TIM MYERS – Room for Murder. Berkley, paperback original, September 2003.

   If you haven’t read any of the previous ones in the series — and this is the fourth so far — Alex Winston is an innkeeper, and he helps solve mysteries. What’s unusual about the inn is that it’s next to an exact replica of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, but snugly nestled in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, way over on the other end of the state.

   North Carolina, that is. It’s a terrific location to set the stage for some fine detective work, but as fine as the camaraderie between Alex and the local townspeople is; as fascinating as the busted romances between Mor and Emma, and Alex and Elise, are; and watching them getting patched up again — or do they? — and as interesting as being shown the vicissitudes of running a modern-day hostelry establishment is, there’s not a heck of a lot of time left in not too many pages to solve a murder or two.

   Emma’s ex is the first body to be found, followed by one of the two candidates for mayor of Elkton Falls, but the election must go on, and since it’s now a matter of husband running against wife (Tracy Shook vs. Connor Shook), the campaign is getting nastier and nastier, and that’s what’s on everyone’s mind.

   Which is all well and good, but perhaps you know what I’m thinking, and you might be right. The solution to the murders boils down to (a) a slip of the tongue on the part of the guilty party, (b) a wild leap in logic on the part of Alex, and (c) an unconvincing change of character on the part of the party in part (a).

   Nor is there anything fancy about Myers’ level of writing, pitched at, say, advanced middle school students. Which makes it sound terrible when it isn’t, but you shouldn’t read this book and expect to find much worth quoting to anyone sitting in the same room with you.

   And the book is entertaining, don’t mistake me there either. It’s just that as a mystery, it has awfully weak legs.

      The Alex Winston “Lighthouse Inn” series:

1. Innkeeping With Murder (2001)     [Agatha Award nominee, Best First Novel]

2. Reservations for Murder (2002)
3. Murder Checks Inn (2003)

4. Room For Murder (2003)
5. Booked for Murder (2004)

6. Key to Murder (2010)
7. Ring for Murder (2011)

  DAVID ALEXANDER – Paint the Town Black. Random House, hardcover, 1954. Bantam 1534, paperback, 1956.

   Bart Hardin, managing editor of the Broadway Times, is in urgent need of $500. On the recommendation of an old friend, television commentator Mike Ainslie, he applies for a press-agent job with the Latin American Trade Alliance.

   Hired for the position, Hardin returns to his apartment over Bromberg’s Flea Circus and finds Ainslie’s tortured body in front of his fireplace. Hardin’s problems are compounded by the fact that he must break the news to Ainslie’s wife, Dorothy, with whom he is in love.

   The newspaperman’s personal involvement with both the murder and the trade alliance — which urgently wants to recover a fake pre-Columbian jug that Ainslie reportedly had in his possession prior to his death — leads him into encounters with a strange curio-shop owner, a psychologist who collects art, a strongman named Andes, and a chinless man with a penchant for sadism.

   Hardin is an engaging character: a denizen of Broadway who sports embroidered vests and a cynicism that is undermined by his ability (which he would term a flaw) to care deeply — be it for a murdered friend or his old blind dog.

   David Alexander’s portrayal of the people of Broadway gives full rein to their eccentricities, but stops short of being unbelievable. The plot is intricate, and all elements tie off neatly at the conclusion.

   Other notable Bart Hardin titles are Terror on Broadway (1954), Die, Little Goose (1956), Shoot a Sitting Duck (1957), and Dead, Man, Dead (1959).

   Alexander also created two other series of two books each. The first features the detective duo of Tommy Twotoes, an eccentric penguin fancier, and private eye Terry Rooke (Most Men Don’t Kill and Murder in Black and White, 1951); the second stars Broadway lawyer Marty Land, who also appears in the Hardin series (The Death of Daddy-O, 1960, and Bloodstain, 1961).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DAVID ALEXANDER – The Madhouse in Washington Square. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1958. Collier 113, paperback, 1961.

   The Madhouse in Washington Square is a tavern frequented by a regular group of social misfits, one of whom is John Cossack, “a painter of barber poles … a barroom porter, a manufacturer of bombs, and something of a philosopher.”

   It is Cossack who finds failed writer Carley Dane beaten to death in Dane’s Greenwich Village cold-water flat. Any number of people had reason to kill the despicable writer, including most of the habitues of the Madhouse.

   Cossack doesn’t wish to see any of these people, his friends, behind bars. Besides, reporting the murder will interfere with preparations for his grand and compassionate scheme to blow up the tavern with one of his homemade bombs, thus putting its largely unhappy patrons — himself included — out of their collective misery.

   As Cossack’s scheme unfolds (and as circumstances force him to reluctantly assume the role of sleuth), Alexander introduces the reader to each habitue: Manley Ferguson, a frustrated artist; Helen Landers, a model who, when in her cups, suffers an overwhelming urge to do an impromptu striptease; wasted Peter Dotter, once rich and now a hopeless and pitiful alcoholic; Major Trevor, eighty-year-old veteran of the Boer War and World War 1, who supports himself by playing small character roles on the stage and on television; bitter old Martha Appleby, whose driving force for close to twenty years has been her hatred of Carley Dane.

   Other suspects include Bruno Madegliani, owner of the Madhouse, who loathes and mistrusts his customers and whose secret passion is to find the long-lost idol of his youth, a champion cyclist named the Great Goldoni; Penny Caldwell, a sensitive young poet who fancies herself another Emily Dickinson; and George Dabney Sturgis, a recently discharged soldier who came to New York just to meet Dane and received a rude welcome.

   Events set in motion in each of these characters’ lives during this crucial day are neatly resolved in the final pages; and Cossack reveals the identity of Dane’s murderer. As for his bomb … well, you’ll have to read the novel to find out whether or not the climax is literally an explosive one.

   In A Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor called The Madhouse in Washington Square “close to unreadable”; Barzun and Taylor obviously have no patience with eccentric prose styles and no empathy for eccentric characters.

   The fact is, the novel is not only readable but quite moving, owing in large part to David Alexander’s ability to sympathetically portray individuals whose lives and actions are far beyond the limits of rational human behavior. His treatment of these misfits is compassionate and gently humorous — and Madhouse is a kind of poignant tribute to all misfits, everywhere.

   Alexander’s other non-series novels are Murder Points a Finger (1953) and Pennies from Hell (1960). The latter, a tale of menace and persecution reminiscent of Hugo’s Les Miserables, is particularly good.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

SALLY, IRENE AND MARY. MGM, 1925. Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Sally O’Neill, William Haines, Henry Kolker, Douglas Gilmore. Based on a play by Eddie Dowling. Director: Edmund Goulding. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   I have fond, if vague, memories of the 1938 remake of this silent film that featured Alice Faye, Tony Martin, Fred Allen, Joan Davis, Jimmy Durante, and Gypsy Rose Lee (quite a cast!), but I had never seen the original film.

   Constance Bennett (Sally), Joan Crawford (Irene), and Sally O’Neill (Mary) are showgirls, with Sally the older and wiser gal who’s seen it all but is happy with her older lover who keeps her in luxury, and Irene and Mary the recent recruits, childhood friends from the same tenement background.

   The film alternates between the giddy, dangerous after hours parties and the tenement apartments where families fear they are losing their daughters to a sinful show business world. The adventure will end tragically for one of the tenement girls while the other will return to her childhood sweetheart.

   The scenes in which the showgirls talk and gossip among themselves are striking in their mixture of dreams and occasional rueful incursions of reality. Crawford is the standout, although Bennett is almost as fine in her “mother hen” portrayal.

JEAN HAGER – The Grandfather Medicine. St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Worldwide Mystery, paperback, November 1990.

   There is nothing like a murder to get your mind off your own troubles, and that is exactly how Buckskin’s Chief of Police Mitch Bushyhead feels when the body of full-blooded Joe Pigeon is found. Mitch’s wife has recently died, and he is still feeling the gap in his life, especially when it comes to raising their only daughter Emily without her.

   Buckskin is in Oklahoma, by the way. While Bushyhead himself is only half-Cherokee, he was brought up by his white mother, and is far from being any kind of authority on Cherokee ceremonies and traditions. However, no one else knows of any reason why two fingers are missing from the dead man’s hand either.

   On the face of it, this is a police procedural, but it’s one of the Bill Crider/Sheriff Dan Rhodes variety, in which the people in a small town quickly become long-time friends of the reader. And since the police force consists only of the Chief and a few well-chosen officers, a case of murder becomes essentially a one-man job, nothing at all like the cases that the 87th Precinct, for example, has to deal with.

   If you gather I liked the book, you’d be right. I also thought the culture and background of the Nighthawk Keetoowahs, a secret society of a few full Cherokees, fighting for their identity in a white man’s world, was perfectly done. And last but not least, the mystery that has to be solved is wrapped as neatly as any I’ve read in the past few months.

   In other words, here’s a book to be looking for.

Editorial Comment:   The Grandfather Medicine was Jean Hager’s first mystery novel. She was the author of three different series over her mystery-writing career; lists of all three can be found in my review of Sew Deadly (1998), in which Tess Darcy, a bed-and-breakfast owner, is the detective of record.

MANPOWER. Warner Brothers, 1941. Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Eve Arden, Barton MacLane, Ward Bond, Walter Catlett, Joyce Compton. Director: Raoul Walsh.

   I’ve often said that Raoul Walsh and Michael Curtiz were the two most artistic directors ever to come out of Hollywood, and the next time someone doubts it, I’ll show them this film.

   Back in the early 30s, Howard Hawks made a film called Tiger Shark, with Edward G. Robinson, Richard Arlen and Zita Johann, about two fishermen-buddies drawn to the same woman, and what happens when she marries the wrong one.

   It made a lot of money for Warner Brothers, so the Studio Heads, with the wisdom of their breed, used to dust off the script, every other year or so, change the profession to Well Drilling, Stunt Flying or what-have-you, and make it again with a different cast and director. No wonder the Warners’ Script Department was known as Echo Valley!

   By 1941, Edward G. Robinson had again rotated into the Chump role, with George Raft and Marlene Dietrich as his friends and lovers. The profession this time was Power Line Repairmen, and the director was Raoul Walsh.

   The result is Hollywood Filmmaking at its Absolute Apex. The whole idea of making a film about a vast, outdoorsy job like Power Line Work entirely on Studio Sets seems audacious when you think about it, but it probably never occurred to Walsh or Warners to do it any other way.

   The studio “exteriors” are beautifully constructed, and Walsh moves his craning camera through them with an easy grace that recalls the best of Fred Astaire.

   He gets real excitement from shots of men clinging to icy towers, in no way diminished by their obvious fakiness, and he manages to break down George Raft’s usual reticence almost completely; there’s a strong sense of Feeling in the scenes between Raft and Robinson, and startling, genuine sexual tension between Raft and Dietrich.

   Best of all, despite the fact that this plot had been done to death by the time he got to it, Walsh makes it seem almost spontaneous. As the characters move on their predestined routes towards Betrayal and Murder, there’s never the sense of Fatalism that could so easily suffuse a worn-out storyline like this.

   Of course, Walsh does all this and a lot more with a quiet professionalism that entirely eludes most critics, but a careful look at his camerawork, pacing, and feel for the material show a director who deserves to be taken a lot more seriously than many of his better-known contemporaries. Maybe someday he will be.

G. M. WILSON – I Was Murdered. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover. Walker, US, hardcover, 1961.

   Unlike one person who shall remain nameless, I have no objection to the supernatural in mystery stories as long as the author presents the occult persuasively. Wilson’s spook fits that demand, even unto the spirit’s shedding of good sense along with the removal of its physical shell.

   Miss Purdy, maiden lady in her mid-50s, has been writing detective stories for 30 years. Seeking an out-of-the-way country place in which to begin her new novel, she ends up at Waterside Cottage in Norfolk.

   Unfortunately, it is already occupied — by the ghost of Lilian Kemp, seemingly accidentally drowned in Liddon broad behind the cottage. The ghost takes over Miss Purdy’s mind temporarily and dictates, “I was murdered.”

   In her attempts to see that justice is done so that Kemp’s spirit may be put at rest, Miss Purdy stirs up things. Another drowning in the broad occurs, this time definitely murder.

   While the haunt is persuasive, the author’s characterization of Miss Purdy won’t fool you: Miss Purdy has never written a detective story, nor seemingly read one. As proof, the murderer is evident to anyone with merely a minuscule knowledge of the genre, but Miss Purdy has no suspicions.

   Worse, the murderer calls Miss Purdy and tells her that there has been a dramatic development in the case and that she should meet the caller at dead of night in a deserted spot without letting anyone know of the meeting. With no hesitation she proceeds to do so. Now, I ask you: Would that be the behavior of an experienced mystery novelist? That is to say, other than James Corbett?

   Wilson, I gather, wrote additional novels with a supernatural background, most of them featuring Inspector Lovick, who stolidly does not believe in the occult and, since he also does not spot the murderer, is obviously inept.

   While Wilson doesn’t construct a tenable plot, she does write well and holds one’s attention.

Editorial Comments: (1) I do not know whom Bill was referring to in the first paragraph. It might have been any number of people at the time, including myself. I’m not as much of a purist as I used to be, but a lot of attempts to mix the paranormal with the detective story fall as flat to me as the proverbial flapjack.

(2) As Bill hints at and so stated by one blogger, G. M. Wilson may have been one of the first mystery writers to have combined the Mystery Story with Ghosts. Since her first book was published in 1948 (a non-Lovick), the claim seems unlikely, but if you’re so inclined, it does suggest her books may be worth tracking down.

(3) James Corbett was a particularly inept mystery writer whose work Bill was particularly fond of. But sentences like this one ought to be sign of genius, rather than a lack of skill with pen to paper, shouldn’t it? “She was visibly excited, yet not a vestige of her features betrayed her.” Follow this link for more of Deeck on Corbett.

(4) The author’s initials stood for the rather prosaic Gertrude Mary. I Was Murdered was the only one of her two dozen mysteries to be published in the US. Inspector Lovick appeared in 21 of them, and of those, Miss Purdy was on hand in twelve. Bill didn’t make much mention of Lovick, and then only disparagingly. Nonetheless, I’d like to try my hand at one, and if possible, sooner rather than later.

PLEINS FEUX SUR L’ASSASSIN. Champs-Élysées Productions, France, 1961. English title: Spotlight on a Murderer. Pierre Brasseur, Pascale Audret, Marianne Koch, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dany Saval, Philippe Leroy. Screenplay: Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac. Director: Georges Franju.

   Boileau and Narejac are to me the most recognizable names in the credits above, but truthfully I know very little about either, except for the fact they wrote the novels on which the films Diabolique and Vertigo were based. They have a long list of other credits on IMDB (here or here ) but the two mentioned will probably catch your eye right away too.

   Georges Franju, the director, may be known to those who have been following the French film industry longer than I have. His most famous film may be Eyes Without a Face (1960), known in the US as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. I assume that if anyone knows more about him, they will tell us more in the comments. (Please do!)

   As for the players themselves, I shall embarrass myself even further, and say that only the name of Dany Saval is familiar. She made one or two films in the US, but no more than that. The one that came to mind right away was Boeing Boeing, a sexy comedy from 1965 with Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis in the two leading roles.

   Moving on to the story. When an aging French aristocrat realizes that he’s dying, he hides away in small room behind a one-way mirror, the better to watch his befuddled heirs after his death. His motive is not clear, but perhaps he holds a grudge against all of them, as they cannot inherit until his body is found.

   There are six or perhaps eight of them at first, their number gradually begins to dwindle, their deaths occurring in mysterious ways, perhaps of accidents or natural causes, but more likely not. Strangely enough, the police do not seem to be suspicious, as there is no investigation to speak of.

   To obtain the funds they need to maintain the castle where they are now living, their plan is to produce a spectacular Son et Lumière show based on an old legend of a cuckolded husband and lord of the estate hundreds of years before.

   The story line itself, as described above, is fragmented and difficult to follow. Neither the screenwriters nor the director care to give any of the players any personality. They are only players in a game. If this were all the film had to offer there is no way I could recommend it to anyone — even those who have read this far!

   But the setting, the black and white photography, the atmosphere: all splendid, indeed. A spooky old castle filled with large and well-appointed rooms, staircases spiraling upward in the gloom, a sound and light show without parallel — including a suicidal fall from the highest tower at the climactic moment — hidden motives and fearful, wary eyes, that’s what I will remember, not the very basic story line — not even who the killer is, not at all.

NOTE:   A short three-minute clip can be found on YouTube here.

JACK WILLIAMSON – Mazeway. Ballantine/Del Rey, hardcover, 1990. Paperback reprint, October 1990.

   Younger science fiction writers may have technical proficiencies that Jack Williamson can only dream about, but other than that, I think his dreams are the stuff that dreams are made of.

   There is something somebody once called a “sense of wonder” in trying to describe a certain brand of science fiction, and Jack Wiliamson has it, and he always did: his first published story was in 1928. He had then — and still does — an awe of the future that younger writers take for granted, as everyday events, and their books are (arguably) the poorer for it.

   But what’s this book about? Nothing more than a few representatives of mankind trying to make the evolutionary leap from planet to space. How? By playing the eldern’s Game of Blade and Stone on the double planet Mazeway – sort of like taking a hard, rigorous entrance exam.

   Winning the game means mankind’s acceptance into the wider world of the entire universe.

   Why such exalted creatures such as the eldern need such a childish way to enter into their ranks is not precisely clear, but given the premise, admittedly not a new one, Williamson delivers an old-fashioned homily on growing up and getting along and maturing.

   It is, as well, a murder mystery. May I quote from page 80? Benn Dain, Terran, is making demands of the Hydrans concerning his friend and mentor, Edward Gibbon Beta, whose brother by fission at birth has been killed, under mysterious circumstances:

   Find the killer, they do, although I’d have to agree that it is not one that Ellery Queen, say, in his wildest dreams would ever have recognized. And as much as I like what some of the newer SF writers are saying, as futzy and outdated books like this might be, it’s still my kind of story.

[UPDATE] 01-18-12.   You didn’t miss a great deal when I shortened this review to post it here. Back in 1991 and for a reading audience of mystery fans who might not have known who he was, I spent a few paragraphs of time telling them something about Jack Williamson’s background as a writer.

   Today, however, all I have to do is include a link to an appropriate page, and you’ll know what I said about him then, and a whole lot more. (I also spent some time justifying the inclusion of a SF writer in a mystery journal. I stopped worrying about that a long time ago.)

HELEN REILLY – The Day She Died. Random House, hardcover, 1962. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 volume, January 1963. Paperback reprints: Ace #G-536, no date [circa 1965]; Macfadden, 1970.

   Checking Hubin to make sure my facts are straight, Helen Reilly’s primary series character, Inspector McKee, spent most of his career solving murders in New York City, his home base of operations, but over the years, he found himself tackling cases that took him up in Connecticut almost as often. Either way, but not always, he seems to have been pretty much a New York and New England sort of guy.

   With, as I say, a few exceptions. The Day She Died, which turned out to be Reilly’s last book and McKee’s last recorded adventure, is one of them, since he just happens to be in New Mexico when the killings take place – two of them, in fact – and “adventure” is exactly the word for it, and I’ll get back to that in a paragraph or so. (One other exception, before going any further, is Follow Me, which came two books before this one, took place in New Mexico as well.)

   McKee’s first recorded adventure was The Diamond Feather, which was appeared in 1930, which means that he had 33 years on the job, working on a grand total of 31 cases. Helen Reilly’s career was just as long, but it includes several mystery novels in which the inspector did not appear. You can read more about her and her books here in a long essay about her by Mike Grost on the primary M*F website. (Follow the link.)

   Enough of these preliminaries, though, and on to the review. Fans of the Golden Age of Detection will have a lot to like with this one, since the grand bulk of it follows one of the most well known (if not most commonly occurring) settings in vintage mysteries of the 1930s, that of murder in an isolated house in the middle of a storm, with no way in and no way out.

   You do have to have a well-engrained “sense of wonder,” though, since New Mexico is a long way from New York City, only to have McKee end up totally by chance in the very same home of a woman recently deceased but unknown to him until mentioned to him before he left on another matter altogether. Nor is he the only victim of the storm to find refuge there, all of whom have secrets and many of whom seem to have known each other from before.

   There is a lot of atmosphere in this novel, in other words, most of it dark and gloomy (and the water rising), with everyone’s eyes cast warily at everyone else. There is no contact with the outside world, so McKee is accepted by everyone as the person in charge. There is much detective work to do, what with one man seriously (and eventually fatally) wounded and another body found later in the stable. Not to mention the face in the window and other signs that someone else may be trapped on the small island the house sits on in the middle of the flood.

   The detective work, to get back to the primary thrust of the tale, is of necessity of the most primitive, basic kind: asking questions, checking everyone’s whereabouts at crucial points in time, and even more questions. Not everyone is involved with the murders, but everyone has secrets, and McKee cannot rely on any of the answers his receives in turn being true, not even the one supplied by the watch that was stopped at the moment of the fatal blow.

   Once contact is made with the outside world, the solving of the case proceeds at a much faster pace – which I found somewhat of a disappointment, and if truth be told, there was no “somewhat” about it.

   There are some really nifty twists in the plot that come at the end, but they came too fast, as far as I was concerned, with the police work occurring mostly offstage, sad to say. I found the slower pace of the first three-quarters of the book much more to my liking than I did the final few chapters, in which everyone, having made their way to the big city of Albuquerque, is now safe and sound, or nearly so.