THE KANSAN. United Artists, 1943. Richard Dix, Jane Wyatt, Albert Dekker, Victor Jory, Eugene Pallette, Robert Armstrong. Screenplay: Harold Shumate, based on the novel Peace Marshal by Frank Gruber. Director: George Archainbaud.

   If this review of the 1943 western film The Kansan starring Richard Dix had been published in a newspaper at the time, a sly headline writer may have tried to put this one across: Nix on Dix, He’s No Tom Mix.

   The role of the film’s hero, gunplay artist John Bonniwell, fits Dix like a poorly cut, over-sized suit that makes him look ridiculous. He is not as young and fit as a Buster Crabbe or Bob Steele, both of which would have been a better suited for the role, and unlike the older John Wayne in The Shootist, when the husks are peeled away, it is difficult to believe that Dix was ever such a skilled triggerman. Dix fills the role as well as a bloated John Barrymore might have.

   What Dix does bring to the role is a modicum of acting ability, and he is successful in his nuanced play with the quasi-villain played by Victor Jory and is charming with the female lead, Jane Wyatt. Jory has the more demanding part and delivers a stronger performance as Jeff Barat, the brother of the irredeemable, crooked banker Steve Barat who masterminds the movie’s machinations.

   Dix ambles through the movie while the exciting parts like a stampede and all-compassing saloon fight happen around him. Dix is so lugubrious that he brings to mind an insurance salesman apt at dolefully describing death and disaster.

   Not as lively as a game of checkers, nor as well thought out as a game of chess, the story moves from one square to the next across a familiar board. Drawn from the novel Peace Marshal by Frank Gruber, Dix’s character John Bonniwell demonstrates his finesse with the pistol and is maneuvered into the marshal’s job by the moneyed Easterner who runs the bank, played by Albert Dekker.

   Jory’s character is the gambler brother of the banker and is in love with the woman that Bonniwell loves. The villainous banker brings in his own set of outlaws to balance out the law. Following the same plot that dozens of other bottom-billed Westerns used, the hero cleans up the town and gets his gal.

   One character, Bones, played by African-American Willie Best, stands out for the wrong reasons. Granted one should be careful about judging attitudes held more than a half century before, but the Bones character with his craven servitude and witless blubbering is a throwback even further to the nastiest caricatures of blacks.

   In one scene, the outlaws sarcastically refer to Jory’s character as the Great Liberator and moments later, find the crouching, shivering Bones in his Union soldiers cap; it is as if the movie is almost saying, this is why we have Jim Crow laws.

   In a brief key part is the hefty character actor Eugene Pallette, whose voice croaks like a frog and whose bulk and charisma fill the screen in equal proportions. Rushing masses of cattle and horses at various junctures provoke those passions stirred by thundering hooves. A troupe of pretty girls seems to have taken a wrong turn at Times Square as they present their musical number on a saloon stage instead of Broadway.

   In that granddaddy of Western talkies, Cimarron (1931), a younger, lithe Richard Dix ably acted the part of Yancey Cravat, but with its playbill opening and grease-painted actors, this earlier film is a thespian production without the constraints of the stage. The recipe for a low-budget Western does not call for a stage actor but a macho movie presence. Dix could muster the former but not the latter.

SIDESHOW. Monogram Pictures, 1950. Don McGuire, Tracy Roberts, John Abbott, Eddie Quillan, Ray Walker, Richard Foote, Jimmy Conlin, Iris Adrian. Director: Jean Yarbrough.

   This short black-and-white movie (only 67 jam-packed minutes) has some noirish aspects to it – it’s dark throughout (in the sense of poor lighting) and there are a few sinister scenes taking place behind the outward glitter of a rundown carnival – but in reality it’s only a crime film, and not a very good one – not one I can honestly recommend to you, if you can find a copy.

   That’s a big “if.” It’s hard to find, and when you do, it’s likely to be in as rough in quality as the one I have. Both the picture and sound deteriorate noticeably toward the end, but not seriously enough to cause you to throw the DVD away. Not me, anyway. I’m happy to have it.

   The real problem is that it’s the story itself that falls apart, the longer it goes. I’ve watched the movie twice, and while there was an improvement the second time around, it’s only at the beginning. The ending is still as much of a mystery to me as it was before. Who, what, when, and especially why – all unanswered questions, even after the curtain comes down.

   I suppose it’s time for me to tell you what this movie’s about, isn’t it? The amusement park carnival that treasury agent Steve Arthur (Don McGuire) goes undercover working for is also somehow the means by which a gang of jewel thieves has been smuggling their gems into the US. His job: to find out how.

   Dolly Jordan (Tracey Roberts), the hootchy-kootchy girl he first suspects, turns out to be both innocent and then a close ally. (The pearls in the fudge she made were placed there by someone else.) But that leaves plenty of other suspects, some brought in during the last reel, and as I said before, the whole affair doesn’t make a lick of sense. (I am not going to watch it a third time.)

   The atmosphere is good, however, including some gritty inside glimpses at sideshow life, and the acting is even better, believe or not.

   The hunky Don McGuire, who didn’t star in many other movies, was a lot more successful as a writer (Bad Day at Black Rock, Tootsie), for example, and as a producer and director, while red-headed Tracy Roberts went to become a famous Hollywood acting coach.

   Not that you could tell she had red hair in the movie, but I think you can from the poster and at least one of the lobby cards I found for the film.

ROY LEWIS – Nothing But Foxes. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1979. Originally published in England: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1977.

    Fox hunts are still immensely popular with the English gentry, but not unexpectedly they’ve also become the target of those who view them as outdated elitist symbols of the not yet achieved social equality they clamor for.

    When just such a young activist is found murdered, his body discovered by the members of a hunting club in full chase, wise politics suggests that Scotland Yard be called in at once.

    Inspector Crow’s usual approach to a murder investigation is a slow and plodding one, as he deliberately takes a cool and dispassionate look at all the evidence before committing himself. Inspired for once, however, by the involved, youthful exuberance of the aspiring young local policeman assisting him, this time he takes a gamble, and he pulls it off.

    Disappointingly, the motive has little to do with hunting foxes.

    The Inspector John Crow series —

A Lover Too Many (1969)
Error of Judgement (1971)
A Secret Singing (1972)
Blood Money (1973)
A Question of Degree (1974)
A Part of Virtue (1975)

Nothing But Foxes (1977)
A Relative Distance (1981)

    Roy Lewis, no relation, and not to be confused with mystery writer Roy Harley Lewis, is not only the author of the eight John Crow mysteries listed above, but 16 books in his Eric Ward series, and 21 crime novels with Arnold Landon as the lead character. Add 12 additional standalones, the most recent being Design for Murder (2010), and you have perhaps one of the more prolific of current writers no one in the US has heard of, without too much exaggeration, I suspect.

        “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

JOHN STRALEY – The Curious Eat Themselves. Cecil Younger #2. Soho Press, hardcover, September 1993. Bantam, paperback, June 1995. Soho Crime, trade paperback, July 2006.

   I didn’t read the first Alaskan mystery by John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear; it was a conscious avoidance, though I no longer remember why. It sold enough copies that I must have been one of the very few who didn’t, and now he’s written another.

   Straley lives in Alaska, is an investigator for the Public Defender and has his own private investigation business; a pretty good set of qualifications.

   Cecil Younger is an on-again, off-again drunk, an ex-public defender, and a private investigator. He lives in Ketchikan, Alaska, has an autistic roommate, and his erratic life just took a turn for the worse. His ex-girlfriend had sent a friend to him, who wanted him to track down evidence of her rape by some employees of a big mining concern. Now she’s been fished out of the water with her throat cut. He’s immediately warned off the case by a high ranking official, and old friend of his family. And his roommate’s Labrador has died.

   Straley’s book reminds me a little of James Crumley with the alcoholic lead, and the anti-business/environmental orientation, and the flair for describing the wilderness. That’s as far as the comparison goes, because Younger isn’t a macho character, and Straley’s prose hasn’t quite the power of Crumley’s.

   It’s good prose, though, and he obviously has a real feel for the Alaskan country about which he writes. He’s a better plotter than Crumley, too.

   Aside from the exotic locale, the story itself isn’t that different from many other hardboiled private detective stories, but it’s well told, and the various characters are interesting. A few of the business and government people are a tad one-dimensional, but at least you don’t need a scorecard to tell the villains.

   There’s a third in the series already, and I like this one enough that I’ll probably read it. I might even go back and read the first.

      The Cecil Younger series —

1. The Woman Who Married a Bear (1992)

2. The Curious Eat Themselves (1993)
3. The Music of What Happens (1996)

4. Death and the Language of Happiness (1997)
5. The Angels Will Not Care (1998)
6. Cold Water Burning (2001)

Editorial Comment:   Barry seems to have jumped the gun on the forthcoming appearance of the third book. His review was written in 1993, but the third book didn’t appear until 1996.

BACK DOOR TO HEAVEN. Paramount, 1939. Wallace Ford, Patricia Ellis, Aline McMahon, Stuart Erwin, Van Heflin, Bert Frohman, George Lewis, Bruce Evans, James Lydon. Director: William K. Howard. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   This low-budget production had some promise with the superior cinematography of Hal Mohr, a good cast, and the experienced direction of William K. Howard.

   However, the grim, downward spiral of the fortunes of a poor but decent kid gone wrong (played by Jimmy Lydon, with Wallace Ford portraying him as an adult) climaxed in a scene bathed in a synthetic pathos that undid much of the gritty, late Depression realism of the film.

   An overwrought score by Erno Rapee constantly undercut the director’s restraint in the handling of a script based on his original story and personal experiences. This film continued what seems to be a tradition at Cinefest of disappointing openings.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR. RKO Radio Pictures, 1936. Richard Dix, Margaret Callahan, J. Carrol Naish, Erik Rhodes, Sheila Terry, Jed Prouty, Ray Mayer, Owen Davis Jr. Based on the story “Fugitive Road” by Erle Stanley Gardner. Director: Louis King.

   As far as I’ve been able to determine, the story “Fugitive Road” this action-packed B-movie is based on was serialized in This Week Magazine between 26 May and 7 July 1935. This was a small snippet of info I found on the Internet, and without any supporting evidence, I don’t think we ought to take it as unadulterated fact.

   My Gardner bibliography is buried somewhere. If anyone can corroborate this, and even better, let me know if the story was ever reprinted anywhere, be sure to let me know.

   Unfortunately I don’t think long runs of This Week Magazine are floating around any place easily accessible, and if it’s never been reprinted, good luck on ever reading this one.

   It’s a good story, though, assuming that the adaptation into the movie Special Investigator followed it even partially. What’s more, I think I’ve found the perfect actor to play the 1930s version of Perry Mason to a T: Richard Dix, square-jawed and resolute, whose most recent (and only other) film to have been reviewed on this blog was The Arizonian, a western in which (as you may recall) he played a Good Guy who comes to town to wipe out the Bad Guys.

   But in Special Investigator Dix plays Bill Fenwick, a high-powered L.A. defense attorney who’s lately been making a big name for himself getting even bigger criminal names walk free. But when tragedy strikes, and it does, his gives up both his practice and his girl friend (Sheila Terry), and goes undercover in a small town in Nevada, this time on the right side of the law.

   Along the way he meets – and falls in love with – another girl (Margaret Callahan), a spirited young lady who just happens to be tied in with the gang of crooks he’s determined to bring to justice. (Isn’t that always the way?)

   In a movie that times in at just over an hour’s running time, there’s as much action in Special Investigator as any B-western of the same era, straight and simple. There’s a minimum of actual detection, but on the other hand, there’s an equal minimum of funny sidekicks to have to deal with too.

   Recommended.

ANDREW GARVE – A Press of Suspects. Collins Crime Club, UK, 1951. Fontana, UK, paperback, 1956. US title: By-Line for Murder. Harper, hardcover, 1951. Paperback reprints: Dell #765, 1954; Lancer 72-715, 1964.

    I happened upon this early Garve by chance, and as he is a writer I have always wanted to read more of, I picked it up and got straight to it.

   Set in a Fleet Street newspaper office — a setting familiar to Garve who was, in real life a journalist — it concerns the Assistant Foreign Editor who, annoyed at being overlooked for promotion, yet again, decides to wreak revenge on all those he considers to be looking down on him by the indiscriminate use of cyanide.

    Don’t worry (those of you who get concerned at the possibility that I reveal too much in my summaries), this is a procedural not a whodunit and we are made aware of the villain’s actions right from the start. We share the thoughts and actions of many of the main protagonists including Inspector Haines, the man from Scotland Yard called in to investigate after the first death.

    At one stage Haines describes his methods as humdrum, and in a way that’s what the book is as the story unfolds in a very matter-of-fact way, but it retains the attention and I found myself engrossed until, with a sigh of satisfaction, the final page was read.

    I shall certainly be looking for more of Andrew Garve while I am browsing the shelves of the dwindling number of second-hand bookshops that I get to visit.

     Previously on this blog —

A Hole in the Ground   (reviewed by Ray O’Leary)
A Touch of Larceny, a film based on The Megstone Plot   (reviewed by David L. Vineyard)

Editorial Comment:   According to Al Hubin, this was the only case solved by Inspector Haines to have appeared in print.

COLIN COTTERILL – Thirty-Three Teeth. Soho Crime, hardcover, August 2005; trade paperback, August 2006.

Genre:   Licensed investigator/Paranormal. Leading character: Dr. Siri Paiboun; 2nd in series. Setting:   Laos–Contemporary/1977.

First Sentence:   The neon hammer and sickle buzzed and flickered into life over the night club of the Lan Xang Hotel.

   It is 107 degrees in Vietiane, Laos where the standard greeting and response has become, “Hot, isn’t it.” “Damned hot.”

   Dr. Siri Paiboun, the 72-year-old coroner for Laos, is being kept busy by both the spirit and human world. An old black mountain bear has escaped its cage but is it responsible for the bodies who’ve been mauled?

   The burned bodies of two men have been found. Siri is summoned to the area of his birth in an effort to identify them. A man working in the Department of archives jumped to his death from a room containing a chest bearing the Royal Seal. Siri, the re-embodiment of the 1050 shaman, Yeh Ming, recognizes the box is inhabited by powerful spirits and he must find the proper way of dealing with it.

   Employing excellent dialogue, wonderful humor and a unique voice, Cotterill has given me one of my new, favorite series. In additional to being a very visual writer, he balances information about Laos in 1997, the paranormal, wonderful mystery and suspense; logic and humor.

   His characters are delightful. I particularly appreciate that we learn more about the characters with this book. Siri reflects that “Poverty lead him to religion, religion to education, education to lust, lust to communism. And communism had brought him back full circle to poverty. There was a Ph.D. dissertation waiting to be written about such a cycle.”

   He is a very spry 72, who is trying to deal with his inner shaman and finds out more about his childhood. He is smart, logical and very loyal to his friends. He, and we, also finds out more about Nurse Dtui. There is more to her than is originally known and she goes off on her own investigation.

   What I love about reading Cotterill is that his books are wonderful stories. His writing is so visual and the individual scenes are memorable in themselves. Put together, I find myself captivated by the combination of the characters and the plot. I never know where the story is going next but thoroughly enjoy every step of the journey.

Rating:   Very Good Plus.

Editorial Comment:   LJ reviewed The Coroner’s Lunch, the first in this series here last April. At the end of that post is a list of all seven Dr. Siri Paiboun novels that have appeared so far.

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH —

       ● The Trouble with Fidelity. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1957. Paperback reprint: Dell #999, 1959.

       ● The Lady Finger. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1962. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1962.

   The Nutmeg Indemnity Company employs Lenny Painter to apprehend defalcators unfortunately bonded by that insurance company and to retrieve whatever monies they might have left. In The Trouble with Fidelity, this is going to be a bit difficult, since Homer W. Gillespie has made off with over $500,000 from the Fordyce Management Company and has killed himself.

   Nonetheless, Painter begins backtracking, with the aid of Gumbus, the C.P.A. from the district attorney’s office, and O’Brien, an investigator for the D.A., who never thinks, just turns up stones.

   Gillespie turns out to have been a much more interesting man than appeared on the surface. His embezzlement is a work of art, though his method of concealing it is a bit less so. Following down the money, Painter goes to Newark, Buffalo, Detroit, Boston, and Maine, and discovers some surprising information about Gillespie.

   While the ending is implausible, what leads up to it is excellent. Not a great mind, Painter’s, but he’s very good at what he does.

   When in The Lady Finger the Massasoit National Bank & Trust Company of Boston is robbed of $200,000 during a well-planned heist, claims investigator Otis Minton is sent to that city to pursue the investigation in the hope that at least some of the funds that the Nutmeg Indemnity Company has had to payout can be recovered.

   Although usually one or more steps behind the FBI in their pursuit of the bank robbers, Minton does have one advantage — the lady finger of the title. It seems the robbers, for reasons uncertain, had doused her boyfriend, a hairdresser, with peroxide and placed him under the hair dryer, which did him no good at all. She is miffed, and the reward offered by Indemnity is an added attraction.

   Again Malcolm-Smith has produced an amusing and lively novel.

    Bio-Bibliographic Data:

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH, GEORGE, 1901-1984. Living in Connecticut in 1950s; editor of an insurance company periodical.    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

      The Square Peg (n.) Doubleday 1952. Reprinted as Mugs, Molls and Dr. Harvey, Graphic #104, pb, 1955.

      The Trouble with Fidelity (n.) Doubleday 1957.
      If a Body Meet a Body (n.) Doubleday 1959.
      The Lady Finger (n.) Doubleday 1962.
      Come Out, Come Out (n.) Doubleday 1965.

   Malcolm-Smith also has a short page on Wikipedia, where it is said that “George Malcolm-Smith was an American novelist and jazz musicologist. A 1925 graduate of Trinity College, he hosted a jazz radio program on WTIC-FM in Hartford, Connecticut for many years.”