WENDY HORNSBY – The Paramour’s Daughter. Perseverance Press, trade paperback, 2010.

Genre:   Unlicensed investigator/Journalist. Leading character:   Maggie MacGowen; 7th in series. Setting:   Los Angeles/France.

First Sentence:   “My dear girl!”

    When documentary filmmaker Maggie MacGowen is approached by a woman who claims to be her mother, it is disturbing enough. When that woman is then killed in a deliberate hit-and-run and Maggie learns the woman’s claim is fact, it changes everything. Maggie travels to meet her French family and soon becomes immersed in their lives, problems and threats.

    Wendy Hornsby’s books have always been character driven with an element of suspense, and that is still true. Imagine finding out your past isn’t what you thought. Imagine being introduced to a completely new family about which you’d never known.

    Hornsby does a wonderful job conveying Maggie’s thoughts and feelings at suddenly being put in this situation. The characters become real, as does the occasional awkwardness of Maggie’s situation. But we see Maggie progress and begin to recover from her recent tragedy, including a possible new beginning for her.

    The descriptions are wonderfully visual, both when she is in Paris and in the countryside, and the food, such as real croissant and strawberry jam, is delectable. As always, I love learning something new and here I learned about cheese and about Calvados (French apple brandy); both good things.

    The suspense is there, particularly once we learn the initial accident wasn’t an accident, but there is a wonderful subtlety to it and balance within the story. While I may not feel this is the best of Hornsby’s book, it was still a very good, solid read. She retains her place on my “must buy” list.

Rating:   Very Good.

        The Kate Teague & Lt. Roger Tejada series —

1. No Harm (1987)     (*)
2. Half a Mind (1990)

        The Maggie MacGowen series —

1. Telling Lies (1992)

2. Midnight Baby (1993)
3. Bad Intent (1994)
4. 77th Street Requiem (1995)

5. A Hard Light (1997)
6. In the Guise of Mercy (2009)
7. The Paramour’s Daughter (2010)

(*) According to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, Maggie MacGowen makes at least a cameo appearance in No Harm.

[UPDATE] 01-23-10.   For a complete bibliography for Wendy Hornsby, add to the list of books above the following collection of short stories. The title story won an Edgar for Best Short Story in 1992. [Thanks to Jeff Meyerson who reminded me of this book in Comment #1. Also note the discussion that follows in #2 and #3.]

Nine Sons and Other Mysteries. Crippen & Landru, 2001.

[UPDATE #2] 01-24-11.   I’ve passed the word along to Al Hubin that Maggie MacGowen does not appear in No Harm. See the comments!

NEAL BARRETT, JR. – The Hereafter Gang. Mark V. Zeisling, hardcover, 1991. Mojo Press, softcover, 1999.

   What this is, part of it anyway, is your quintessential nostalgic Texas road novel, sort of like something Dan Jenkins might write if he’d been holed up with a bottle and Thomas Wolfe for a week or two.

   It’s not for your genteel audience, you understand; hell, it may not even be for anybody who can spell genteel. Byt Joe Bob Briggs, now, he’d like it a whole lot. There’s a good bit of drinkin’ and fornicatin’, a fair amount of of drivin’, and more puredee Texas-style talk than you can shake a dead armadillo at.

   There’s this 50-odd year old guy who tells people he’s around 30 and looks it, ’cause he periodically covers himself up with good old mother earth. He just sorts of drifts along, lives a lot in the past and lets the present mostly take care of itself. His momma’s dead and his daddy used to run a lumberyard, but he’s a few boards shy of a stack now and in one of those homes.

   Well, our hero’s wife Earlene dumps him for one of those TV preachers with a lot of hair just ’fore he was fixin’ to leave her, so he gets stoned, walks off his advertisin’ job, hooks up with this underage carhop named Sue Jean, and they take off in a stolen Nazi car, and … aw, hell, you don’t need to know any more about the plot.

   It’s about Life, is what it is, and Death, and a bunch of other stuff, and it’s probably not quite like anything you read before. You’ll know after 20 pages if you’re gonna like it or not, and if you do, you’re gonna like it a lot.

   Y’see, Barrett’s got himself one of those really unique voices. Billy Clyde Crider put me onto it, and it’s a dandy. Now if you can’t trust me and old Billy Clyde, who can you trust?

TODD RITTER – Death Notice. St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, hardcover, October 2010.

    Though the serial killer novel has been done to death and beyond, it’s still nice to see one take a different tack and do it successfully.

    Death Notice is a mystery/suspense entry set in Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania, where Police Chief Kat Campbell is raising her son and settling in for the quiet life — until two crimes strike — someone has stolen the local florist’s delivery van (“Perry Hollow was the kind of town where you could park a car and leave the keys in the ignition and know it would be safe. Until now.”) and someone has left a coffin on the side of the road … and not an empty one.

    The coffin turns out to have a body of a local man in it, murdered in a gruesome manner, and when Henry Goll, who does the obituaries for the local paper, reports he received a death notice for the victim before the man was murdered, the state police show up in the person of Nick Donnelly.

    Donnelly is the head of a task force assigned to track down the serial killer known as the “Betsy Ross Killer” because he embalms his victims alive and sews their lips shut while they are still breathing in the manner of the Perry Hollow victim.

    A second death notice arrives and then a second victim in Perry Hollow, but when the Betsy Ross Killer is caught, there is yet another murder in Perry Hollow.

    Kat has her own personal serial killer on her hands, and it is someone she knows. Before it is over, the whole town will be in terror and Kat and her son in particular, while Donnelly finds his life and career in jeopardy, and Henry Goll discovers he is more than merely the messenger where these killings are concerned..

    Anyone who has ever worked for a small town paper or written obituaries will appreciate the insiders view of the job from a journalist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

    My only caveat is that since Ritter points out in the book that the first line of any obit is known in the business as “the Death Sentence,” that should have been his title. A minor complaint, and likely imposed by an editor or a publisher instead of the writer.

    The setting and setup may be cozy, but there is nothing cozy about this well written and twisty suspense novel that uses many of the tropes of the serial killer novel and the cozy, while creating an atmosphere of dread and terror counter balanced by good police procedure and likable well drawn characters (hopefully we will see more of Kat and Nick).

    Ritter manages the whole small town milieu without resorting to eccentrics or “characters,” which alone is enough to set him apart, and handles the grue and gore without falling into the trap of exploitation or reveling in them in the semi-pornographic manner of many better known writers in the field. His prose has the journalistic virtues of being crisp, analytical, and controlled.

    I didn’t buy the killer’s motive or reasoning completely, but Ritter handles it all with skill and a bit of panache so I am more than willing to give him this small conceit for the sake of an entertaining read.

    A new writer to watch, a good book with a well drawn setting and well drawn characters, and something a bit different in the over crowded serial killer field gets this one the highest of recommendations.

COVER UP. United Artists, 1949. William Bendix, Dennis O’Keefe, Barbara Britton, Art Baker, Ann E. Todd, Doro Merande. Screenplay: Jerome Odlum & Dennis O’Keefe. Director: Alfred E. Green.

   Here’s a fine example of a case where the title of the movie is spot on accurate, so much so that you’re going to have to put it in the back of your head while you’re watching, or it will give the whole story away. (And forget I just said so, too, while you’re at it.)

   Dennis O’Keefe, who gets second billing, even though it’s his actions (and reactions) we follow throughout the movie, plays an insurance investigator in Cover Up. In the unnamed small town somewhere in the Midwest (near Chicago, apparently) where he’s been sent to look into a reported case of suicide, he runs straight into a stone wall.

   The local sheriff, played by a placid, pipe-smoking William Bendix, is friendly enough, but when asked about the gun, the bullet, anything at all, evades the answers. The coroner’s out of town, I don’t know where the gun is, I don’t know what type of gun it was, all the while puffing away, looking slyly upward to see how his act is going over.

   No fool he, Sam Donovan (that’s O’Keefe) knows it’s an act, too, but he has no choice but to realize that any investigating he has to do, he’ll have to do on his own. Complicating matters is that he is falling for the girl he rode into town with on the bus (Barbara Britton).

   Why complicated? Only that he comes to the conclusion that murder has been committed and the girl’s father, the town’s banker (Art Baker) is soon his number one suspect.

   This is no film noir mystery, as I’ve seen it advertised online, in case you were wondering, not in my opinion. The story takes place at Christmas, there is a lighting of the town’s tree with all of the local folk in attendance, presents are exchanged, and soon the snow is starting to fall.

   Very folksy and charming, in other words, but if pressed, I’d have to agree that there’s an edge to the plot — hidden right below the mistletoe — that keeps this movie moored as a mystery and not a just another soft-hearted romance.

   And while Dennis O’Keefe as Sam Donovan may be the primary protagonist, it’s William Bendix, who does double duty as both the small town’s sheriff and its self-appointed guardian, if you will, who earns his top billing after all.

PETER HILL – The Hunters. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1976. UK edition: Peter Davies, 1976.

   A rapist killer strikes in Suffolk, and Scotland Yard sends out its crack team of Chief Superintendent Robert Stauton and Detective Inspector Leo Wyndsor. Mark their names as they will return.

   In brief, Stauton is supposedly infallible, uncompromising, and suffers from hemorrhoids, while Wyndsor is a man for the ladies, who literally tear their clothes off for him. Yet as a team they make an efficient pair, gradually learning each other’s personalities and vices, each determined to succeed.

   The initial stages of the investigation are as routine as usual, but the story suddenly comes alive when Wyndsor takes on the local priest in an argument about the Church and the human condition — I say he wins. At the same time overtones of the occult begin to work their way in, and a local coven’s meeting the night of the murder makes mince of coherent alibi taking.

   It is a problem, but one overcome by a nifty piece of police work, in a tale filled with characters one grows to appreciate. A fine debut.

[UPDATE] 01-20-11.   I don’t remember this one at all. I probably wouldn’t have reprinted it if I hadn’t felt the need to remind myself that you can’t be right all the time. There were several more books in the series, but Staughton and Wyndsor obviously didn’t catch on and/or couldn’t maintain the momentum I thought I saw in their first outing. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of Hill’s crime fiction under this name:

PETER HILL. Pseudonym of Peter Eyers-Hill, 1939- .

    The Hunters (n.) Davies 1976 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Fanatics (n.) Davies 1977 [Commander Allan Dice]
    The Liars (n.) Davies 1977 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Enthusiast (n.) Davies 1978 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Washermen (n.) Davies 1979 [Commander Allan Dice]
    The Savages (n.) Heinemann 1980 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]

Note: The last two titles had no US publication.

MICHAEL INNES – The Ampersand Papers. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1979. UK edition: Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1978. Paperback edition: Penguin, several printings.

   Sir John Appleby is getting on in years now, but we have every right to he thankful whenever his expertise as a former Commissioner of Scotland Yard can be put to good use once again.

   Such a time is when death occurs under mysterious circumstances, and as chance would have it, Sir John is immediately on hand for the unexplained collapse, with occupant, of the precarious staircase leading to the North Tower of the Ampersand castle.

   Stored there are family papers, possibly containing valuable literary memorabilia from the Age of Shelley. There is a mention of Spanish treasure as well. Lord Ampersand himself is more addled than even English aristocrats have a right to be — is it inbreeding, or what?

   Innes is in fine form, with a touch of 18th century wit about him, but the deductions (I hate to say it) seem little more than guesswork on Appleby’s part, bringing about a vaguely dissatisfying close to an otherwise most elegant affair.

MILTON BASS – The Belfast Connection. New American Library, hardcover, 1988. Signet, paperback, 1989.

    Benny Freedman is not your average American cop, and The Belfast Connection is not your average American cop’s adventure. Milton Bass introduced his lieutenant in the San Diego homicide department three novels back, and by now Benny is worth $49 million through some convenient if unplanned inheriting.

    The money came with mob fingerprints all over it, but Benny sorted that out earlier. The millions don’t interest Freedman greatly, though sometimes they come in handy; he’d just as soon be investigating murder. But here a minor injury has sidelined him for the statutory twelve-week sick leave, so he decides to explore his roots.

    His Irish roots. On his mother’s side, obviously. When his Jewish father (now dead) married his mother (now also dead), her intensely Catholic family denounced her. Thirty years later, Benny figures he’d like to find out what sort of people would do that, and maybe punch a few of them in the nose.

    He comes to Belfast to find cousin Sean is freshly dead, of what is confidently assumed to be a Protestant bullet. So this Irish-Jew cop of ours is plunged into the sectarian wars of that ravaged city, a place where human answers are as unknown as dying is familiar. A fascinating tale.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:

       The Benny Freedman series —

   Dirty Money. Signet, pbo, 1986.
   The Moving Finger. Signet, pbo, 1986.
   The Bandini Affair. Signet, pbo, 1987.
   The Belfast Connection. NAL, hc, 1988.

  Bass also wrote two mystery novels in his Vinnie Altobelli series: The Half-Hearted Detective (1993) and The Broken-Hearted Detective (1994), plus one stand-alone thriller in hardcover: Force Red (1970).

  From one online website: “Milton Ralph Bass was born [1923] and raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1947 and a Master’s in English from Smith College in 1948. During World War II, he served in the army as a medic. In 1986, he retired from The Berkshire Eagle after 35 years as entertainment editor, theater and movie critic.”

 
Milton Bass was the author of at least four western novels, all in his “Jory” series: Jory (1969), Mistr Jory (1976), Gunfighter Jory (1987), and Sherff Jory (1987). I’ve never seen any of them, but Bill Crider reviewed the first one a couple of years ago on his blog.

[UPDATE] 01-20-11.   As I’ve just discovered, Mr. Bass is not yet fully retired. He’s still doing a weekly online column for The Berkshire Eagle. Here’s a link to a piece he did last Sunday on the occasion of his 88th birthday.

MICHAEL INNES – The Case of Sonia Wayward. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1960. Published in the UK as The New Sonia Wayward by Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1960. Paperback reprints include: Collier AS450V, US, 1962; Penguin, US, 1989.

   One of the best mysteries of Michael Innes’s middle period, The Case of Sonia Wayward, has recently been reprinted by Penguin in paperback. (Innes has been writing so long that his “middle” period was thirty years ago.)

   It starts as the titular Sonia, a best-selling author of romances, dies at sea of natural causes. Her husband, Colonel Petticate, tries to keep her death a secret so he can continue to write under her name, without having to establish his own reputation.

   The complications of his ruse are many, and Innes provides many twists and surprises, with fewer literary allusions to slow things down than usual.

GIRLS IN CHAINS. PRC, 1943. Arline Judge, Roger Clark, Robin Raymond, Barbara Pepper, Clancy Cooper, Allan Byron, Sidney Melton, Emmett Lynn, Richard Clarke. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer.

   The title, first of all is a misnomer. The girls in the reform facility in this rather limp feature film, from one of Hollywood’s legendary bottom-of-the barrel movie studios, are all in their late 20s if not rather obvious 30s, and there are no chains. (I accept the title either as a metaphor, or if not that, then as obvious over-the-top hyperbole.)

   Second of all, however, is that when Sid Melton (Ichabod Mudd in the Captain Midnight TV series) is the only name you spot right off the bat when you start running down through the credits, then you know that Girls in Chains is not going to be a big-budget extravaganza. It is not even a low-budget extravaganza. (I accept the fact that it may be my fault for not recognizing the names of the two leading stars, but I am always willing to learn, and next time I will.)

   There is a lot of story in this movie’s 75 minutes of running time (which I am told it took only five days to shoot), and every once in a while there are some good scenes. Viewers on IMDB have taken a great dislike to this film, but using a sledgehammer to demolish it from one end of the room to the other seems like overkill to me. I have seen worse.

   The story? Well, it’s complicated, and nicely so. When Helen Martin (Arline Judge, she of the magnificent upsweep bird’s nest hairdo)) is fired from her teaching job because her sister is married to low-life criminal boss Johnny Moon (Allan Byron, who has the whole town wrapped up in his left side back pocket), a friendly police officer (Roger Clark, bland beyond belief) gets her another teaching job, this one at the local girls’ reformatory, where the warden is on Moon’s payroll, but scamming the books on him. More? Johnny Moon’s latest girl friend on the side (Robin Raymond) is about to land in the very same slammer on a shoplifting charge.

   Life behind bars is tough enough, with a handful of prison cells for the worst of the offenders, but mostly it’s the laundry room and the barest of dorm rooms for the rest. After discovering early on what she’s up against, Helen is persuaded to work undercover to get the goods on the warden and Johnny Moon, and I suppose that this is all you need to know about the plot.

   Overall, Girls in Chains is a strange mixture of funny moments with, let us say, strange takes on courtroom scenes plus puzzling mobster mistakes, with at least one tense situation for the undercover Helen Martin going absolutely nowhere.

LAW & ORDER: UK. ITV. Series Three: 09 September through 21 October 2010. Bradley Walsh, Jamie Bamber, Harriet Walter, Ben Daniels, Freema Agyeman, Bill Paterson.

   Another seven episodes (making a total so far of 20) of original Law & Order stories adapted to a London setting.

   Somehow it doesn’t quite work, partly, perhaps, because the stories were designed to operate in a slightly different culture. Maybe it would have been better to commission new stories and fit them within a more recognisable British setting.

   An exception might have been “Masquerade,” based on the US episode “Good Girl,” which seemed, to me at least, to be rather stronger than the others. I’m not convinced, however, that prosecutors in England would investigate in the way they do here.

Of course when I’m watching the original I have no idea how the legal system works in New York (except from watching similar programmes — although as I’ve said before the difference in procedures between L&O, NYPD Blue and CSI:NY leaves this viewer rather confused) and accept it all without a quibble.