Dirk pays her wages. While not the most logical, the running gag is funny especially in the final episode.

    Jason Watkins gets the required role of stupid cop DI Gilks, whose role gives Dirk someone to run from.

            THE EPISODES:

Pilot (12/16/2010). Written by Howard Overman. Based on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. Directed by Damon Thomas. Guest Cast: Doreen Mantle, Anthony Howell, Billy Boyle, and Miles Richardson. *** Dirk is hired by an old woman to find her cat. This leads him to his friend from college Richard MacDuff, who is breaking into his girlfriend Susan’s home to delete an email he regretted sending.

    They look for the cat in a warehouse full of SF looking machines that self-destructs apparently killing a millionaire scientist. The same millionaire who had been “in love” with MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan since their college days, and who Susan had been rejecting for years because of an incident in college. This and more is all connected and leads Dirk to the cat and the answer to two murders.

    Typical Dirk moment: Among his expenses (payable in advance) Dirk charges the old lady for is the cost of a new refrigerator for his office (the one in his apartment had been padlocked by his landlord).

Episode One (3/5/12). Written by Howard Overman. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Cosima Shaw, Paul Ritter, Colin McFarlane and Kenneth Collard. *** MacDuff has joined the detective agency as Dirk’s partner/assistant. The agency has been hired by a paranoid millionaire computer genius convinced the American Pentagon is out to kill him.

    They find him murdered, and uncover his plans to invade Switzerland. From the clues, Dirk realizes the man had invented a computer program that will prove whatever premise you want, to justify the unjustifiable, a computer program the Pentagon would kill to get.

    Typical Dirk Gently moment: Dirk believes in Zen navigation. While many believe when you are lost you should consult a map, Zen navigation advises one to find someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them. Dirk admits this method rarely gets him where he was going but it often gets him where he is supposed to be.

Episode Two (3/12/12) Written by Matt Jones. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Bill Paterson, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Lydia Wilson and Andrew Leung. *** Dirk’s mentor, Professor Jericho hires the agency to discover who was stealing funds and projects from the computer research department.

    While Professor Ransome struggles on the verge of creating an AI named Max, Jericho is working on a robot version of his lost daughter Elaine. The robot is stolen and Jericho blames Dirk.

    Typical Dirk moment: Dirk falls in love with the woman of his dreams, a woman who shares his obsession for fatty foods.

Episode Three (3/19/12). Written by Jamie Mathieson. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Lisa Dillon, Tony Pitts, Tina Maskell and Jason Stevens. *** Final episode of the series. Someone is killing Dirk’s former clients. He thinks someone is trying to frame him and runs from the police. The police are hoping he will be the next victim and regrettably feel obligated to offer him protection.

    Dirk’s most basic random beliefs are tested when normal police procedural work finds the evidence to arrest the killer. MacDuff quits the agency when he is bothered by how flippant Dirk is over the mysteries when people are dying. But in the end the proper police work proves wrong and the inner connectedness of all things is the key to the solution.

    Typical Dirk moment: One of Dirk’s first cases had him help convict a man for murder. He had been hired to find out who was stealing post-it notes from an office. Dirk framed the man he thought was guilty. However, when the police went to arrest the man for post-it note theft, they discovered the man’s brother murdered body. Later it was learned there was no stolen post-it notes, it had been an error in accounting.

    Dirk Gently has its moments of delightful absurdist humor and the mysteries are fun, but, like in the books, the characters wear thin after awhile. The series is worth watching, but I would rather re-read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

    The series has been released on Pal format (non-USA) DVD. Currently (and unlikely for long) you can watch the episodes over at YouTube starting with the pilot here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0oXJ0Ocjr8&list=PL2B639E39513C8D4E&index=1&feature=plpp-video