●   A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA.   Vitagraph, 1920. Nellie Spaulding, Edna Murphy, George de Winter, Rod La Roque. Based on a story by O. Henry. Director: Edward Griffith. Both this film and the one following were shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   A charming short film in which Kate, whose mother runs a boarding house, is taken with Mr. Brunelli, a roomer who has the airs of an aristocrat. One day he invites her to dinner at the Restaurant Tonio where everybody seems to know him and confirms Kate’s suspicion that he must be a count.

   To her surprise, he reveals himself to be Tonio, the restaurant owner and chef, a spaghetti “prince” but not a true aristocrat, a species of disreputable roomer with whom the Irish boarding-house owners have had most unpleasant experiences.

   Relieved, Kate allows Tonio to kiss her, delighted that she has found a plebeian suitor that her mother will accept.

   Edward/Edward H./E. H. Griffith had an extensive list of directorial credits for silent films, and was also the director of the first version of Holiday (1930), which a good friend has told me he finds superior to the Cukor remake with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

  ●   THE VIOLIN OF M’SIEUR.   Vitagraph, 1914. Etienne Girardot, Clara Kimball Young, James Young, Napoleon the Dog. Director: James Young.

   When violin teacher Pere (Etienne Girardot) is separated from his beloved daughter Yvonne (Clara Kimball Young) by the FrancoPrussian war, he wanders for years until a chance encounter leads him to his daughter, now grown, married and the mother of a child, and a happy and prosperous future.

   I know you’ll want to know this: the dog saves the day. I’m glad he got a credit.

   A question came up on the Yahoo PulpMags group earlier this week. Why, it was asked, didn’t Thrilling/Popular Library convert their pulp magazines to the smaller digest size in the mid-1950s?

   As a magazine collector I’ve often thought about this topic. I also like Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories and I guess one reason as to why they did not make the change to digest was that they simply did not see that the digest era was upon them.

   The pulp format had been very successful for 50 years and maybe they figured they could continue somehow. But the digest format swept everything aside (excepting Ranch Romances).

   Maybe they figured even the digest format would not survive. They had seen Street & Smith convert all their pulps to digest in 1943 and then finally give up on the digests in 1949 (except for Astounding).

   Same thing with Popular Publications. They changed most of their pulps to a slightly larger digest format but it was a failure also They then switched back to pulp size but within a couple years killed all their SF, detective, western, sport, love pulps.

   Look what we are going through now. Newspapers and magazines are all suffering from declining circulations. The digital, online format may be next since they cannot continue to lose massive amounts of money with the hardcopy, print format.

   My hometown paper, The Trenton Times, has made so many editorial and staff cuts, that the paper is a shadow of its former self. This is happening across the country to many newspapers and magazines.

   The digest era now appears to be just about over. Very few outlets bother to carry the magazines at all. In the the Trenton area, the only place left for me to buy the SF or mystery digests is Barnes & Noble. My Borders superstore bit the dust recently and that chain appears doomed.

   I checked the circulation figures in the January or February issues of the SF digests:

       ANALOG SF — 30,000 average
       ASIMOV’S — 23,000 average
       F&SF — 15,000 average

   The above figures are a fraction of what these magazines used to announce. The downward decline has been going on now for years and in the future people may say how come the SF digests did not see that the digest era was over. Is digital the answer? Asimov’s I believe has already started. Maybe the others are also available on Kindles, etc.

   But I have no interest in e-readers or reading fiction online. I have a houseful of pulps, digests, slicks, literary magazines. Like Startling and Thrilling Wonder I’m in for the duration and like them I’ll be holding out until I die.

   So as collectors and readers, our battle cry has always been “Remember the pulps!” Soon we will add another cry which will be “Remember the digests!” Will the book format be next?

   Not for me, and my final words will be “To hell with the e-readers!”

Previously on Mystery*File:   Part Six — Are Pulp Collectors Crazy?.

ALAN AMOS – Borderline Murder. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1947. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, March 1948.

   Not too long ago I was surprised to still able to pick this up for 53 cents at the Salvation Army store on Myrtle Avenue near Jamaica. The dust-jacket symbol is the Dagger — for Chase and Adventure.

   Larry Winter, embittered by a two-year stretch for a robbery he didn’t do, gets off the Bus in Laredo, Texas on Christmas Eve.

   A private eye buddy of his has been keeping track of the man whose perjured testimony sent Winter up, and it seems the suspect, one Brantz Hallem, aka Burke Hall, is in Mexico about to smuggle some stolen jewelry stateside.

   Almost immediately, things get complicated. Winter is forced to share a room with a talkative fellow-passenger from the Bus, and the two of them get glad-handed by one Larry Higby & Wife, who are organizing a party of Motel Guests to spend Christmas across the Border.

   Then Winter hears from his PI buddy that Higby has been traveling in Mexico with Hallem/Hall and will probably be doing the smuggling.

   Oh yes; also on the trip are two elderly spinsters, an over-the-hill Opera Star, a female ventriloquist with a life-sized male dummy, an elderly doctor waiting on a burro (I’m not making this up.) and a fellow who claims to be writing a history of Texas.

   Sometime during the course of the evening, Winter gets knocked unconscious and the elderly Doctor turns unexpectedly dead. With his prison record, that makes Winter a pretty good suspect, and he realizes he now must find the real killer or face dire consequences.

   Got kind of long-winded in my rundown. This one turned out to be a pretty good read, not great by any means, nor even very memorable, but a solid piece of entertainment.

   My one quibble was with the character of Winter’s PI buddy, who, we are supposed to believe, has been tracking Hallem/Hall for two years and living on God-knows-what, then just sends Winter a letter and bows out, with no desire to be in on the kill or anything. Seems more convenient than realistic, if you ask me.

Bibliographic Bits:   Alan Amos was the pseudonym of Kathleen Moore Knight, ca. 1890-1984, a prolific mystery and detective story writer from the mid-1930s on through the 1950s, mostly for the Doubleday Crime Club — and all but forgotten today.

   She wrote four thrillers as Amos, and under her own name, more than 30 more novels, many of them cases solved by Elisha Macomber, a Penberthy Island selectman up around Martha’s Vineyard way.

   One of these books, The Trouble at Turkey Hill, was reviewed earlier by me (Steve) here on this blog. Included is a list of all sixteen of Elisha’s appearances.

DENNIS LEHANE – Moonlight Mile. William Morrow, hardcover, November 2010.

    It is twelve years after the end of Gone Baby Gone (1998).   [PLOT WARNING:  There is no way this current book can be reviewed without revealing the ending of the previous one. This review is no different.]

    After a year of separation, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are not only got back together again, they married and now have a young daughter. But the economy has been brutal to Patrick’s PI business — he has no work and worries how he will pay the medical insurance bill that is due at the end of the month.

    Into this setting comes the case that broke them apart — Amanda McCready is now sixteen, and has run away from home. Before, when Patrick returned her to her addicted mother when she was four, he did the right thing legally — but did not help her.

    Instead he took her away from the only loving parents she had ever known (even if they had kidnapped her), and got them imprisoned for trying to do the right thing and protect Amanda from her drugged mother. Now Amanda is on the run again — and her druggie mother and her drug dealer father in law want to find her — but not, Patrick suspects, for the reasons they are saying.

    Is this a chance for a Patrick to make amends for making the wrong decision even if it was the right one legally — and help and protect Amanda from her parents, and others who are pursuing her?

    A weak entry in the series; it reads more like an attempt by Lehane to end it right this time. A fast enough read but without the biting ending of the previous novel.

  Rating:   B minus.

CRAIG JOHNSON – Junkyard Dogs. Viking, hardcover, May 2010. Trade paperback: Penguin, May 2011.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character:   Walt Longmire; 6th in series. Setting:   Wyoming.

First Sentence:   I tried to get a straight answer from his grandson and granddaughter-in-law as to why their grandfather had been tied with a hundred feet of nylon rope to the rear bumper of the 1968 Oldsmobile
Tornado.

    It begins with a severed thumb found within a Styrofoam cooler at the junkyard. Sheriff Walt Longmire decides this might be a way to re-spark the drive in his bullet-shy deputy, Santiago Saizarbitoria. Little did Walt
know that thumb would lead to murders, drugs, kidnapping and family secrets.

    Craig Johnson is a story teller in the classic and best sense of the word. You are captivated with the first sentence and taken along with Walt through the story to the end.

    The characters are alive, real and balance each other beautifully. Walt is the personification of the good man who is intelligent, believes in his job, compassionate in his handling of people and dedicated to justice even when it takes a little bending of the law.

   Deputy Victoria Moretti is the street-wise, profane, East Coast transplant who provides edge to Walt’s calm. Of greater significance is that all the characters, whether recurring or episodic, are fully realized. Johnson’s voice is one to which you cannot help but listen. His dialogue, whether it be Walt’s internal dialogue or that between characters, is audible.

   His humor often causes me to laugh aloud…”It was a two-gallon Styrofoam cooler — one of the cheap ones that you can pick up at any service station in the summer season and then listen to it squeak to the point of homicidal dementia.”

   Sense of place and description can add so much to a story. Here we are in the middle of an exceptionally cold winter in Wyoming and no matter when and where you may be reading the book, you feel that cold.

    This particular book doesn’t convey as much of the openness of the area as some of the previous books, but it does make you aware of how small is the town and the relationships and history of the residents.

    The story builds beautifully, starting out fairly light and the tension building as the story progresses. I was never able to anticipate where the story was going yet the twists never seemed contrived. The element of the metaphysical is there but not overdone.

    As much as I enjoyed the book, and I did, I don’t feel the story is up to the same standard as the previous books. It lacked growth, depth, tension, and focus, both of story and of characters. I do recommend Junkyard Dogs, but really recommend reading the series from the beginning.

Rating:   Good Plus.

The Walt Longmire mystery series —

1. The Cold Dish (2004)

2. Death Without Company (2006)
3. Kindness Goes Unpunished (2007)
4. Another Man’s Moccasins (2008)

5. The Dark Horse (2009)
6. Junkyard Dogs (2010)
7. Hell Is Empty (2011)

LIZA CODY – Bucket Nut. Eva Wylie #1. Doubleday, hardcover, 1993. UK edition: Chatto & Windus, hardcover, 1992. Mysterious Press, US, paperback, 1995.

   I haven’t been a big fan of Cody’s Anna Lee stories. Haven’t really hated them, you understand, just haven’t like them well enough to seek them out. For better or worse, Eva Wylie is a different breed of cat entirely.

   Eva is a big, not very pretty, not exceptionally bright young lady who is a security guard for a wrecking yard, and a lady wrestler (the villain), and an errand runner for a shady Chinaman. She has an attitude, a drunken whore for a mother, and a sister from whom she was separated in childhood and with whom she yearns to be reunited.

   She’s a bit of a thief, too. She’s a brick or two shy of a load, and it’s probably because she threw them at someone. Her best friends, maybe her only, are two guard dogs, but she wants none of your effing pity, thank you. Innocently enough (according to her own lights, anyway), she gets herself involved in a gang war, and ends up with what seems to be half of London looking for her.

   This is different. If you’re tired of the same old thing in crime fiction, this isn’t it. It’s a portrait of a young woman who hasn’t been given a whole lot of a breaks by either nature or nurture, and is coping the best way she can. Cody tells her story in a matter-of-fact first person, and the language is the lower-class language of London.

   It’s a rough story, told in rough words, about rough people. The picture painted of the world of professional wrestling is fascinating, if not particularly edifying.

   Cody seems to strives for neither humor nor tragedy, though you may find elements of either or both, depending on your own psyche. While first-person a narration has its limitations, it is perfect for the kind of portrait that she paints here.

   This is as good a job of making an unlovely, unlikable character seem human enough to be worthy of sympathy as I’ve seen lately, and it’s excellent storytelling. Eva sticks in your mind.

Note:   Bucket Nut was awarded the British CWA Silver Dagger in 1993. Cody’s other series character, PI Anna Lee, makes a cameo appearance in this first outing for Eva.

       The Eva Wylie series —

1. Bucket Nut (1992)
2. Monkey Wrench (1994)

3. Musclebound (1997)

THIS GIRL FOR HIRE. Made-for-TV movie, CBS, 01 November 1983. Bess Armstrong, Celeste Holm, Cliff De Young, Hermione Baddeley, Scott Brady, Howard Duff, Jose Ferrer, Beverly Garland, Roddy McDowall, Percy Rodrigues, Ray Walston, Elisha Cook Jr. Directed by Jerry Jameson

   This 1983 made for television movie aired on CBS as a pilot for a proposed series about B.T. Brady (Bess Armstrong), a somewhat less than perfect female private eye with a penchant for trench coats and fedoras, an exotic mother, Zandra (Celeste Holm) who is a former B movie actress living in the past (the 40’s to be exact), and a policeman boy friend (Cliff de Young).

   The plot involves a group of mystery writers, one of which — an arrogant and obnoxious fellow (Jose Ferrer) has been murdered. The writers are Hermione Baddeley (Agatha Christie more or less), Scott Brady (Spillane down to the pork pie), Howard Duff, Beverly Garland (who writes under a man’s name), and Roddy McDowall (who writes a Saint like character but is not Charteris).

   In solving the case B.T. is aided by her mother’s old Hollywood contacts and haunted by a mysterious fellow (Ray Walston) of suspicious motives.

   If any of this sounds a little familiar it may be because save for the actual plot, the characters, setting, and the name are all taken from This Girl For Hire by G. G. Fickling — the first Honey West novel, by a husband-and-wife writing team.

   This is not an adaptation of that book — at least not officially. In fact among the army of writers on the teleplay, the characters are attributed to Clifford and Jean Hoelscher. Neither has any other writing credits; other than this film Clifford’s name appears only as an editor and sound designer on a handful of movie and TV productions.

   Is it just a coincidence that this This Girl For Hire was apparently created by a husband and wife team too (Jean could be a man, but I’m guessing not) who have no other screen writing credits whatsoever?

   I don’t know about you, but something stinks.

   It’s not the movie, thankfully It’s nothing special, but a pleasant way to kill two hours, with Armstrong a feisty likable unlikely private eye, Celeste Holm underutilized, and Brady pretty much doing a dead on imitation of Mickey Spillane. Nice to see the old faces, and the plot isn’t terrible. Nothing great, but not terrible.

   Did I mention B. T. Brady’s dad was a murdered detective — just like Honey West’s father?

   If I recall this right I think she even lives in Bellflower, the Los Angles suburb Honey is from.

   A much bigger mystery than any solved in this mediocre film is how they used the title of the first Honey West book with a plot so similar to it. You can’t copyright titles, but neither can you write a Civil War novel called Gone With the Wind and get away with it.

   Who were the Hoelschers? Why is this their only credit? And how come no one noticed or mentioned this was so close to the original Honey West — not the later Honey, or the Anne Francis Honey, but the one in the first couple of books — who, like B.T. Brady is a bit of a klutz and a bit out of her element as a private eye.

   To paraphrase Red Skelton about a joke that didn’t get a laugh — I just state the problems, I don’t explain them.

   Anyone have a solution?

   Is this a lost Honey West movie in all but name? A case of out and out plagiarism that they got away with? A huge unlikely coincidence? Corporate intrigue? Cosmic Karma?

   Poltergeist?

   I place the mystery in your hands, oh mighty bloggers on this site.

   What the heck is going on here?

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)

   It is hardly surprising, perhaps, that one of the main reasons why so little has been written about the TV crime and mystery genre is that while everyone knows what constitutes as crime drama, no one has been able to define quite what it is. As has often noted before, the general consensus is that the crime and mystery, at its core, is a puzzle.

   Essentially, when not a Whodunit (identifying the criminal) it is a Whydunit (the reasons for the crime). While the puzzle factor does indeed lie at the heart of the genre, the shape and structure of the puzzle may adopt a myriad of forms.

   Certain basic characteristics can be deduced from the presentations themselves. It is more often than not contemporary. It has an urban setting (the city). It involves a crime of some nature (murder and robbery being among the foremost).

   But these, of course, are not the mandatory hallmarks of a TV Crime & Mystery. The Western, for instance, has lawmen and outlaws, gunfighters and hold-ups, but they are hardly crime and mystery. Although in keeping with the TV vein here, the 1870s investigations of gunfighter/private eye for-hire Shotgun Slade (syndicated, 1959-61) and the police procedurals of Denver police detective Whispering Smith (NBC, 1961) may well be the cause for some constructive argument. And not forgetting Richard Boone’s early forensics in NBC’s Hec Ramsey (1972-74).

   It has been expressed before that realism rather than stylization, a sense of authenticity and not outright adventure are the keynotes. The settings, the look, the narrative, and the procedure are all intended to be realistic. Or at least plausible. Content may often appear to be ritualized and behaviour somewhat stereotyped, but the characters are (in the majority of cases, at least) individuals rather than archetypes.

   In this view, the TV genre is at times variably flexible and tends to be audience-led. It often bows to contemporary flavours and fashions. Its richest moments, however, offer access to a world not normally afforded the ordinary citizen, the slightly sinister world of the dogged detective or the cynical street cop, the nocturnal prowling of the private eye or the ice-cold operation of a secret agent.

   The spirit of the genre is that law and order must be maintained at all costs, or, from the flip side of the coin, outwitted, outsmarted, and even defeated.

   It can take the form of the pursuit: quiet and observational (as in Maigret [BBC, 1960-63], Agatha Christie’s Poirot [ITV, 1989-93; 1995]) or physically fast and furious (The Sweeney [ITV, 1975-76; 1978], Starsky and Hutch [ABC, 1975-79]), or even the long-form (The Fugitive [ABC, 1963-67]). It can be a psychological chess game (Cracker [ITV, 1993-96]), a medical examination (Quincy ME [NBC, 1976-83]), or a forensic probe (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [CBS, 2000-present]).

   The setting can range from Miss Marple’s cozy English village of St. Mary Mead to the dangerous night-time streets of The Wire’s Baltimore. Then there’s the milieu, the occupational routine of the sleuth. Or the social and/or professional world they inhabit. The hospital/medical milieu (Diagnosis Murder [CBS, 1993-2001]). The clerical milieu (Father Dowling Mysteries [NBC, 1989; ABC, 1990-91]). Wealthy eccentrics (Burke’s Law [ABC, 1963-65]). Horse racing (The Racing Game [ITV, 1979-80]). Et cetera, et cetera…

   Because it contains so many elements and facets related to crime, engaging the viewer from a variety of directions, the TV genre can not be defined precisely.

   The basic story-telling characteristics are an extrapolation of the forms and formats of, in one-part, the literary genre, one-part the radio drama and one-part the cinema. The TV form (not unlike the literary form) can embrace almost any genre, and can pursue any narrative strand. It can be set in the past or in the present. It can select as its point of narrative focus the law enforcer, the criminal, or the innocent bystander. It can be a TV play, a TV film, a miniseries/limited serial, an episodic series, or a series of self-contained episodes or thematic episodes (the anthology).

   The detective or sleuth character is usually the leading figure in the narrative. Leading the path that the viewer is obliged to take, they follow the pattern of the investigation. It is the sleuth’s particular application to the details of the crime that provides the dramatic interest or action (whether the gung-ho tactics of a Lt. Frank Ballinger of M Squad [NBC, 1957-60] or the careful scrutiny of a Hercule Poirot).

   The sleuth may have an assistant (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson) or a partner (Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis). Or may consist of the a team (Ironside [NBC, 1967-75]) or a specialised squad (the cold cases unit of Waking the Dead [BBC, 2000-present]).

   The subgenre of the private detective provides, usually, the loner (Peter Gunn [NBC, 1958-60; ABC, 1960-61], Shoestring [BBC, 1979-80]). Among the subdivisions are the amateur sleuths (Hettie Bainbridge Investigates [BBC, 1996-98], Kate Loves a Mystery [NBC, 1979]) and the sleuth couple (The Thin Man [NBC, 1957-59], Hart to Hart [ABC, 1979-84], Wilde Alliance [ITV, 1978]).

   They can belong to established organisations (The FBI, Scotland Yard, MI5, the CIA, the French Sûreté, Interpol) or carry out their assignments on behalf of made-up agencies (U.N.C.L.E., C.O.N.T.R.O.L., Nemesis, CI5).

   The most popular, and the most associated with the TV genre, has been the police drama. Mainly the Police Detective (Columbo [NBC, 1971-77; ABC, 1989-93], Inspector Morse [ITV, 1987-2000]) but also the Police Officer (Dixon of Dock Green [BBC, 1955-76], Joe Forrester [NBC, 1975-76]).

   Among the subdivisions here are the undercover cop (Wiseguy [CBS, 1987-90], Murphy’s Law [BBC, 2001-2007]), the internal affairs/investigations cop (Between the Lines [BBC, 1992-94]), as well as the mobile cop (Z Cars [BBC, 1962-78], Highway Patrol [syndicated, 1955-59], CHiPs [NBC, 1977-83]).

   The Adventurer. Thrill seeker; often on the lookout for dangerous and exciting experiences. Perhaps a round-up of the expected suspects along these lines would include Roger Moore’s The Saint (ITV, 1962-69), Robert Beatty’s Bulldog Drummond (in “The Ludlow Affair” pilot [ITV, 1958] for Douglas Fairbanks Jr Presents), The Agatha Christie Hour (with “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” [ITV, 1982]), Raffles (ITV, 1977), Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar (BBC/A&E, 1986), Modesty Blaise (pilot; ABC, 1982), The Lone Wolf (syndicated, 1954), Jason King (ITV, 1971-72), The Baron (ITV, 1966-67) and, since this type of programming seems to have the greatest appeal to casual TV viewers, the countless others that we could all name.

   The Private Detective (or Private Eye) has had a long and popular run in the TV genre. In the traditional American sense (77 Sunset Strip [ABC, 1958-64] as team, The Rockford Files [NBC, 1974-80] as loner) as well as the more British tradition of the ‘consulting detective’ (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [ITV, 1984-85], Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime [ITV, 1983-84]), along with the occasional UK leanings toward the American style (Public Eye [ITV, 1965-75]).

   The Hard-Boiled sleuth (Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer [syndicated, 1957-59]) comes into this category. Also the amateur sleuthings of The Snoop Sisters (NBC, 1973-74) and The Beiderbecke Affair (ITV, 1985), either by design (a sense of over-curiosity) or by accident.

   Perhaps as a footnote to the private detective division is the insurance investigator (John Ireland in The Cheaters [ITV, 1962-63]) or investigator for the diamond industry (Broderick Crawford in King of Diamonds [syndicated, 1961]).

   The Lawyer sleuth and the Legal Procedural offer stories combining both private investigation and courtroom drama (Perry Mason [CBS, 1957-66], Sam Benedict [NBC, 1962-63]), and in more recent times the format has been used for corporate as well as constitutional enquiry (L.A. Law [NBC, 1986-94], Judge John Deed [BBC, 2001-2007]).

   Spies, government agents and espionage have been in the literary genre almost as long as the crime and mystery genre itself. However, for the most part, their activities on both the printed page and the small screen have been popular for as long as there has been established political enemies to fight – which means, the genre was popular for most of the last century and remains (with the threat of terrorism), unfortunately, popular today.

   The television espionage genre has presented the spy (the Anglo-U.S. side, of course) as either a lone crusader (during the communist witch-hunt early 1950s; I Led Three Lives [syndicated, 1953-56]) or as part of a secret, highly organised corporation, an element that reached its peak of popularity (quite often as parody) during the 1960s (The Avengers [ITV, 1961-69], The Man from U.N.C.L.E. [NBC, 1964-68]).

   Later, Callan (ITV, 1967; 1969-72) returned the genre to a more serious track, culminating in John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in 1979. The highly popular Spooks (BBC, 2002-present; in U.S. as MI-5), for instance, features a youthful team of operatives involved in anti-terrorist activities. And so it goes…

   The Period Sleuth has been popular on UK television since the early 1970s. A winning combination of costume drama and detective fiction, the works of such authors as Christie, Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, and others, have produced the sagas of Lord Peter Wimsey (BBC, 1972-75), Father Brown (ITV, 1974), Campion (BBC, 1989), the ITV Sherlock Homes series (with Jeremy Brett; 1984 to 1994), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (ITV, 1989-93; 1995) and The Mrs Bradley Mysteries (BBC, 1998-99). The fascinating Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries (Citytv, 2008-present) continues to fascinate.

   Occasionally, there are observations on contemporary life from the distant viewpoint of ancient Rome and Medieval England (the Falco and Brother Cadfael stories, respectively). The most popular period, it seems, is the fairly recent past, roughly the late Victorian era of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper to the ‘nostalgic’ decade of the 1960s with Crime Story (NBC, 1986-88) and Heartbeat (ITV, 1992-2010).

   A small note on the future and/or fantasy as ‘setting’: Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel (BBC, 1964); The Outer Limits (ABC) episodes “The Invisibles” and “Controlled Experiment” (both from 1964); The X Files (Fox, 1993-2002); Star Cops (BBC, 1987).

   The Scientific Sleuth has surfaced intermittently over the decades (The Hidden Truth [ITV, 1964], The Expert [BBC, 1968-69; 1971; 1976]) until 2000 when CSI blazed a trail that brought the work of forensics experts to the fore.

   Weapons and ballistics experts have featured in past stories, and currently Dexter (Showtime, 2006-present) has amassed an unexpectedly popular following by portraying the work of a blood splatter specialist (alongside his alter ego as a serial killer). The criminal psychologist has also gained a following over the years, especially with the success of Cracker in 1993 (Profiler [NBC, 1996-2000], Wire in the Blood [ITV, 2002-2008]).

   Needless to say, there is more to the TV Crime & Mystery than just the above basic descriptions. In time, I intend to discuss aspects of the TV Gaslight Era drama, the Underworld, the Psychological Thriller, and other related TV forms.

   In Part Two of PRIME TIME SUSPECTS, I will trace early examples of the genre (from 1930s/1940s TV works by Christie, Edgar Wallace, G.K. Chesterton, Patrick Hamilton and Edgar Allan Poe, among others), leading up to the episodic series of the late 1940s (such as The Plainclothesman, 1949-54).

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here.

LEE THAYER – The Scrimshaw Millions. Sears & Co., hardcover, 1932. Hardcover reprint: The Macaulay Company, no date.

   There are five killings in the tale, yet The Scrimshaw Millions is not remotely exciting. What should have been a gripping family extermination murder story on the order of S. S. Van Dine’s grandly baroque The Greene Murder Case (1928), instead is a snoozer the reader has to drive himself to finish.

   But finish it I did, dear readers! It takes a lot to stop this fellah from plowing through to the end of a Golden Age whodunit, even a fourth- or fifth-tier one. Heck, I’ve read a dozen mysteries by Carolyn Wells!

   In The Scrimshaw Millions someone is fatally poisoning the members of the Scrimshaw family one by one. A fortune is at stake — who will survive to inherit? And how long will it take for you to cease caring one iota?

   To be fair, The Scrimshaw Millions struck me as superior to the books described earlier on this blog by Francis M. Nevins. The prose is serviceable, lacking those purple passages quoted by Nevins (at least until the cosmic retribution denouement Nevins has noted as a common feature of her books).

   The characters, while sticks, are not irritating (except when meant to be — though perhaps we could have done without the Italian houseservant/blackmailer, regrettably named Guido). Generally speaking, you can believe this tale is taking place in the 1930s rather than a half-century earlier, unlike Carolyn Wells’ mysteries from the same decade.

   Moreover, the clueing is respectable. And the murder means used in the five killings is…. Well, while it’s not original to Thayer (and John Rhode used it in a detective novel three years later, though only for a murder attempt late in the book), it’s kind of cute, in Golden Age Baroque fashion.

   However, fatal weaknesses in The Scrimshaw Millions are its slack narrative, its sometimes careless writing and its lack of credible police procedure and scientific detail.

   I have read the claim that the hugely prolific thriller writer Edgar Wallace, who boasted of being able to compose novels over weekends, in the course of one tale managed to change the name of his heroine (i.e., she starts off as Janet, say, and becomes Betty). Yet I had never come across such a phenomenon myself in an Edgar Wallace shocker, or, indeed, in a mystery tale by any other author — until I read Lee Thayer.

   In The Scrimshaw Millions the secretary of that late, unlamented miser, Simon Scrimshaw, is introduced on page 51 as “Evangeline Osgood.” Yet five pages later her surname has changed to “Ogden.”

   And there’s more! Although we are told for most of the tale that Simon’s two spinster sisters — thought at first to have died from heart failure–were both poisoned by “aconite” (I think “aconotine” was meant), late in the book the poison abruptly becomes arsenic.

   All in all, I think it’s fair to say Lee Thayer was playing fast and loose with poisons, as well as with police procedure, in The Scrimshaw Millions. For no credible reason whatsover, three different poisons are used to slay in the tale, all by the same individual murderer: the alchemical aconite/aconotine/arsenic concoction, nicotine and cyanide (the last is later called hydrocyanic acid).

   One might have thought this might have made the police suspicious of the character we are told works in a chemical factory, but, nope! It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone even to cock an eyebrow.

   You might also think the murderer would have had to have been mad to adopt such an approach to attaining an inheritance. Well, hold on to your hats, it looks like he was:

   Nearly forty years ago, Julian Symons labeled certain formerly quite popular and highly regarded detective novelists like John Rhode (a peudonym of Cecil John Charles Street) as “humdrums.” Other, more recent, mystery genre survey authors like P.D. James have followed suit, adopting Symons’ disparaging tone toward these writers.

   Yet, compared to Lee Thayer, I say please, Lord, give me more “humdrums” like John Rhode. The use Rhode makes of science in his tales often is quite fascinating, ingenious, adroit and credible. In The Scrimshaw Millions none of those adjectives can be applied to Thayer’s (mis)use of science.

   Traditionalist American mystery writers of the Golden Age of detection like Lee Thayer and Carolyn Wells often aped, as much they could, the form and milieu of detective novels of superior British counterparts.

   Thayer, for example, clearly seems to have deliberately copied Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter/Bunter master-servant relationship with her own series detective, red-haired Peter Clancy, and his impeccable English manservant, Wiggar (the latter character was introduced by Thayer in 1929, ten years after she had debuted Clancy and six years after Sayers gave the world Lord Peter and Bunter). But Thayer and Wells are but pale shadows of far more substantial authors (and to be sure, there were many first-rate American traditionalists as well).

   Still, the patented Lee Thayer cosmic retribution denouement so aptly described by Mike Nevins is impressive in its own loopy way. In The Scrimshaw Millions the entire house of the murdered miser falls in on the investigators and suspects just after the killer, pressed by the intrepid detective Peter Clancy, makes his mad confession:

   Top that if you can, Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot! Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted the roof to collapse on one of those drawing room lectures David Suchet gives in every darn one of his TV productions.

   Providentially, one might say, only the mad murderer is killed when the house collapses in The Scrimshaw Millions. The nice boy lives to marry the nice girl, the policemen survive to continue getting murder cases all wrong, and Wiggar escapes the wreckage to continue happily serving his mildly concussed master Peter Clancy in many another perhaps-something-less-than-entirely-enthralling Lee Thayer mystery.

   At the name of Lee Thayer, most mystery fans draw a blank, but in other quarters it’s still well remembered. Emma Redington Lee was born in Troy, Pa. on April 5, 1874, studied at New York City’s Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, and got a job as an interior decorator (which in those days meant a painter of murals for the homes of the wealthy) at New York’s Associated Artists in 1890.

   Some of her work was displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 when she was still in her teens. Two years later she and Brooklyn architect Henry W. Thayer co-founded Decorative Designers, a firm which in the days before dust jackets produced binding designs, interior illustrations and the like for various New York book publishers. [An example of her work can be found at the end of this post.]

   Lee and Thayer were married in 1909. The female partner is credited with having invented a method of using a split ink roller for printing color gradations on book bindings. Decorative Designs was first based in New York but migrated to Chatham, N.J. in 1921 and was dissolved, along with the partners’ marriage, eleven years later. Henry Thayer’s ex-wife called herself Lee Thayer for the rest of her life, probably because it was the byline on her detective novels.

   Her first whodunit, The Mystery of the Thirteenth Floor, was published in 1919, when she was 45, and she continued turning out one or two books a year for well over four decades, a total of 61 titles.

   All but one of them featured debonair red-thatched private sleuth Peter Clancy, who in Dead Man’s Shoes (1929) was joined by the intolerable imperturbable Wiggar, a Jeeves clone with an endless supply of scintillating bons mots like “Oh, Mr. Peter, sir!”.

   The union between master and valet lasted much longer than many marriages including Thayer’s own. She always thought of writing as a sort of sideline and kept her hand in as an artist by designing the dust jackets for all but the last three of her novels, several examples of which can be seen illustrating this column.

   That she never became a household name is demonstrated by her only TV appearance. What’s My Line? was a popular CBS game show whose regular panelists (Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen and Bennett Cerf) were challenged to guess the occupations of various guests.

   At the time of her appearance, May 11, 1958, she was 84 years old. Subsequently the program used her photograph in promotional ads: “This sweet little elderly lady writes blood-curdling murder mysteries!” Her last novel, Dusty Death, came out in 1966 when she was 92.

   I know nothing about book design, but Thayer still seems to be highly regarded in that field. More than two dozen boxes of her Decorative Designs work are archived at UCLA, along with interviews taped very late in her life in which she reminisced about the firm’s work.

   As a mystery writer she’s almost completely forgotten, and perhaps that’s the way it should be, because by ordinary standards there’s very little to recommend her. Feeble plots, clumsy writing, laughable characterizations, elephantine pace, zero fairness to the reader: you name the fault and Thayer’s books have it in spades.

   Maybe it’s for this reason that I find in her what novelist and playwright Ira Levin told me he found in John Rhode: the perfect writer to take to bed. (Get that filthy thought out of your minds this instant!) But there are certain recurring elements in her novels that come close to qualifying her as an auteur.

   One of these is the apocalyptic denouement. Whenever Peter Clancy has solved a murder to his own satisfaction but has no evidence that will stand up in court, God himself steps into the breach, striking the killer down from on high, while Thayer’s rhetoric swirls and squalls around and kicks up a furious storm.

   In Accessory After the Fact (1943) it’s the founder of a quack religious cult who gets the treatment. The same furious deity strikes down totally secular villains in Out, Brief Candle! (1948) and Still No Answer (1958) and in who knows (I almost wrote God knows) how many Thayer novels I’ve never read.

   Another Thayer hallmark is the off-the-wall crime method. Ransom Racket (1938) climaxes with Clancy’s reconstruction of a child-kidnapping: the gangsters drove a steam shovel up to the house, aligned the scoop with the baby’s upstairs bedroom window, stuffed the kid in the scoop and drove off undetected. (This is the book where Thayer writes “It was as dark as the inside of a cow” with a perfectly straight face.)

   In Accident, Manslaughter or Murder? (1945) the victim is skating across a frozen lake on a moonless night, followed by the murderer in an iceboat which apparently makes no noise. Murderer maneuvers boat behind victim, swats him across the butt with an oar and propels him into a thin patch where the poor schmuck breaks through and drowns.

   The novel I chose to concentrate on in my Thayer entry for 1001 Midnights was Out, Brief Candle!, which like Christie’s Death in the Air (1935) is about a murder on an airliner in flight.

   It’s twice as long as it need have been, but the solution is passably clever, and I considered this the best Thayer I had read up to the time I wrote the entry. Later I discovered a copy of Evil Root (1949), which brings Clancy to a luxurious retirement home with stiff and unrefundable entrance fees and a suspiciously high death rate among recent residents. This was mystery writer/critic Jon L. Breen’s favorite Thayer, and after I’d read it I found I had to agree with him.

   The Second Bullet (1934) has always had a special cachet for me because it’s set in the mountains of northern New Jersey, the state where I grew up. Thayer sets the scene as only she can: “[T]he strong autumn sun warmed the hollows with mists of purple and gold. The color of the woods sang like a great organ. The sky was that thrilling cobalt that seems as if it must be fragrant. Great clouds piled into the zenith. The air was warm and full-flavored like … claret properly unchilled.”

   An auto mishap brings Clancy and Wiggar to the remote mansion of a famous “psychic-analyst” where they discover that he seems to have shot himself to death shortly before their arrival. Concluding that the local cops are idiots who know nothing about detective work and speak in Texas cracker accents to boot (“Meet Captain Tom Joyce, inspector for this here county”), Clancy decides to conceal crucial evidence, invite himself and Wiggar as house guests and stay on to investigate what he has quickly concluded is murder.

   In due course he exposes yet another off-the-wall crime method. The murderer and an accomplice drove up to the victim’s isolated house in a utility truck with a long ladder. When the ladder was aligned with the victim’s second-story window, the killer climbed it and, like a demented Paladin, challenged the guy inside to a gun duel!

   After twenty years as a northern Californian and resident of Berkeley, Thayer moved to the southern tip of the state and was living with relatives in Coronado in the fall of 1970 when she was interviewed by Jon Breen. At 96, Jon reported, she was still in relatively decent health and able to read with the aid of a combination lamp and magnifying glass.

   She was extremely modest about her many mystery novels, saying only that “some are worse than others.” A year or so later there was an exhibition of some of her artwork at the UCLA library. She died on November 18, 1973, just a few months short of her 100th birthday.

        The First Violin, by Jessie Fothergill, 1896. Cover design attributed to Lee Thayer.