SHORT CUT TO HELL. Paramount Pictures, 1957. Robert Ivers, Georgann Johnson (debut of both), William Bishop, Jacques Aubuchon, Murvyn Vye. Screenplay by Ted Berkman and Rafael Blau, based on the screenplay by W. R. Burnett for This Gun For Hire (1942) and the novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene. Directed by James Cagney.

   With apologies to film critic Bosley Crowther, Short Cut to Hell certainly is.

   James Cagney’s debut as a director, and his only film as one, is a mess by any measure, not the least the absolute failure of this two stars making their less than stellar debut in two of the least charismatic screen performances imaginable.

   Watching this it is hard to believe the legendary Cagney who worked with some of the finest directors in Hollywood like Wellman, Walsh, and Curtiz, could have picked up so little or produced so pedestrian a film, pedestrian being a compliment because this often looks like a bad half hour episodic television cop show of the era.

   Whatever Graham Greene thought of the original 1942 version of his novel A Gun for Sale, filmed under its American title This Gun For Hire, there was no denying the extraordinary appeal of its cast: Alan Ladd as the emotionally and physically scarred gun man Raven, Veronica Lake as Ellen, a sexy smart young singer/magician caught up in Raven’s mission, Laird Cregar as the effete double crossing club owner who hires Raven and then betrays him, and Robert Preston as Ellen’s policeman boy friend.

   In that version, the plot moved from London to LA, and Raven changed from a man scarred by a cleft lip to one with a twisted wrist, Raven kills to cover up a crime for Cregar’s character who then betrays him to the police. Raven escapes swearing revenge on Cregar and whoever employs him, runs into nightclub performer Ellen on the way to LA for a job and ends up taking her hostage as she awakens his long buried humanity and sense of decency. Meanwhile Ellen’s boyfriend Robert Preston is the policeman hunting Raven, especially once he discovers Ellen is his hostage.

   That film made iconic stars of Ladd and Lake, who went on to be teamed in multiple films and was a major success for the studio.

   Not so much Short Cut to Hell.

   Here we meet Kyle (Robert Iver, changed from Raven and chosen because Chad seemed too tough sounding, I assume) who lives in a rundown hotel with his cat who he obsesses over while violently spurning the advances of the daughter of the manager (Yvette Vickers) who is attracted to and repelled by the slender slight killer.

   Kyle cold bloodedly assassinates a young engineer and his secretary who threaten to reveal a crime by his employers and meets effete Jacques Aubuchon at a small restaurant to be paid, not knowing Aubuchon plans to claim the sequential bills he has paid Kyle were stolen from him, and knowing Kyle let him shoot it out with the cops and die.

   Enter policeman William Bishop assigned to the case, whose performer girlfriend Glory (Georgann Johnson) is leaving for LA to work in a club rather than marry him.

   Kyle escapes and Kyle, Aubuchon, and Glory all end up on the train to LA where Kyle takes Glory hostage.

   From there the film pretty much follows the Greene novel and the 1942 film in terms of plot, but only in terms of plot.

   Otherwise it bears the same relationship to the classic film that Abbot and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bears to the Oscar winning Frederic March version directed by Rudolph Mate.

   Let’s start with Ivers, a wanna be James Dean type with the charisma and screen presence of unbuttered toast. Perhaps he did better in later performances, but I see no evidence of that here. What is supposed to be a smoldering killer with budding humanity beneath the ice cold mask instead looks slightly petulant and somewhat constipated as if his chewing gum lost its flavor.

   I have seldom seen a worst performance in a film from a major studio, or a less compelling one. Compared to Ivers, Alan Ladd was Olivier.

   Our other debut Georgann Johnson as Glory isn’t much better though somewhat more animated and certainly better to look at. Without the teasing peek a boo mix of playful sensuality and smoky sexuality that Lake exuded, the character of Glory just doesn’t make much sense. There is no reason for her to feel anything but fear of Iver’s Kyle, so her protection of him and aid seem perverse and a bit stupid. Minus the visible sparks that flowed on screen between Ladd and Lake, the plot doesn’t make much sense without Greene’s novelist voice to carry us through.

   No one else fares much better. William Bishop was always better cast as charming bad guys, and Jacques Aubuchon has the unenviable task of following Laird Cregar in the role of the cowardly immoral and effete bad guy , and frankly rather than a sense of menace and vague depravity, he only communicates dyspepsia and the snobbery of a punctilious head waiter at a second rate French restaurant.

   Murvyn Vye appears as Aubuchon’s sadistic chauffeur in a noirish touch, but it is so blatant and so flat that it comes across as unintended humor rather than noir. Unintended humor is pretty much the definition of this film that is often laughably off key, thanks to the performers and script.

   One dramatic scene where Kyle kills a cat to keep it from revealing his hiding place is supposed to be played for his horror and anguish at what he has done, but plays more like a Monty Python sketch gone horribly wrong.

   Painful as it is to write, James Cagney comes in for his full blame for this as well. His direction is unimaginative and pedestrian. He disdains any use of light and shadow beyond the simplest of shots, his camera is objective and cold, mostly in two shots and long shots even when extreme closeups would seem unavoidable, and he shows no sense of pace or suspense much less cinematic flair unfolding his story as static as episodic television at its most unimaginative.

   It is not surprising a man of his taste didn’t venture into the director’s chair again after this. I applaud his recognition of his limits.

   Short Cut to Hell was remade in 1979 as made for TV movie with Robert Wagner and Lou Antonio. I only hope it was better than this.

   There is a language of film, and it is always disappointing when someone you expect to know it intimately proves deaf to its rhythms and lyric style. This film is actively bad, perhaps not a bomb, but empty and devoid of any sense of style. It isn’t Ed Wood, and I am not suggesting that, but the combination of James Cagney, Graham Greene, W. R. Burnett, and a classic film should have been more than this.

   It is currently on YouTube, and I can only say if your curiosity overcomes you, watch at your own peril.

   From this website:

   A pairing one might not imagine is Nils Lofgren and the late author Clive Cussler on Whatever Happened To Muscatel. Nils remembers “My dear, departed friend Clive Cussler, one of the all-time great adventure writers, asked me to write this country song with him. It was a joy to research the lyrics with him of old, rotgut liquors gone by the wayside, in his historic writing room in AZ. A great honor and creative adventure to team up with Clive. Rest in Peace dear, brilliant friend.”
   

BARNABY JONES “To Catch a Dead Man.” CBS. 04 February 1973. (Season One, Episode Two.) Buddy Ebsen , Lee Meriwether. Guest cast: Janice Rule, Darleen Carr, Victoria Shaw, William Shatner. A Quinn Martin Production. Directed by William Hale. Currently streaming on Amazon and (for free), on YouTube. [See below.]

   It’s almost a given that everyone of a certain age reading this will know the basic premise of this vintage almost geriatric PI series from the mid-1970s. (Buddy Ebsen was 65 when the show started, and it lasted for most of eight years.) In the first episode (this is the second) Barnaby Jones care out of retirement as a PI to find the man who murdered his son Hal. Teaming up with him is another private eye, a man by the name of Frank Cannon, also of some TV fame, who was a friend of his son.

   By the end of the episode Barnaby has decided to go back into the PI business again, assisted by his son’s widow, Betty (Lee Meriwether), as his devoted secretary.

   In “To Catch a Dead Man” Barnaby is hired by a young girl whose boy friend has disappeared. I don’t consider it giving away anything to tell you that the boy friend is dead, killed in a boat explosion caused by a millionaire (William Shatner) who would like the world to believe the man in the boat was him. In the meantime, he has hunkered down in a fishing resort area with his current girl friend.

   What follows is, well, we the viewers following along with Barnaby as he painstakingly puts the clues together to solve the case, with a continual twinkle in his eye and a knowing grin. I only watched the show on and off over the years when it was on, but until someone can tell me otherwise, I assume that this was the pattern for all of Barnaby’s investigations from this point on.

   As enjoyable as this episode is, and in all honesty, based only on this episode, it seems unlikely that Buddy Ebsen’s folksy charm as an actor would be able to carry the series for as long as it did, but on the other hand, it certainly seems to have done.

THOMAS B. DEWEY – Deadline. Mac #13. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1966. Pocket 55002, paperback, 1968. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1984. Probably condensed and reprinted as the story “Deadline” appearing in Sir!, August 1968 [see Comment #6].

   Thomas B. Dewey is one of detective fiction’s severely underrated writers — a craftsman of no small talent whose work is among the most human and compassionate of any in the genre. Although Dewey was clearly influenced by Hammell and Chandler, his Chicago-based private eye, “Mac,” is not one of the wisecracking, vigilante breed of fictional ops; he is intelligent, quiet, gentle, ironic, tough when he has to be, a light drinker, and a man not incapable of being hurt either physically or emotionally. All in all, a far more likable creation than the bulk of his brethren.

   In Deadline. Mae is hired by a group of do-gooders in a last-ditch effort to save the life of a small-town youth, Peter Davidian, who has been convicted of the mutilation murder of an eighteen-year-old girl and is awaiting execution in the state prison. When Mac arrives in the rural Illinois town, Wesley, he meets considerable hostility: The crime was a particularly vicious one, and the girl’s father, Jack Parrish, is an influential citizen who is convinced of Davidian’s guilt.

   Racing against time-he has only four days before the scheduled execution, the “deadline” of the title- Mac utilizes the aid of a retarded handyman, a friend of the dead girl’s named Mary Carpenter, and a schoolteacher named Caroline Adams to find out who really murdered Esther Parrish. In the process he has to overcome a conspiracy of silence, threats, and a harrowing brush with death.

   This is a simple, straightforward story, told with irony, fine attention to detail, and mounting suspense. Satisfying and memorable.

         ———
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.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. NBC, made for TV movie, 22 May 1988. Bill Bixby (David Banner), Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk), Jack Colvin, Lee Purcell, Charles Napier, Tim Thomerson, Eric Kramer (Thor). Written & directed by Nicholas Corea, based on the character created by Stan Lee (for Marvel Comics).

   A 1988 made-for-television movie that originally aired on NBC, The Incredible Hulk Returns also found a home on VHS. Released two years later by R&G Video and distributed by Starmaker, the final entry into the “Hulk” TV series found a more permanent home on video store shelves. The cover art work suggests perhaps a more dramatic Hulk story than what the feature actually is; namely, an ultimately non-successful backdoor pilot for a “Thor” spinoff.

   Before we get to that, however, here’s the basic plot. It’s been a few years since scientist Bruce Banner (Bill Bixby) was visited by his Hyde-like friend, the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno). He’s now working as a scientist again under an assumed name and has a lady friend in fellow scientist Dr. Margaret Shaw (Lee Purcell). His main project is a transponder that he hopes can reverse his “curse.” But all doesn’t go according to plan. First, Banner finds an uninvited guest in a former student of his who just happens to be supernaturally connected with Thor (Eric Kramer).

   Then there are the Cajun heavies, Jack LeBeau (Tim Thomerson) and Mike Fouche (Charles Napier) who want the transponder for their own purposes. Finally, there’s intrepid reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) who is determined to out Banner as the Hulk.

   In a way, it’s all fun and nostalgic. Apparently it was a success for NBC. And it’s hard not to see why. Fans got a chance to reunite with their favorite characters and you can tell there’s some real love and dedication in the film. Bixby could have phoned it in, but he obviously did not. Thomerson — who I loved in Trancers (1984) – and Napier make great villains.

   What makes The Incredible Hulk Returns ultimately a lesser superhero television production was the writers and producers’ decision to use this reunion as a way of introducing Thor to viewers. Kramer is surely a physical presence to behold, but his Thor was way too – how should I put this? – goofy for anything sustainable. Not only does he talk like a simpleton; he also has a craving for beer that is funny one time, but grating the next. And the scenes with him dancing with girls at a motorcycle bar were amusing, but they don’t do much to establish a character that viewers will want to return to week after week. Simply put, Thor is no Hulk.

PS. Of course, when The Hulk and Thor first meet, they misunderstand each others’ intentions and fight. See it here!

   Agatha Christie often reworked her stories into other forms, including several featuring Hercule Poirot. “The Submarine Plans” (The Sketch, November 7, 1923) was expanded into “The Incredible Theft” (serialized in the London Daily Express, April 6-12, 1937), and “The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest” (The Strand Magazine, January 1932) as “The Mystery of the Spanish Chest” (serialized in Women’s Illustrated, September 17-October 1, 1960). “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding” (aka “Christmas Adventure”; The Sketch, December 12, 1923) became a novella (aka “The Theft of the Royal Ruby”) first published in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées (1960).

   Christie sometimes exchanged one of her many sleuths for another; what appeared in The Strand Magazine (June 1936) as “Poirot and the Regatta Mystery” was rewritten with the lesser-known Parker Pyne before its book publication in The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (1939). The original, while collected in the 2008 U.K. version of Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories, is not in the U.S. version. She expanded some stories into novels, e.g., “The Plymouth Express,” which originally appeared in The Sketch (as “The Mystery of the Plymouth Express”; April 4, 1923), like most of those in Poirot’s Early Cases (1974), and was collected in the U.S. in The Under Dog and Other Stories (1951). The expanded version became The Mystery of the Blue Train (William Collins & Sons, 29 March 1928).

   First published Stateside in The Blue Book Magazine (as “The Plymouth Express Affair”; January 1924), the short story is narrated by Poirot’s friend and flatmate, Captain Arthur Hastings, as were the majority of them, although he appears in only eight novels. Shortly after Royal Navy Lt. Alec Simpson discovers Mrs. Flossie Carrington, stabbed to death, under the seat of a compartment in the titular train, Poirot receives a note asking him to call on her father, Ebenezer Halliday, “the steel king of America,” for whom he once did a little service (“an affair of bearer bonds”). Her poor taste in men included her husband, the Hon. Rupert Carrington, and adventurer Count Armand de la Rochefour, a “bad hat.”

   The maid, Jane Mason, reported that, en route to a house party at Avonmead Court with $100,000 worth of jewels, Flossie had suddenly announced she would not change trains at Bristol, where Jane — who saw the back of an unknown man in the compartment — was ordered to await her with the luggage, minus the jewel case. Describing Flossie’s striking outfit, she says she thinks the tall, dark man was not Rupert, a fortune-hunter from whom a legal separation was imminent. Sensing that Halliday is holding something back, Poirot threatens to decline the case, until he reveals a letter found in Flossie’s handbag from the Count, who was about to renew their acquaintance…and also matches Jane’s description.

   Poirot and Hastings meet with their old friend Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard (making a Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson/Inspector Lestrade parallel), who is astounded when Poirot correctly predicts that he has found the murder weapon, “by the side of the line between Weston and Taunton,” and interviewed the paperboy whom Flossie generously tipped at Weston. Learning that one of the “shiners” has been pawned by Red Narky, a jewel thief apparently working without usual accomplice Gracie Kidd, Poirot hastens with Hastings to Halliday’s, where he finds a duplicate outfit in Jane’s trunk. Jane is, of course, Gracie, who impersonated Flossie, and ensured that the paperboy would remember her ensemble.

   â€œIt was of the most simple!,” declares Poirot, who explains that after Gracie and Red had chloroformed and stabbed Flossie between London and Bristol, she had taken her place, “[throwing] the knife out of the window to mark the place where the crime presumably occurred.” She deliberately described a man whose appearance was the exact opposite of Narky’s, and neither the Count — “much too careful of his own skin to risk murder” — nor Rupert was involved. Such stories obviously inspired the Monty Python sketch about the “West End hit It All Happened on the 11.20 from Hainault to Redhill via Horsham and Reigate, Calling at Carshalton Beeches, Malmesbury, Tooting Bec, and Croydon West.”

   As with “The Plymouth Express” and The Mystery of the Blue Train, Christie expanded the posthumously published “The Incident of the Dog’s Ball” and “Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly” into, respectively, Dumb Witness (aka Poirot Loses a Client; 1937) and Dead Man’s Folly (1956). Interestingly, the story (1991) and the novel (2005) were adapted separately, with David Suchet, for Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Featuring the first appearances of Poirot’s valet, George(s), and private investigator Mr. Goby, next seen in After the Funeral (aka Funerals Are Fatal; 1953), the novel is set partly in the village of St. Mary Mead in Kent (presumably distinct from Miss Marple’s home west of London).

   The Mystery of the Blue Train was also adapted for BBC Radio in 1985-6, with Maurice Denham — who played Japp on film in The Alphabet Murders (1965), and Pyne on TV in The Agatha Christie Hour — as Poirot, and as a graphic novel in 2007. Christie reportedly said of this novel in her autobiography that she “always hated it,” not so surprising when financial need had forced her to return to writing after her mother’s death; the infidelity of her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Archie Christie; a breakdown; and the mysterious eleven-day disappearance dramatized with Vanessa Redgrave in the film Agatha (1979). It was first serialized in London’s The Star (February 1-March 15, 1928), minus two initial chapters.

   These backtrack (as it were) to before the murder, while the closest any character names in this third-person narrative come to the story’s are Ada Mason and the Comte Armand de la Roche. In Paris, American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin — later said by Marie Van Schuyler to be a friend of hers in Death on the Nile (1937) — buys a small parcel from a Russian, who observes both the pair following Rufus and a white-haired man taken to be their employer. After learning that these “Apaches” were repulsed with a revolver, M. le Marquis dons a mask to visit antiques dealer Demetrius Papopolous and his daughter Zia; reporting this failed attempt to steal the rubies, he vows, “The other plan — will not fail.”

   In London, Van Aldin is greeted at the Savoy by his secretary, Major Richard Knighton, and a troubling letter from his daughter, Ruth Kettering, to whom he brings the rubies — worn by Catherine of Russia and including the flawless Heart of Fire — as gifts. His son-in-law, Derek, has been cavorting with exotic dancer Mirelle, so he advises a divorce and hires Goby to investigate him; Derek darkly hints that Ruth has her own secrets, and on his way to see her Rufus spots Armand, from whose clutches he extricated her years ago, leaving her building. Mirelle notes that her death would be convenient, and tells Derek that Ruth — ostensibly headed to the Riviera — is really planning to meet Armand in Paris.

   In St. Mary Mead, Katherine Grey inherits a fortune from Jane Harfield, to whom she had been a paid companion, and departs for London. There, she receives an invitation from a cousin, Viscountess Rosalie Tamplin, to her Riviera home, the Villa Marguerite; the Hon. Lenox Tamplin, her daughter, instantly sees through it, since her fourth husband, Charles “Chubby” Evans, has no money whatever, yet while also not deceived, Katherine accepts as a change from her sheltered life. At Thomas Cook & Sons she sees Derek, a stranger who’d bumped into her at the Savoy, also booked a berth on the Blue Train, and refuses Rufus’s offer — conveyed by Knighton — of £100,000 if he will not contest their divorce.

   On the train, Katherine sees Ruth, who’d shared her Pullman coach from Victoria Station to Dover, and unburdens herself to the stranger in the dining car; Poirot, boarding in Paris at the Gare de Lyon; and Derek, curious if this is the lover of whom Ruth spoke. Met by Chubby in Nice, Katherine is informed by M. Caux, the Commissary of Police, that Ruth has been found strangled and the maid, Ada, has vanished, so only with this revelation in Chapter 11, a third of the way through the novel, do Christie’s two narratives even begin to synch up. Poirot offers his assistance, while she identifies Ruth — “disfigured…almost beyond recognition” with a heavy post-mortem blow — by the mole on the victim’s wrist.

   The jewel-case is missing, and Ruth had said she’d left Ada behind in Paris, according to attendant Pierre Michel, apparently not the same conductor in the oft-adapted Murder on the Orient Express (aka Murder in the Calais Coach; 1934). At a dinner party, Katherine is introduced to Derek, of whom she had not told M. Caux, and he is informed of Ruth’s death; Goby reveals that he and Mirelle were aboard, and Ada, seen by Knighton in Paris, is questioned by Examining Magistrate M. Carrège. He shows Rufus the letter from the Comte, ostensibly writing about famous jewels, and Poirot, while convinced that murder is inconsistent with his psychology, reports that he has leased the Villa Marina at Antibes.

   With Derek inheriting £2 million, Rufus asks Poirot to investigate, but despite his flimsy alibi, Ada cannot identify Armand conclusively; Derek denies that he knew Ruth was on the train, yet is aware of the rubies. At the Negresco, Derek sees Mirelle, who thinks he killed Ruth for her, but is told he is done with her, so she introduces herself to the Comte, stating that the police suspect him and suggesting he finger Derek. Poirot and Katherine meet with Rufus, and she makes a favorable impression upon Knighton, who in a nicely metafictional moment tells her, “You confess that you read detective stories, Miss Grey. You must know that any one who has a perfect alibi is always open to grave suspicion.”

   At a tennis match, Poirot points out to Rufus the sudden appearance of M. Papopolous in Nice, then produces the rubies, recovered from the accommodation address to which the Comte, under surveillance, mailed the parcel. Visiting the Greek, to whom he once did a service, Poirot displays the jewels — which are imitations — and says he is concerned only with the murder, not with recovering the originals, so he is given a tip on M. le Marquis. He believes that Armand planned a substitution, but was pre-empted by murder, and the Comte, claiming innocence, tries to blackmail Derek with information from Mirelle, who says she saw Kettering emerge from Ruth’s compartment just before they reached Lyons.

   Minutes apart, Derek and Knighton seek to marry Katherine, recalling Lucy Westenra’s three-proposal day in Dracula (1897); Mirelle tells the police her tale but is evasive about how she knew Ruth was dead when the train left Lyons, and George notes that, seeking a new situation, he had read in Society Snippets about Poirot being received at Buckingham Palace. Poirot leaves news of Derek’s arrest with Lenox, who says the killer could have boarded and left the train after strangling Ruth, while Zia, reminded of a secret he’d kept for her, reveals that her father has the rubies. Armand’s servant admits he’d arrived a day later than claimed, and Poirot theorizes that Mirelle found Ruth dead in her compartment.

   Homesick after receiving a letter from elderly Amelia Viner in St. Mary Mead, Katherine returns to England when she learns that Knighton and Rufus are as well, and becomes her new companion. Poirot consults his friend Joseph Aarons — a theatrical agent introduced in The Murder on the Links (1923) — about male impersonator and character actress Kitty Kidd, who had quit the stage three years earlier. Mirelle has taken up with the ex-Prime Minister of Greece and now sports the Heart of Fire, clearly sold to him by Papopolous; lunching with Katherine, Poirot says the disfigurement is central to his doubt that Derek is actually guilty, and that “the robbery and the murder were done by the same person.”

   Poirot has Rufus and Knighton return with him to the south of France on the Blue Train, where he reveals that a “youth” seen leaving the train at Lyons was Kitty (aka Ada), and Knighton, who’d feigned a limp from a war wound to facilitate his dual identity of M. le Marquis, boarded in Paris just long enough to kill Ruth. As Poirot tells Van Aldin, they had planned to scapegoat the Comte, but after his cigarette case, bearing the initial “K,” was found in her cabin, they’d hit upon Kettering as the man she’d allegedly seen. Ada, posing as Ruth, had told Pierre that the maid was left in Paris, hence the disfigurement to conceal her imposture, and thus Derek, cleared and released, leaves for St. Mary Mead…

Up next: “Murder in the Mews”

Editions cited:

      â€œThe Plymouth Express” in Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: William Morrow (2013)

      The Mystery of the Blue Train: Pocket (1940)

CHARLES ASHLEIGH -The Rambling Kid. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1930. Charles H. Kerr, US, softcover, 2004.

   Semi-autobiographical hobo novel of a Wobbly about his experiences in America circa 1912-1919, coming to America, joining the IWW, riding the rails, and being imprisoned for opposing US involvement in ‘the war to end all wars’.

   Hardboiled writing: ‘Words that would be simple, so that all could understand, hot and clear from memory and feeling and hard thought’. About life on ‘the road — a rising coloured stream of incident, divine adventure filling his heart with action-satisfaction.’

   The road offers a reality you can’t see from the university’s ivory towers: ‘I left because it stank. Life in college became unendurably dull. It was stale — most of it—and false. I wanted reality….. There’s more genuine feeling, more straight acting and talking, more health and reality among the working class than in all the trim little intellectual circles or in all the colleges….It’s a tremendous relief to get away from the smart-alec cynicism [and] dreamy-dreamy aestheticism’.

   And there are some memorable incidents described, riding the rails. I’ll share one of them here where a young brake-man fresh off the farm accosts a car full of Wobblies:

                  ———

   Overall, sorry to say, it’s just not that good. The novel is divided into three parts, the first and last more fictionalized than the middle. And not the better for it. Ashleigh himself came to the US as an adult, proselytizing the IWW and hooking up with Claude McKay on the way. But gay miscegenation doesn’t make its way into the novel. Neither does his deportation back to England in lieu of imprisonment.

   Instead, Ashleigh concocts a story of an English family, sunken with poverty around the turn of the 20th century, with no hopes but those found in letters from family who’d made the trek to America, Land of Opportunity!

   The family makes its way to America only to find that their American brethren had been grossly exaggerating things in their letters. What did you expect? Them to tell you the truth in their letters? That after all that effort, pomp and circumstance of moving to America that things were just as bad? No. That would be humiliating. So family after family is lured to America by false hope, only to spread the horsefeathers themselves when writing their own letters back to the old country. They promised to write. Not to lie would be to admit defeat and embarrassment.

   The problem is that this ‘family moving to America’ business is made up. Not made up in the sense that it didn’t happen. Many times, of course, to other people. Just not to Ashleigh. Ashleigh is not a talented enough novelist to make up episodes of a life he had not lived and make it sing. Or singe.

   It’s for this reason that the middle section of life of a Wobbly on the rails is compelling. It has the verisimilitude that can usually only be earned by experience. Unless you’re a really talented writer. Which Ashleigh is not.

   The final section is also imagined. While Ashleigh and his protagonist doppelganger were both arrested for opposing the war, his doppelganger doesn’t take the boring option that Ashleigh took: accept deportation and go home. His character, rather, heads for the Russian revolution.

   Anyway, as I said, it’s just not that great. The middle section has some nice bits. But for a sustained novel of the hobo life by a hobo, head for the amazing Waiting for Nothing by Tom Kromer and You Can’t Win by Jack Black.

   For as long as I remember, which is about as far back as when I first started collecting pulp magazines, the story “The Diamond Wager,” by Samuel Dashiell, which appeared in the October 19, 1929 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly, has been assumed to have been written by one (Samuel) Dashiell Hammett.

   This in spite of the fact that this was the only story that Hammett would have ever had published in DFW, and even though it read nothing like anything the creator of hard-boiled detective fiction ever wrote under his own name.

   It has taken a long time, but pulp historian Will Murray has discovered another huge flaw in the assumption that Hammett actually wrote the story; that is to say, that there was a fairly well known journalist at the same time the story appeared whose name was, guess what, Samuel Dashiell.

   You can read all about it in this post on the Blackgate blog. Will Murray’s account there seems definitive to me. All the collectors who have paid a steep premium for that particular issue of DFW must be well displeased.

   This is a Vinegar Syndrome trailer for the Mexican Eurospy movie, Santo vs. Doctor Death (1973). Directed and partially written by Rafael Romero Marchent, this entry into the long-running Santo series has high production values and, as you will see, lots of stunts and fun action sequences.

RICHARD JESSUP – Port Angelique. Gold Medal s11159, paperback original; 1st printing October 1961.

   Angelique is a small island in the Caribbean, a possession of the United States. A paradise unknown to all but for its few inhabitants. A few years ago, when the notorious Sabo de Chine was finally forced from the island, his fortune in gold had to be left behind.

   And now that he’s back, the job of police commissioner Stanley Fowler is twofold: get the money, and not let his long-time nemesis slip through his fingers again. Intended, I think, as something more than just a crime novel, it still grows in momentum [as the latter] as it goes.