When present day critics and historians look back at the Golden Age of Detection as it took shape in its British form, they almost never go beyond the four “Mystery Queens” of the era: Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh.

   Curt Evans, a frequent guest blogger here on Mystery*File, accepts all four as “royalty,” but as you will know from his reviews and his followup comments on the reviews of others, he is a devoted champion of the male authors of the same time period, now deposed and all but relegated to the dustbins of the past.

   In this regard, may I recommend to you a two part part series on The American Culture website, in which Curt takes on the present day one-sided view of the past? Names are named, and claims that have been made are hung up for inspection, analyzed and rejected.

   And who are the Crime Kings of the era? Curt will tell you. His two-part essay is long, but it’s well worth your time and consideration.

http://stkarnick.com/culture/2011/03/01/the-british-golden-age-of-detections-deposed-crime-kings-part-1-of-2/

http://stkarnick.com/culture/2011/03/03/the-british-golden-age-of-detection%E2%80%99s-deposed-crime-kings-part-2-of-2/

GEORGE BAGBY – I Could Have Died. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979.

   I find the stories that “Bagby” tells us about the exploits of Inspector Schmidt of New York City Homicide about as fast and easy to devour as a fresh batch of hot, buttered popcorn. And he must write them at just about the same rate — after all, this does make seven now that have appeared in just the last three years.

   It doesn’t actually begin as a case of homicide. Following the kidnapping of Bagby and two lady companions as part of a successful hotel robbery, quite inexplicably the younger of the two ladies finds herself falling in love with one of her captors. And of course a murder eventually occurs.

   There are a few too many holes for the engagingly pleasant and witty plot that results to hold up well under close observation, but in all honesty it also very nearly works the way it’s supposed to.

[UPDATE] 03-03-11.   I’m going to suggest this book to Patti Abbott for inclusion in tomorrow’s weekly roundup of Forgotten Friday mystery novels on her blog. I don’t believe that George Bagby — in real life Aaron Marc Stein, under which name he wrote an equally long list of other detective novels — got nearly the critical attention that I always thought he should have, and he’s definitely forgotten by all but a few devoted aficionados now.

   Perhaps he was too prolific, and maybe the endings didn’t match the cleverness of other writers’ mysteries (nor perhaps the openings of his own books), but I always admired the way he had for descriptive passages, making the most prosaic actions — such as taking the cap off a toothpaste tube or hunting for a set of lost keys — seem interesting.

   George Bagby, by the way, if the review wasn’t quite clear on this, was both the pen name and the character in the Bagby novels who tagged along with Inspector Schmidt and chronicled his cases for him.

JOSEPH FINDER – Vanished. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, August 2009; reprint paperback, August 2010.

   Vanished is the first book in a new series by a writer who specializes in financial intrigue, and who has written several best selling roman a clef’s (The Moscow Club, Power Play) that benefited by prefiguring events that made the headlines across the world, and made his debut with a controversial non-fiction work, The Red Carpet, that exposed the ties of the KGB to American entrepreneur Armand Hammer..

   Vanished introduces Finder’s first continuing character, Nick Heller, chief investigator and trouble shooter for Stoddard International and Jay Stoddard, its CEO. Heller is an ex-Special Forces type (de rigueur in today’s thrillers) replete with personal demons and a tough no-nonsense approach to his work.

   If that echoes many of the heroes in today’s thriller fiction, what separates Finder from the pack is that he both can really write, and his plots dealing with corporate intrigue have the ring of truth.

   The glamour of big business and ruthless corporate back fighting is nothing new in thrillers. John D. MacDonald frequently used shady business as a background in this thrillers as did Hammond Innes, and as have many writers including Michael Thomas, Thomas Gifford, and more recently Christopher Reich. For that matter Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher series gave us a banker sleuth in that cut-throat world — albeit with more than a dash of humor.

   Heller proves to be a likable and believable protagonist. In his first outing the job he’s on for his boss gets pushed aside when his brother Roger disappears after Roger’s wife Lauren is nearly killed. Roger’s panicked teen age son calls on his uncle.

   Nick and Roger have a complicated relationship — dating back to their childhood, and their father who is still in Federal prison for securities fraud and insider trading and has been since Nick was only thirteen. Roger followed in Dad’s footsteps — at least in regard to working in the financial world.

   Heller proves a competent guide through the complexities of financial finagling as he pursues his brother — who may not want to be found — as well as a tough no nonsense fighter pitted against a variety of gun-waving types and a ruthless killer known as the Surgeon. Along the way he also grows closer to his nephew, Gabe, who reminds him of himself when confronted with the duplicities of the adult world.

   Vanished is a fast read, written in short clipped, staccato chapters and clear prose that is refreshingly free of the jingoism, posing, and diatribes that crowd too many of today’s thrillers.

   Finder is satisfied to tell a good story well and let the facts speak for themselves without undue editorializing, while still allowing Heller to emerge as a believable protagonist with a recognizable voice and manner.

   I will admit I got to the solution before Heller did, but not by much, and less based on evidence than being overly familiar with thriller structure. It’s not a flaw of the book by any means, and it is a neat and simply explained scheme at the heart of the matter that even readers who think the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times might as well by written in Chinese will have no trouble following.

   Heller admits he is channeling Batman as much as Philip Marlowe, but remains humanly tough and never cartoonishly so. Heller has been compared to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, but I found him a much more believably human character.

   Nick Heller proves a refreshingly bright and straightforward protagonist who even gets away with introducing himself with “It was a dark and stormy night.” You have to admire that kind of chutzpah from one of the more believably likable and competent thriller heroes I’ve encountered in some time, who manages to suffer from a complex background and angst without making the reader suffer through them as well.

Editorial Note:   Buried Secrets (Nick Heller #2) will be published in hardcover this coming June.

    ● Reported first by Jiro Kimura on his Gumshoe website, mystery and SF writer Edward Wellen died on January 15, 2011. Noted primarily for his short fiction, Mr. Wellen wrote two crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and one collection of criminous short stories:

EDWARD (Paul) WELLEN 1919-2011.
      Hijack. Beagle, pb, 1971.

      An Hour to Kill. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
      Perps. Five Star, ss collection, hc, 2001.

   Hijack was a science fiction novel with a considerable crime component; the blurb on the front cover says “The Mafia takes to space!” A shorter version was published earlier in Venture SF (May 1970).

   A list of Wellen’s short SF can be found here on ISFDB, while some of his short work in the mystery (and western) field can be found here in The FictionMags Index.

   The earliest story there is “Enough Rope,” 2-Gun Western, August 1953, which is enough to qualify him as a pulp fiction writer, a category whose number is sadly decreasing every month.

    ● The death of author Barbara Whitehead was reported first by UK mystery writer Martin Edwards on his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

   Martin says in part: “Barbara came to crime fiction late after writing historical romances and non-fiction. Her first crime novel, Playing God, had an interesting background of the York mystery plays. It became the opening entry in her “York cycle of mysteries”, which eventually ran to eight titles spanning a decade of publication. Her main character was Detective Superintendent Bob Southwell and she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”

BARBARA (Maude) WHITEHEAD. 1930-2011. Series character Inspector Robert Southwell in all titles:

       Playing God (n.) Quartet 1988; St. Martin’s, 1989.
       The Girl with Red Suspenders (n.) Constable 1990; St. Martin’s, 1990.
       The Dean It Was That Died (n.) Constable 1991; St. Martin’s, 1991.
       Sweet Death, Come Softly (n.) Constable 1992; St. Martin’s, 1993.

       The Killings at Barley Hall (n.) Constable 1995.
       Secrets of the Dead (n.) Constable 1996.
       Death at the Dutch House (n.) Constable 1997.
       Dolls Don’t Choose (n.) Constable 1998.

   The last four books have never been published in the US. For more information about her life and career, her webpage http://www.barbarawhitehead.com/ is still online.

   According to his entry in Wikipedia, before he became a writer, the multi-talented Lou Cameron was a comic book illustrator, a fact that I did not know before putting this page together, with his work for Classics Illustrated being perhaps the most well known.

   Listed below are his crime fiction titles (only) as included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, along with as many covers as I have been able to come up.

   He also wrote many westerns, both in the traditional vein and for several of the “adult” sexy western series. He created the “Longarm” series, for example, as Tabor Evans; wrote most if not all of the Stringer series; and as Ramsey Thorne, the “Renegade” novels.

   In 1976, Cameron won a WWA Spur award in 1976 for his novel The Spirit Horses.

   More? He has written war novels, adventure novels, science fiction, movie novelizations and more, most of which you can find listed on the Wikipedia page (see above).

   When James Reasoner reviewed Cameron’s western novel The Buntline Special on his blog last year about this same time, he filled in some the details of Cameron’s career and spoke highly of his very effective and distinctive writing style.

   Lou Cameron didn’t write for the pulp magazines, but throughout his writing career, he has been a Grand Master of pulp fiction, no doubt about it.

LOU CAMERON. 1924- . Pseudonyms: Julie Cameron & Dagmar.

    Angel’s Flight (n.) Gold Medal 1960

    The Empty Quarter (n.) Gold Medal 1962 [Saudi Arabia]
    The Sky Divers (n.) Gold Medal 1962

    The Block Busters (n.) McKay 1964 [New York City, NY]
    The Dragon’s Spine (n.) Avon 1968 [Viet Nam]
    File on a Missing Redhead (n.) Gold Medal 1968 [Las Vegas, NV]

    The Outsider (n.) Popular Library 1969 [Los Angeles, CA]
    The Amphorae Pirates (n.) Random 1970 [Italy]
    Before It’s Too Late (n.) Gold Medal 1970

    Behind the Scarlet Door (n.) Gold Medal 1971

    The Girl with the Dynamite Bangs (n.) Lancer 1973 [Brazil]
    Barca (n.) Berkley 1974 [New Jersey]

    The Closing Circle (n.) Berkley 1974 [New York City, NY]

    Tancredi (n.) Berkley 1975 [New Jersey]
    Dekker (n.) Berkley 1976

    The Sky Riders (n.) Gold Medal 1976 [Greece]
    Code Seven (n.) Berkley 1977
    The Subway Stalker (n.) Dell 1980
    The Hot Car (n.) Avon 1981 [Los Angeles, CA]

JULIE CAMERON. Pseudonym of Lou Cameron.

    The Darklings (Berkley, 1975, pb)

    Devil in the Pines (Berkley, 1975, pb)

DAGMAR. Pseudonym of Lou Cameron.

    The Spy with the Blue Kazoo (Lancer, 1967, pb) [Regina; Central America]

    The Spy Who Came In from the Copa (Lancer, 1967, pb) [Regina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]

[UPDATE] 03-04-11.   Bill Crider’s nostalgic review of File on a Missing Redhead appears today on his blog, complete with details of what was happening on the same day that he read it the first time, January 27, 1969.

BEVERLEY NICHOLS – Murder by Request. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1960. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1960.

   No Man’s Street, Beverley Nichols’ first novel featuring Horatio Green, retired private detective, I found not too impressive.

   The plot was good, but it seemed to me that Nichols, having an impressive background as a mainstream novelist, was just toying with the mystery form. In that [first] case, Green was merely a bundle of idiosyncrasies.

   With Nichols’ second mystery, The Moonflower (published in the U.S. as The Moonflower Mystery), Green, probably because of the horticultural background, his avocation, comes alive and retains that attribute through the following three novels in the series.

   In this, the last of his investigations after his “retirement” at approximately age sixty, Green is invited by Sir Owen Kent, famous financier, to Harmony Hall, the foremost Nature Cure establishment in England. Kent will be spending the Christmas season there himself, and he has received, in the most astonishing ways, threats on his life.

   The threatener succeeds in his or her threat, Kent being shot in a room where there are sixteen people, but no one sees the murderer.

   A baffling crime, a bit too much even for Green, but when the investigation starts slowing down, fresh clues, reminiscent of those in a mystery novel, pop up. The publishers say that the murderer “is the last person whom even the most hardened expert in whodunits would expect.”

   I would differ. Still, it’s a fascinating case.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   John Beverley Nichols (1898-1983) was a multi-talented man. According to Wikipedia, he was “an author, playwright, journalist, composer, and public speaker,” with substantial credentials provided in each category to prove it.

   From the same source, “Nichols is now best remembered for his gardening books, the first of which, Down the Garden Path, […] has been in print almost continuously since first published in 1932.”

       The Horatio Green series —

1. No Man’s Street (1954)
2. The Moonflower (1955) (aka The Moonflower Murder, US)

3. Death to Slow Music (1956)

4. The Rich Die Hard (1957)

5. Murder by Request (1960)

LESLIE FORD – Siren in the Night. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1943. Paperback reprints include: Bantam #303, 1948; Popular Library K68, 1964.

   Grace Latham, Colonel Primrose, and Sergeant Buck reappear in yet another locale in this wartime story. Grace is spending the spring in San Francisco because her son, a naval air cadet, is stationed there; Primrose and Buck have traveled west because of the colonel’s involvement in the war effort.

   The city is at its charming best, except for placards indicating where the air-raid shelters are and “the sudden rising wail of the alert siren, and the lights of that Golden City fading like a million synchronized fireflies dying in the night.”

   A blackout, in fact, plays a key role in the discovery of the murder of Loring Kimball, popular resident of San Joaquin Terrace, where Grace has taken a house.

   If all the lights in the city hadn’t gone out except for the one in Kimball’s study, no one would have stopped in to investigate, and his body might not have been discovered for some time — thus allowing the killer to escape the scrutinizing eyes of Colonel Primrose.

   But the lights do go out; the body is found by neighbor Nat Donahue (who is immediately suspected of the crime); and when all residents of,the small street are accounted for, it turns out that a number weren’t where they should have been at the time of Kimball’s death.

   As Primrose probes into the lives of these residents, hidden passions and secrets come to the surface. The suspects are varied and well characterized, and the portrait Ford paints of wartime San Francisco is memorable.

   While as mannered as Ford’s other mysteries, there is a dark side to this novel, as exemplified by the blackout and the implied threat of annihilation by the enemy.

   The Primrose/Latham series is best read in order of publication, since its chief charm lies in the complexity of the relationships among the main characters. Other notable titles include The Simple Way of Poison (1937), Old Lover’s Ghost (1940), and The Woman in Black (1947).

         ———
   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.

LESLIE FORD – Ill Met by Moonlight. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1938. Reprint paperbacks include: Dell #6, mapback edition, no date [1943]; Popular Library 60-2440, 1964.

   Leslie Ford (a pseudonym of Zenith Brown, who also wrote as David Frome) has often been accused of being one of the leading practitioners of the “had-I-but-known” school, and it is true that a great many of these leading and tension-spoiling statements appear in her novels.

   However, shortsighted critics have overlooked her carefully delineated exploration of life among people who are not too different from the average reader except in the fact that, through familial associations, political affinity, or geographic accident, they invite more than their fair share of murder and well-bred mayhem.

   This is the second adventure of Colonel John T. Primrose and Sergeant Phineas Buck, one in which the unlikely but highly successful combination of retired officer and retired enlisted man is teamed with a thirty-eight-year-old widow, Grace Latham. Grace is of a distinguished Georgetown family, and her elegant home forms the backdrop for many of the books in this series.

   Ill Met by Moonlight takes place in another setting — April Harbor, Maryland, a summer playground for an inbred group of upper-crust families, where Grace and her relatives have been vacationing for years. Primrose and Buck are guests at Grace’s cottage when she finds a neighbor dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in the garage next door.

   An old romance, a troubled marriage, a new love affair, and relationships with the folks in the neighboring town are all woven together in this engrossing and charming tale of love and murder.

         ———
   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 STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE. Paramount Pictures, 1933. Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Florence Eldridge, Sir Guy Standing, Irving Pichel. Based on the novel Sanctuary, by William Faulkner. Director: Stephen Roberts.

   I don’t know about you, but I like to know as little about a movie before watching it as I can. Most of the time you can’t help but knowing something about a movie – you’ve read a review, somebody’s recommended to you, or it was based on a story or a character you’ve already read or heard about it.

   None of the above this time. It came in a white envelope along with 20 or so others I’d bought from a dealer specializing in classic (old) detective and crime noir films, and that’s all. I didn’t know what year it was made, who was in it, that it was based on a William Faulkner novel, and if I’d have known that it was Sanctuary, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me, since that’s a novel I’ve never read.

   But here’s the shameful truth. William Faulkner and I had a bad experience together back in high school English class. It wasn’t his fault. Silas Marner and Pip and all their adventures had the same problem. If they wanted me to read it, I wasn’t interested. All I wanted to do was to use determinants to solve systems of three or more simultaneous linear equations.

   Miriam Hopkins is the star. She’s the one who plays Temple Drake, the spoiled granddaughter of the town judge, a southern belle whom in high school we’d have called a – well I won’t say the word, but her dates always seem to end with the male half panting and wanting more.

   She has an evil streak in her, she admits to Stephen Benbow (William Gargan) who has been in love with her for a long time and has asked her to marry him, but as many times as he has asked, she has turned him down. By profession, Bendow is a local attorney whom the judge calls upon to defend penniless clients in his jurisdiction.

   I’ll make this shorter, perhaps. Temple Drake, on yet another date gone bad, is kidnapped by a local gang of bootleggers hanging out in a decaying Southern mansion, and in doing do, catches the eye of the Trigger (the vicious and malevolently evil-looking Jack La Rue), head of the gang.

   She witnesses the cold-blooded murder of the young lad guarding her at night, is raped by Trigger (a scene not seen but oh so strongly suggested), and forced into a privileged life of prostitution (again only suggested but everyone in the audience knows exactly what is going on).

   There is more to come, but the purpose of a review is not to tell the whole story, but to give you a sense of the story, if you should so want one (see above), and the fact that Benbow is a public defender is important. The concluding trial scene is as tense and moving as anything I’ve seen in a movie in quite a long while.

   It’s also a movie that should be much better known than it is, and perhaps it will be soon. If I’ve intrigued you enough – if you’ve read this review all the way to here – for now, the only way you can watch this film is from one of those online dealers that sell old movies in white envelopes with only the name of the movie on them.

[UPDATE.]   Later the same day.   Since writing this review, I’ve done some browsing on the Internet, and from what I’ve read, this pre-Code movie did not last long in the theaters when it was first released. It was, rather, one of the straws that brought the Hays Office into being. I am not surprised.

   Its notoriety, however, and the fascination of today’s audience for pre-Code films means that it may be more well-known than I’d thought. There’s still no official DVD release for Temple Drake, but it’s been shown recently at several film festivals that specialize in old and otherwise forgotten films such as this one, and a good print is said to exist. Thank goodness for film fanatics!

[UPDATE #2.] 03-01-11.   Todd Mason has included this as one of this week’s Overlooked Films on his blog. For the others, follow this link.

   Dan Stumpf’s comment about the “nightmarish feel [of] Temple’s night at the farm house” is a perfect description. Once seen, you won’t forget it. It also reminded me that I’d temporarily misplaced one of the images I meant to include. I’ll add it here:

SPY HUNT. Universal International, 1950. Howard Duff, Märta Torén, Philip Friend, Philip Dorn, Robert Douglas, Walter Slezak, Kurt Kreuger. Based on the novel Panthers’ Moon by Victor Canning. Director: George Sherman.

   When a young woman (Märta Torén) posing as a journalist slips some vital information on microfilm into the collar of one of two rare black panthers that Steve Quain (Howard Duff) is taking from Milan to the United States – they are in fact his ticket back home, as he is otherwise flat broke – it’s the beginning of a fine tale of not so much espionage but high adventure in the heart of postwar Europe.

   When the railroad car that Quain and the panthers are in is separated (intentionally) from the rest of the train, it crashes somewhere in the Swiss Alps. When Quain awakes, he is in bed in a ski area hotel, and the panthers are loose.

   On the scene are a small but significant number of suspicious characters: a newspaperman, a big game hunter, and an artist, and the hunt is on. But who’s the one who’s after not the panthers but what’s in the male panther’s collar?

   So hunting the down the spy is where the title comes from, but if you were to ask me, I think that they wasted a perfectly good one in Panthers’ Moon, the book by Victor Canning this movie is based on. The panthers play their part very well [FOOTNOTE], but so does Howard Duff, even though his voice and slightly perplexed speech patterns sound exactly like that fellow on the radio. Sam Spade – that’s the one.

   Equally effective as essentially the only female character in this movie is the dark-haired and very pretty Swedish actress Märta Torén, whose several other American movies I am in the process of tracking down, many of them in the same noir or near noir category that this one’s in — that’s how great an impression she made on me. (Other the other hand there is a long list of female movie stars I say the same thing about. Fickle, I am.)

   Märta Torén married writer-director Leonardo Bercovici in 1952 and the final few films in which she appeared were made in Italy. She died in 1957, only 31 years old.

FOOTNOTE.   The black panthers were played by a pair of mountain lions who were dyed black for the film.