ERIC AMBLER – Journey Into Fear. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1940. Alfred A. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1940. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and paperback. Movie: RKO, 1943. Also: New World, 1975. TV adaptation: Climax!. Season 3, Episode 2, 11 October 1956.

JOURNEY INTO FEAR. RKO, 1943. Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Durant, Everett Sloane, Orson Welles. Screenplay: Joseph Cotten (and Orson Welles, Richard Collins & Ben Hecht uncredited), based on the novel by Eric Ambler. Directors: Directed by Norman Foster & Orson Welles (the latter uncredited).

   With a plot featuring a regular man caught up in a high stakes game of international espionage, Journey Into Fear remains a classic of the spy fiction genre. And for good reason. It gives the reader with a protagonist that most readers can sympathize with, a British naval engineer named Graham. It also provides a recognizable and formidable foe in Nazi Germany. Because Graham has been hired by the neutral Turks to bolster their naval forces, he has come to the attention of the leadership in Berlin.

   Not wanting Turkey to enter the war on the side of the Allies, the Nazis dispatch a pair of killers to neutralize Graham and to delay the possible Turkish entry into the Second World War. All Graham wants to do is return from his work in Istanbul back to his native England in safety.

   What makes Journey Into Fear work so extraordinarily well is that the novel in actuality features two stories, one external and one internal. The external story follows Graham as he descends into the seedy world of Istanbul nightlife, into a Turkish police station where he comes face to face with the head of the Turkish secret police, and aboard a freighter bound to Genoa. Much as in a locked door mystery, the coterie of strange characters along for the ride provides imaginative readers with plenty to grapple with intellectually. Who might be a Nazi agent? Who might be looking after Graham on behalf of the Turks who want to see him return to England in one piece?

   Graham’s internal journey, the one that takes him deep into his innermost fears is the more compelling one. Here’s one example of how Ambler’s utilization of close third person narration allows the reader to get a glimpse of Graham’s particular way of thinking. This is from the latter portion of the novel when he faces down the very real possibility that his death at the hands of Nazi agents is imminent:

   It is this aspect of Graham, the psychological one, that fails to make its way into the 1943 RKO cinematic adaptation. In the movie, Graham, rather than a Brit, is an American and he is portrayed as a rather cowardly and charmless doofus by Joseph Cotten. A far cry from his role as the complex, multilayered Eugene Morgan in Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Cotten plays Graham as a rather bland, one dimensional everyman.

   True, he is able to summon up the courage to face down his opponents when it becomes absolutely necessary. But Cotten’s Graham is hardly the stuff that the best spy films are made of. Neither a doomed protagonist in the film noir sense of the term, nor an average man forced to do extraordinary things to survive (think: Cary Grant in North by Northwest), the cinematic Graham is somewhere in the vast middle. This makes him a far less compelling character than the psychologically tormented Graham that the reader identifies with in the novel.

   The greatest pleasure in reading Ambler’s masterwork in espionage fiction may not necessarily found in the story, compelling though it may be. Rather, it is in Ambler’s sparse but descriptive prose that one can easily lose oneself. Ambler’s prose flows naturally, with each sentence logically progressing from the previous one.

   Perhaps it was his training as an engineer which allowed him to map out his paragraphs as if they were each small blueprints for a much larger project. This is not to imply that his language is mechanical in the pejorative sense of the term. Rather, it is to highlight how fine tuned his prose actually is. It neither meanders nor muddles. It just flows. Brilliantly.

MARGERY ALLINGHAM – Police at the Funeral. Albert Campion #4. William Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1931. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1932. Paperback reprints include Bantam, US, TV tie-in, 1989. TV adaptation: Mystery!: Campion “Police at the Funeral, Parts 1 and 2,” Season 1, Episodes 3 & 4, February 5 & 12, 1989.

   In the book immediately following The Gyrth Chalice Mystery (published in the UK as Look to the Lady), Mr. Campion has become, if not a full-fledged PI, at least in his own words, a “Deputy Adventurer.” Here he’s asked to help investigate a series of deaths befalling the Faraday family.

   All of whom are elderly and a bit more than eccentric in their behavior, and the murders are equally bizarre. If you completely ignore the role that coincidence plays in this one, you should have a good tie trying to match wits with Campion in this one.

       —

FOOTNOTE:   As a bit of warning, however, I think the book is starting to show both its age and its trans-Atlantic origins. There were a couple od short passages that were so determinedly British that I could have used a footnote or two to help with a translation.

   But have you seen the TV version of Albert Campion on public TV? I can’t help but think that Peter Davison is nothing but perfect in the role. His blend of blank vacuousness with obvious underlying intelligence is absolutely unnerving.

ROBERT CRAIS – The Wanted. Elvis Cole #17 (*). G. P. Putman’s Sons, hardcover, December 2017; premium paperback, December 2018.

   It’s been a while since I read one of the Elvis Cole books, several years at least, but nothing seems to have changed in the interim. Cole is still the laid back kind of guy he’s always been. Maybe not quite as glib and quick with the quips as he was in the early books, and maybe (probably almost assuredly) I’ve missed some character growth along the way, but at least I didn’t see any big changes in this one.

   (*) The count may be off. I believe my number includes three Joe Pike books in which Elvis pops up as a secondary character. Pike is Elvis’s strong arm assistant whom he calls upon when he needs strong arm assistance. Elvis is tough enough too handle most most situations, but there almost always comes a point in any case he’s working on that Pike comes in awfully handy.

   For a book that’s almost 400 pages long in its tall paperbark version, the case is a simple one. He’s hired by an immature teen-aged boy’s mother to find out where all of the money he’s flashing around is coming from.

   It turns out that he’s been part of a gang of youthful burglars, two boys an a girl who’ve found that stealing things is an absolute lark. That is to say it’s been fun for a while. Now two literate hitmen are on their trail. It seems as though the youthful gang has stolen something that someone desperately wants back and is willing to kill to get it back.

   The book is very smoothly done, with a caveat I’ll get to in a minute. I did find the shifting points of view jarring at first, but slowly but surely Crais convinced me that he knew what he was doing, and he did.

   The caveat I mentioned, though. It’s frustrating that after 380 pages of methodical detective work on Cole’s part, the book ends with him making a rookie mistake, a decision so wrong-minded that I winced as soon as he made it. It does allow for Joe Pike to come riding in to the rescue, as well as help from another unexpected source, but what I was was disappointed.

THE PREVENTERS. ITV, UK, 16 December 1996. One-off, 30 minutes. Absolutely Productions / Carlton Television. Cast: Morwenna Banks as Penelope Gold, Robert Harley as Craig Sturdy, Chris England as Mike Stallion, William Gaunt as The Controller, Ed Devereaux as Roger Stavro Mordik, and Simon William as Lord Timothy Belvoir St. Nash. Written by Morwenna Banks, Chris England and Robert Harley. Directed by Liddy Oldroyd. Executive Producer: Miles Bullough; Line Producer: Terry Bamber.

   THE PREVENTERS is a near perfect satire of my favorite form of television fiction – the “troubleshooters” of ITV (era: 1960-70s). In reaction to the stuffy BBC and a desire to break into the American market, ITV produced a variety of troubleshooter/spy series from the serious DANGER MAN to the surreal DEPARTMENT S to the adventure series of puppet master Gerry Anderson (THUNDERBIRDS). The lighter part of the ITV brand became very popular to the British audience and cult favorites over in America.

   Filmed in 1996, THE PREVENTERS could almost be considered a lovely tribute to the style of television that gave us THE AVENGERS, THE BARON, THE CHAMPIONS, THE CORRIDOR PEOPLE, THE PRISONER, THE PRESUADERS, THE PROTECTORS, THE SAINT, THE SENTIMENTAL AGENT, THE ZOO GANG and the many others that title did not begin with THE.

THE PREVENTERS “Hippy Daze”

   The villainous group The Consortium’s latest plan to take over the World is to use television to brainwash everyone to believe it is the 1960s again and turn hippies into assassins. Good guy organization The Movement calls for The Preventers. Only they – three ordinary citizens now trained top agents – can prevent the evil plan from succeeding.

   We open in typical ITV style – a car driving through the British countryside via horrible rear projection shots. The driver, the head of British Television believes he is alone but he shares his last ride with his killer. According to IMDb, the footage here is lifted from ITV’s RANDALL AND HOPKIRK (DECEASED) episode “Its Supposed to Be Thicker Than Water” (February 20,1970).

   The opening theme begins as we have our heroes stylishly posing in THE AVENGERS (and other series) style. The Preventers are introduced, banter and backstory is exchanged.

   After a clue and the first attempt to kill them, The Preventers decide to split up. Craig and Penelope rush off to Paris and then Monte Carlo via rear projected stock footage and interior studio action. Mike, “The Third One” (a joke anyone familiar with THE CHAMPIONS would appreciate) gets stuck with the dirty disgusting hippies and their Woodstock-like rock concert. Mike’s establishment attitude towards the hippie style and his taste in fashion reveals him to be a “square” and he barely escapes.

   At Monte Carlo, Mike joins Craig and Penelope as they search for the mastermind behind it all. Penelope meets Lord Tim whose last name Belvoir St. Nash – according to Lord Tim – is pronounced Beaver Snatch. The Consortium’s representative is there, an Australian media mogul who is dressed for the Outback and carries a small wallaby with him.

   What follows is typical ITV low budgeted action. Penelope seduces Lord Tim and goes with him to his country home. Craig and Mike rush to rescue her. The three are captured and Lord Tim attempts to brainwash Craig. The plot is defeated but the mansion is about to self-destruct. Our heroes get out in time and join The Controller to celebrate with toasts of champagne. But there is a final twist and we end with a cliffhanger.

   This episode succeeds on all levels. Not just the writing, acting, and direction, but from every phase of TV production. Beginning with the cheap grainy look of the film done by cinematographer John Walker, no element of the ITV style goes untouched. Constant stream of gags and shout-outs flow non-stop through the thirty minutes. ITV fans will enjoy the opening titles, the set designs (Chrysoula Sofitsi), costumes (Debbie Scott), and music (Peter Baikie).

   THE PREVENTERS’ writers played the three heroes with the same insight to the ITV style of protagonist that the entire production showed. It was also fun to see William Gault as The Controller. Gault was in THE CHAMPIONS and his character was represented here as Mike Stallion “The Third One.”

   The episode ends with a cliffhanger and a graphic telling us the story is “to be continued.” But it never was. Perhaps it was not supposed to continue. It certainly would have been difficult to continue to satirize a form of fiction that was virtually a spoof itself as ITV pushed against the old conservative but socially conscious BBC that had programs such as THE WEDNESDAY PLAY.

   It didn’t help that when THE PREVENTERS aired in 1996 the role of the spy had changed. With the British government spy scandals of the 70s and the end of the Cold War in the 80s by the 90s the TV spy had been reduced to sitcoms such as THE PIGLET FILES.

   I miss the style of the 60s ITV light dramas. Writers such as Brian Clemens (THE AVENGERS) and Dennis Spooner (THE CHAMPIONS) had the talent to create light drama with surreal plots and weird characters while maintaining believability with the audience. The style fit in with the real world of 60s sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The ITV troubleshooters may not have always approved of the changing world in fashion, music, and young people’s behavior, but many of those ITV shows existed best in such a world.

   For those who are not familiar with the ITV style here is a sample, the final episode of THE CHAMPIONS. (The occasional movement of the picture is a problem caused by downloading it on YouTube.)

“Autokill”. April 30, 1969. Written by Brian Clemens – Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Cast: Stuart Damon as Craig Stirling, Alexandra Basted as Sharron Macready. William Gaunt as Richard Barrett and Anthony Nicholls as Col. W.L. Tremayne. Guest Cast: Eric Pohlmann and Paul Eddington. *** Someone has found a way to brainwash Nemesis agents to become assassins. The latest to be brainwashed is Colonel Tremayne, the man who commands The Champions.

   THE CHAMPIONS is not one of my favorites ITV series, but it does have the ITV style. The plots range from strange to stupid. Why brainwash the boss Tremayne to kill the doctor? The bad guys had nothing more evilly productive to do to Tremayne?

   The characters are likable, simple but believable. The writing and direction adds the proper amount of humor and pace to entertain and prevent the audience from actually thinking about what was happening and why.

   The ITV light drama of the 60s and 70s worked because the audience was in on it. This was not some brilliant serious filmmaker such as Dennis Potter (STAND UP, NIGEL BARTON) or Ken Loach (CATHY COME HOME) examining the troubles of modern society, ITV shows were fun. THE PREVENTERS got that right too.

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#3. JOHN SHIRLEY “Shaman.” Novelette. First published in Asimov’s SF, November 1988. Not reprinted elsewhere.

   John Shirley’s science fiction falls largely in the cyberpunk genre, but he’s also written award-winning horror fiction, movie tie-in’s (Alien, Batman) and as John Cutter, many books in the long running men’s adventure series “The Specialist.”

   “Shaman” takes place in a very dystopian future Manhattan, as four young adventurers, Quinn, Chico, Bowler and Zizz, decide to take on the impossible task of rescuing their friend Deirdre from the Fridge, a “wall-to-wall biomonitoring facility” in which the prisoners are completely restrained “on IV medifeeds and spinebox.”

   Their path, as it happens, must go through the area controlled by the Funs (Muslim Fundamentalists), a tricky venture at best, and success is far from guaranteed. Along the way, many strange things happen, and Quinn in particular learns a lot about himself and the world he lives in. (The word ‘strange’ is an understatement here.)

   This bare-bones outline of the plot does not do justice to its colorful if not outright mystical telling. If words fail me, they certainly don’t John Shirley. Even if I don’t follow all of the foursome’s adventures completely, I certainly enjoyed the ride.

   What follows is a brilliant melange of psycho-drugs, pseudoskins capable of transmitting continuous porno shows on one’s body, and the basic setting of people all around the world in a panicked search for a sense of community through basic tribalism.

   And there is the moral to the tale. “… there were a thousand million people using all of civilization’s technology without understanding it; the children of the new illiteracy, living electronics the way a Cro Magnon had used fire; assuming it was magic.”

   It’s difficult to imagine Donald Wollheim, whom I think of as being a staunch defender of traditional science fiction, picking this over-the-top cyberpunk tale as one of the Year’s Best, but I’m glad he did.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology:   STEVEN GOULD “Peaches for Mad Molly.”

THE CAT AND THE CANARY. Grenadier, 1978. Honor Blackman, Michael Callan, Edward Fox, Wendy Hiller, Olivia Hussey, Betrix Lehmann, Carol Lynley, Daniel Massey, Peter McEnery, AND Wilfrid Hyde-White. Produced by Richard Gordon. Written & directed by Radley Metzger.

   Apparently you can’t go wrong with this title. The original 1927 film is a classic of silent era style and wit; the 1938 version offers a great cast and a star-making turn by Bob Hope; and this version, made by soft-core maven Meztger, has wit, color, and a cast of mostly one-shots and has-beens, shining in the kind of parts they weren’t used to getting.

   TIME OUT: Let me emphasize that the cast is only MOSTLY moth-eaten. Actually, many of them distinguished themselves on the stage, some went on to do interesting work in and out of the movies, and lovable old Wilfrid Hyde-White was always in a world of his own. But the fact is that when this movie was made, there wasn’t enough Hollywood star power between them to light up an “EXIT” sign.

   Yet they are consistently excellent here. Honor Blackman does a perfect Queen Bitch, paired up with Olivia Hussey as her submissive partner. Daniel Massey and Peter McEnery play vigorously off each other as bickering relatives. As the Doctor from the local Insane Asylum, Edward Fox acts nasty enough to make one suspect that the sobriquet “head shrinker” might be literal in his case, while Wendy Hiller and Beatrix Lehmann skulk about in the background as Shady Lawyer and Sinister Housekeeper.

   All of whom are gracefully counterbalanced by Carol Lynley and Michael Callan as the Young Lovers of the piece: She a frightened but sensible heiress; he a hack song-writer, ruefully aware of his insignificance in the scheme of things, but ready to roll the dice with a hostile universe.

   And then there’s Wilfrid Hyde-White as dead Uncle Cyrus, whose presence in the story is a clever ploy, handed off to an actor who carries it charmingly.

   I can attribute the presence of all this talent to Producer/Old-Movie-Buff Richard Gordon, but credit for their classy playing in well-written parts must go to writer-director Radley Metzger, whose stylish porno movies and erotic films of the 60s and 70s are reflected in the elegance of this, his only PG-rated effort. And some day I’d like to hear how he got the job.

   Just in case anyone still wonders what The Cat and the Canary is all about, it has to do with greedy relatives gathered for the reading of the last will & testament of their rich uncle Cyrus. And what happens when they find only one of them will inherit. And what happens when they find out that the putative heiress may be “disqualified.” And what happens when a Homicidal Maniac escapes from a nearby Madhouse. And one damn thing after another.

   That’s what the story’s about. The film is about style, pace, polish and wit, and how they can burnish an old gem like this into a real delight.

NORMAN DANIELS “The Great Ego.” Novella. First appeared in Startling Stories, Spring 1944. Never reprinted.

   The first story by Norman Daniels I ever read was one of his John Keith, Man from A.P.E. spy stories from Pyramid. I didn’t know who Daniels was at the time and knew nothing of his pulp connection, but I knew I liked the book enough to look for more by him, which proved fairly easy to do as he was an extremely prolific writer for most of his entire career, from his early days in the pulps to the Gothic romances written with his wife as Dorothy Daniels. The only trick with his work was discovering which pseudonyms he was writing under other than his own name, and which genre he was writing in.

   But I confess I never really thought of him much in terms of the Science Fiction genre, which is why I was a bit surprised to see his name on the cover of Startling Stories with the lead novella illustrated by no less than the great Virgil Finlay, the work in question, “The Great Ego.”

   The story, as you might expect from Daniels and Startling, opens with a hook designed to keep you turning pages. The extremely meek and retiring Mr. Rodney St. George (…in manner of dress he might be almost dainty) is a clerk at a bank, and his superior, young and handsome Jim Downing, has asked Miss Pam Brooke, an attractive clerk at a rare book store, to identify St. George as a man who buys rare volumes at her store.

   Two marked notes, part of a large sum embezzled by a recently caught clerk named Foster, one who definitely would not be found in a rare book store, showed up at her store. To make things even more mysterious, it turns out the meek Mr. St. George has spent some $8,000 on rare books in recent months. This is certainly not a sum he earned at the bank no matter how carefully he lived.

   Like any pulp hero worth his name, Jim Downing is determined to investigate more deeply, something he soon finds he wishes he kept his nose out of. But before he can follow up, Mr. St. George foils a bank robbery, apparently by accident. Asked to identify the captured bank robber, St. George visits his cell, where magically a cute kitten appears just as the bank robber who had pleaded with St. George to free him drops dead, much the same way the embezzling clerk Foster did, from no apparent cause.

   There is much more to Mr. St. George than meets the eye, and he is ready for Jim Downing’s nosing around.

   Meanwhile Pam Brooke has been doing a little detective work on her own. She has discovered St. George has spent thousands of dollars in rare bookstores around the city. So when Downing goes to visit St. George he suspects there is more to the story than he’s been told and willing to confront the man. At which point St. George turns him into a kitten and himself into a large black cat.

   Of course Daniels manages to give the whole thing a thin patina of science since this was Startling Stories and not Weird Tales, but basically this is the sort of thing you would find in John Campbell’s Unknown, though told here with a straighter face and without the more literary efforts of a Heinlein, Leiber, De Camp, or Williamson.

   St. George can turn anyone into any animal, but he prefers cats, and his house full of cats, all former humans (including Foster and the bank robber), but he needs Downing because it turns out St. George isn’t the only one with this power. He has a rival, a deadly one, Dr. Michael Jamison.

   Downing manages to become human and escape, but no one will believe him but Pam, so he tries to enlist Jamison only to find himself ironically allied with St. George against an even madder scientist/sorcerer, the two men vying for an ancient scroll that will make one of them a virtual god.

   This fast-moving tale has a momentum of its own, despite the absurdities and proves to be a fun story as Downing and Pam find they are mankind’s last hope as the two self proclaimed gods feud with man’s fate in the balance.

   Daniels manages a nice bit of jiggery-pokery here, keeping the tale moving despite the built-in absurdity, and even allowing the hero to outwit the two madmen with a clever bit of observation about the nature of their abilities, bringing the thing to a fine apocalyptic head.

   â€œThe Great Ego” is a well-written and playful tale, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still seriously enough to involve the reader in the fate of the attractive hero and heroine, if you are willing to give into the spirit of the thing.

   Startling may not have been in a class with Astounding, but over the years it was the home to some of the more gifted writers in the field, including Leigh Brackett, Stanley Weinbaum, Manly Wade Wellman, Ray Bradbury, Edmund Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, (Captain Future, too) and other major names, and in “The Great Ego” an unquestioned pulp — if not SF — master pulls off an entertaining tale as wild and furry as the cats that populate it.

ELLERY QUEEN – The Dutch Shoe Mystery. Ellery Queen #4. Stokes, hardcover, 1931. Paperback reprints include Pocket #202; 1st printing, December 1942.

   Subtitled “A Problem in Deduction” (*) and that is exactly correct. The wealthy benefactress of a New York City hospital is murdered just before undergoing an emergency operation on the same building, and the only clue is a pair of shoes with a mended shoelace.

   No one should read an Ellery Queen novel of this vintage for a study of the characters involved, but for the most part the prose is clean and uncluttered. The only exception being a tendency toward flowery language at the beginning of every section. The rest of the story is punctuated only occasionally by the presence of yet another footnote. The lack of action is made up for by a plot that, when unraveled, has no flaws, so far as I can see.

   (*) There is a ‘Challenge to the Reader’ on page 241 of the Pocket edition, and as usual, I flubbed it up. And yet, if I’d followed through on the thought that occurred to me on page 32, I’d have nailed the culprit in no tie flat. I kid you not.

THE ROOKIE COP. RKO Radio Pictures, 1939. Tim Holt, Virginia Weidler, Janet Shaw, Frank M. Thomas, Ralf Harolde, Muriel Evans, Ace the Wonder Dog. Director: David Howard.

   Tim Holt, who came up for discussion as a B-western movie star following my review of Sagebrush Law a while back, was only 20 years old when he made this film, and as a rookie cop Clem Maitland, he’s really perfect for the part, since he’s young and eager and as wet behind the ears as they come.

   Although he’s billed first, this film is really built as a showcase for all the clever things Maitland’s dog Ace can do, which I didn’t find all that interesting, but back in 1939, audiences may have enjoyed his tricks a whole lot more. As for me, I was more impressed with the performance of even younger Virginia Weidler, 12 at the time playing a 9-year-old tomboy named Nicey who wants to become a cop herself, when she grows up — and she can hardly wait.

   It’s too bad that with all the screen time Nicey gets, they really didn’t have a lot for her to do. Part of the story has to do with Clem convincing the police chief that dogs can be of great help to a police force, but even though the police chief is the father of his girl friend, he stubbornly can’t see it Clem’s way.

   The other half of the story is nabbing a gang of crooks, which is a whole lot easier than convincing a stubborn police chief to see the light. The end result is competently done, but it’s certainly nothing special.