Hi Steve,

A while ago I asked you about man-on-the-run novels and you and David Vineyard gave me a magnificent reply. I am still working my way through that long list of books and shall be for quite some time! In the process I have already discovered several fine authors whom I had not known of, or read, before.

I have another enquiry that perhaps you and David can help me with. As well as man-on-the-run stories I enjoy reading tales of searches for buried treasures and artefacts. This type of story seems to have made a big comeback in recent years but it’s really the older novels I’m interested in. For example, one that I read a few weeks ago was David Dodge’s Plunder of the Sun, about lost treasure in Peru. Another was Archie Roy’s Deadlight, about a search on the Scottish Island of Arran for buried scientific notes that disclose a new technology.

Of course, once found, the “treasure” can turn out to be a Pandora’s Box, releasing something malicious or vengeful or deadly, and I like these kinds of stories too.

Can you and David, and the readers of your excellent blog, suggest any more such novels?

Thank you in anticipation,     — D.

And here’s David Vineyard’s reply:

Hmm, if you don’t mind I will forget anything past about 1990 so I don’t have to do too many of the Cussler and other types. Here is a quick list and perhaps it can be expanded upon by myself and others. I won’t go back so far as Rider Haggard and Stevenson, and I’ll limit myself to thrillers too.

THE THIRD HOUR by Geoffrey Household

VIVIERO LETTER and THE GOLDEN KEEL by Desmond Bagley

LEVKAS MAN, THE GOLDEN SOAK, and ISVIK by Hammond Innes

TREASURE by A.E. Hotchner

GIRL ON THE RUN by Edward S. Aarons

TROJAN GOLD and HER COUSIN JOHN and the entire Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters

THE SALZBURG CONNECTION by Helen MacInnes

BOY ON A DOLPHIN by David Divine

PLUNDER IN THE SUN, THE RED TASSEL by David Dodge

MURDER IN NEW GUINEA by John Vandercook

GRAIL by Ben Sapir

THE SECRET SCEPTRE and PRISONER OF THE PYRAMID by Francis Gerard

THE GYRTH CHALICE MYSTERY by Margery Allingham

GUARDIAN OF THE TREASURE (aka ISLAND OF TERROR) by Sapper

LIVE AND LET DIE by Ian Fleming

THE ROSE OF TIBET and THE MENNORAH MAN by Lionel Davidson

THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE by B. Traven

THE LAST PLACE GOD LEFT by Jack Higgins

THE EYE OF THE TIGER and THE DIAMOND HUNTERS by Wilbur Smith

TWIST OF SAND, RIVER OF DIAMONDS and GRUE OF ICE by Geoffrey Jenkins

BRIDGE OF SAND and BROTHERS OF SILENCE by Frank Gruber

FEAR IS THE KEY by Alistair MacLean

BLACK ORCHID by Nicholas Meyer and Barry Jay Kaplan

THE Q DOCUMENT by James Robert Duncan

THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE by Eugene Vale

PEKING MAN IS MISSING by Claire Tardashian

THE SAINT AND THE TEMPLAR TREASURE by Leslie Charteris

THE TOMB OF T’SIN by Edgar Wallace

THE GHOUL by Frank King

PRESTER JOHN by John Buchan

QUEST FOR THE SACRED SLIPPER by Sax Rohmer

THE WHITE SAVAGE by Edison Marshall

THE VENUS OF KOMPARA by John Masters

STONES OF ENCHANTMENT by Wyndham Martin (lost world novel featuring Anthony Trent)

THE SAPPHIRE by A.E.W. Mason

TREASURE FOR TREASURE by Justin Scott

TREASURE OF SAINTE-FOY by Macdonald Harris

TREASURE TRAIL by Roland Pertwee

Many of the Doc Savage novels as by Kenneth Robeson

GOLD BAIT by Walt J. Sheldon

MR. RAMOSI by Valentine Williams

GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT by James B. Hendryx

BURNING DAYLIGHT by Jack London

GOLD OF ST. MATTHEW by Duff Hart-Davis

GOLD OF TROY by Robert L. Fish

GOLDEN BUDDHA by Capt. A. O. Pollard

THE GOLDEN SPANIARD by Dennis Wheatley

A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD by John D. MacDonald

THE RAINBOW TRAIL by John Cunningham

MACKENNA’S GOLD by Will Henry

THE LAST TOMB by John Lange (Michael Crichton)

CONGO by Michael Crichton

APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH by Agatha Christie

THE TREASURE OF MATACUMBE by Robert Louis Taylor

TREASURE by Clive Cussler (and most of the Dirk Pitt novels)

THE MESSIAH STONE by Martin Caidin

THE MEDUSA STONE by Jack Du Bruhl

BLOOD ROYAL, BLIND CORNER, SHE FELL AMONG THIEVES, BERRY AND COMPANY by Dornford Yates (many of Yates novels involve some sort of treasure or loot)

THE PINK JUNGLE by Alan Williams

HIS BONES ARE CORAL and THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER by Victor Canning (both films, the former as SHARK by Sam Fuller with Burt Reynolds)

ANY OLD IRON by Anthony Burgess ( a modern family of British Jews are guardians of Excalibur)

APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH by Agatha Christie

THE GOLDEN HOARD by Philip Wylie (when the government called in gold a miser’s hoard becomes the focus of gangsters)

TREASURE OF MATACUMBE by Robert Louis Taylor

MARCHING SANDS and THE GARDEN OF EDEN by Harold Lamb (also some of his shorts from ADVENTURE about Khlit the Cossack deal with the lost treasures of Genghis Khan and the Hashishin)

THE MASK OF FU MANCHU and THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU by Sax Rohmer

THE SANDS OF KARAKORAM by James Ramsey Ullman

THE MYSTERY OF KHUFU’S TOMB, THE NINE UNKNOWN, THE DEVIL’S GUARD, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, THE IVORY TRAIL by Talbot Mundy

SPHINX by Robin Cook

THE GOLD OF MALABAR by Berkley Mather

THE NAUTICAL CHART by Arturo Perez-Reverte (a recent one, but worth reading)

THE ARROW OF GOLD by Joseph Conrad

IMPERIAL EXPRESS by James Bellah

TERENCE O’ROURKE GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER and THE POOL OF FLAME (both with Terence O’Rourke) by Louis Joseph Vance

THE SECRET OF SAREK, THE COUNTESS CAGLIOSTRO, 813, THE BLOND LADY, THE HOLLOW NEEDLE by Maurice LeBlanc (all Arsene Lupin and most dealing with his quest for the lost treasures of the Kings of France)

THE SPOTTED PANTHER by James Francis Dwyer

THE MATING OF THE BLADES (many titles) by Achmed Abdullah (NIck Romanov, a career Brit solider and the son of an Indian Princess and a Russian aristocrat, author of THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD and the screenplay for LIVES OF THE BENGAL LANCERS)

THE BLUE EYED MANDARIN by Stephen Becker

GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS by Steve Frazee (western)

THE DEEP by Peter Benchley

WHITE WITCH OF THE SOUTH SEAS and ISLAND WHERE TIME STOOD STILL by Dennis Wheatley

JOURNEY TO ORASSIA by Alan Caillou

ZADOK’S TREASURE by Margot Arnold (Toby Glendower mystery)

THE FAMILY TOMB by Michael Gilbert

THE RIDDLE OF SAMPSON by Andrew Garve

THE CUP OF GOLD, THE ETRUSCAN TOMB, THE GREEK AFFAIR by Frank Gruber

THE DANCING MAN by P.M. Hubbard (one of the great thriller writers on any theme)

FIGUREHEAD by Bill Knox (a lost gold ship and a deadly feud on a Scottish island plus a possible monster — one of the Webb Carrick Fisheries Protection Service novel — yes, the Fish Police — also check out his Talos Cord series and as Noah Webster, his Jonathan Gaunt books)

THE CROWN OF COLUMBUS by Louise Edrich and Michael Dorris (good example of the literary version of the treasure hunt)

TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY by Edgar Rice Burroughs (search for the ‘Mother of Diamonds’ also known as THE RED STAR OF TARZAN and basis for the serial THE NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN serialized on radio)

SEA GOLD by Ian Slater

OUT OF THE DEPTHS by Leonard Holton (Father Bredder on holiday goes scuba diving for treasure and murder)

RIPTIDE and ICE LIMIT by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs (okay, they are well into the later period but both outstanding)

THAI GOLD by Jason Shoonover ( not the greatest writer in the world, but interesting because the author is a treasure hunter and relic hunter in real life)

Many of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy books touch on treasure hunts

TEMPLE TOWER by Sapper aka H.C. McNeile (Bulldog Drummond hunts a treasure and battles a master criminal,Le Bossu, the Hunchback, in France)

THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco

THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Reverte-Perez

THE TAKERS by Jerry Ahern (UFO’s, lost Atlantis, the Antarctic — everything but the kitchen sink)

ICEBOUND by Rick Spenser (paperback original series but better written than usual, the VIKING CIPHER series)

THE ABOLITION OF DEATH by James Anderson

MYSTIC WARRIOR by Ryder Jorgenson [NOTE: See Comment #3 for the correction to this entry.]

THE POLLENBERG INHERITANCE by Evelyn Anthony

GRAVE DOUBT by Ivor Baker

THE TEMPLE TREE by David Beatty (gold-carrying plane crashes on a sacred Asian temple)

THE BUCKINGHAM PALACE CONNECTION by Ted Willis

SOLOMON’S QUEST by H. Bedford-Jones writing as Alan Hawkwood. A classic pulp adventure by the King of the Pulps one of the long running John Solomon series about cherubic Cockney businessman and adventurer Solomon — in this one he races to prevent evidence from being produced that could set the Mid-East aflame — namely that Mohammed converted to Christianity… Needless to say not politically correct. Also JOHN SOLOMON SUPER CARGO and many others.

BLACK CORAL by Nancy Ferguson

DAUGHTER OF THE HAWK by C. S. Forester. Englishwoman’s father leads a South American revolution.

THE WIND CHILL FACTOR, THE GLENDOWER LEGACY, ASSASSINI by Thomas Gifford

THE HOLLOW SEA, CLEFT OF STARS by Geoffrey Jenkins

A TASTE FOR DEATH by Peter O’Donnell. Modesty and Willie battle criminals looking for ancient treasure and using slave labor to do it.

THE LABYRINTH MAKERS by Anthony Price

TERROR KEEP by Edgar Wallace — Mr. J.G. Reeder finds love and treasure.

THE DIAMONDS OF LORETA by Ivor Drummond (Sandro, Colly, and Lady Jenny adventure)

LEE HARRIS – The Good Friday Murder. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1992. TV movie: Hallmark Channel, 2004, as Murder Without Conviction (with Megan Ward as Christine Bennett & Morgan Weisser as Det. Jack Brooks).

   When I went to Google to look up Lee Harris’ real name, Syrell Rogovin Leahy, I came upon a website for a public library somewhere where three of her novels (non-criminous) were listed, in a category of books called Tearjerkers: A Book of Ruth, Circle of Love, and Love Affair. (Following next were Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley. That’s pretty good company.)

   These books all came before The Good Friday Murder, which was the author’s first mystery. Unless I’ve lost count, there are now 14 in the series, with one or two coming out every year through 2002, when The Happy Birthday Murder appeared.

   [UPDATE:   The Cinco de Mayo Murder is the 17th and presumable the last. It came out in 2006.]

   But if at all possible, if you think you’d like to try one, start with this first one, which as chance would have it, is what I did. It’s a good one, and with no effort on your part, I’d be happy to tell you more.

   I knew from reading the back covers that Christine Bennett was once a nun, but under what circumstances she left the convent and became involved in mystery cases, I did not know. The answers are to be found in this book, which is why you should perhaps start with this one.

   Part of the charm of this early book in the series, at least, is that Kix (to her friends) is not used to talking to strangers, and yet she manages very well; she is unused to things like bridge tolls and the high price of parking in Manhattan, yet she ends up driving back and forth several times into the city from a small town an hour or so up the Hudson.

   She is also definitely not used to being physically attracted to good-looking men, of which Sergeant Jack Brooks is one, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be allowed to be there with them as each of them learns who the other is.

   And yes, there is a murder to be solved, one that occurred on a Good Friday forty years earlier. A pair of twin boys, 29 years old, but savants unable to care for themselves — yet capable of doing miraculous feats of memory and mental computations — were blamed at the time, but they were never convicted of killing their mother.

   Separated ever since, Robert and James Talley were institutionalized, fell into severe depression, and generally wasted their lives. Until, that is, Christine is able to reunite them, clear their names and make them whole again, with misty eyes all around.

   As a detective, Christine Bennett is a gifted amateur, working out the facts by doing a lot of footwork and being a good judge of character. The final melodramatic scene of kidnap and rescue didn’t seem quite to fit the high caliber of what came before, but there’s nothing in this that would make me dissuade you in any way from reading this book.

   Which I did in one evening. Very enjoyable.

[UPDATE #2] I had not seen the movie when I wrote this review, but I do remember watching it later on. I may be wrong about this, but the film followed the book quite well. It’s too bad it didn’t turn into a series.

   Of course that statement is based only on my memory of it. I found it on DVD on Amazon for three dollars, so I ordered it. Perhaps I’ll report back on it here on this blog one of these days.

   As much as I enjoyed the book, I have not, alas, read any of the others in the series. I suppose it the series falls into the “cozy” category, but if what I said in the review is true, it’s one in which the characters are serious about they’re doing, and the mystery isn’t bad, either.

REGINALD HILL – Exit Lines. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1984. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1985. Reprint editions include: Signet, pb, 1986.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading characters:  Dalziel & Pascoe; 8th in series. Setting:   England.

First Sentence:   On a cold and storm-racked November night, while Peter and Ellie Pascoe were still celebrating with wine and wassail the first birthday which their daughter Rose had greeted with huge indifference, three old men, who felt far from indifferent, died.

    The local population has been decreased by the death of three elderly gentlemen in one night; one died of exposure on a playing field, one having been attacked in his bath, and one after being struck by a car possibly driven by Andy Dalziel.

    It is always such fun to read a book by Hill. There is a great central cast of characters. In DS Andy Dalziel, Hill has created a highly offensive character and made him very likable. He is type the person you’d most want to avoid, yet there is innocence to his uncouthness and a heart beneath the girth.

   DI Peter Pascoe is the perfect counterpart with his university education and proper manner. He has come to be known as the murder specialist.

   Supported by their team, including the naive Constable Hector, Hill combines good police procedure and a touch of humor. When it comes to the victims, Hill is serious and presents the challenges and vulnerability of the aging with great respect and care.

   There are essentially five threads to Exit Lines: the three deaths, trying to figure out what Dalziel is doing, and Ellie Pascoe’s concern for her own aging father. I appreciated the realism of having the police investigate more than one case at a time and was stunned by the way they came together in the end.

   Hill is a wonderful writer, and Dalziel and Pascoe are a great combination, one I enjoy more with each book.

Rating:   Very Good.

CAROLYN WELLS – The Furthest Fury. J. B. Lippincott, US/UK, hardcover, 1924.

   After over a half-dozen attempts I have finally found a Carolyn Wells mystery I like. It’s called The Furthest Fury. Character drawing is adequate to good, Wells’ “transcendant detective” (as he is called here) Fleming Stone is present for about half the book — actually detecting — and the solution is acceptably fair to the reader.

   David Stanhope’s visit with friends in the Connecticut hill country village of New Midian soon plunges him into mystery as two comparatively recent citizens of the village, a man, Nevin Lawrence, and his widowed sister, are murdered in their own house, both shot to death.

   Potential suspects include the hotheaded son of Stanhope’s wealthy friends, who was running for country club president against Nevin Lawrence on a “wet” platform; the son’s girlfriend, a mere daughter of the local dressmaker; the peppery maid, who inherits under the wills; the local spinster music teacher, a gossip and busybody of the first order; the strange, white-faced man Stanhope noticed on the train to New Midian; and possibly even the landlord and landlady and various summer residents of the local genteel boarding house, “Gray Porches.”

   Along with the far-too-bumbling local police, Stanhope investigates the brutal crimes; but he finally is compelled to call on Fleming Stone, who answers all questions after some genuine detection. Stone leaves his theory of the crime in a sealed envelope early on during the course of his investigations — and he was dead-on accurate, of course!

   The atmosphere of the once-peaceful little New England village is fine — it’s a convincing sort of American Mayhem Parva. Additionally, there’s some well-portrayed generational conflict between a father and son, an appealing (not cloying) lower-class damsel, a fine “character” of a maid, and a memorable gossipy spinster. The solution is quite interesting, and the reader may well deduce it.

   All in all, The Furthest Fury is a fine book, well worth reprinting. The silliness omnipresent in so many of Wells’ post-1920 books is not present, nor is the book stilted and dated in the Victorian manner like many of her earlier mysteries. And, best of all, the tale is fully fair play, the first such, actually, that I have read by Ms. Wells. Well worth reading!

GORDON MATHIESON – The Color of Ice. SinoAmerican Books, softcover, November 2009.

   The yellow peril is alive and well and living in modern thriller fiction.

   True, the racial element is considerably toned down, and many titles, like this one, feature an inter-racial love affair and a heroic Asian character, but still something of the air of Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, and Doctor No linger in the margins.

   To be fair they would almost have to. I don’t think any author could ever be politically correct enough to erase them.

   President Bowa, the new American President and his Chinese American Secretary of State can’t ignore the threat or the offer for a joint effort with the MSS and the Chinese government, but they don’t trust the PRC or MSS leader General Peng, so Bowa chooses Mandarin speaking microbiologist Carrie Bock to be his “mole” in the research project.

   Bowa and Bock are old friends (he calls her Carbo, she calls him Barbo — no kidding — but I tried not to hold that against them or the writer).

   So far so good, and to some extent that sums the book up. As far as it goes it is pretty good, but too often it reads like a detailed outline for a movie more than an actual novel. That isn’t to say it is poorly written, it isn’t. Many a best selling thriller writer writes less interesting prose than Mathieson.

   Carrie joins the team under the beautiful ‘ice woman’ Lan Ying, meets and falls for scientist Dr. James Chen, and learns that during WW II the US looked into a biological weapon targeted at the Japanese and that this is the basis for the Pakistani weapon and the hoped for vaccine to prevent them from targeting individual races.

   Carrie falls for Chen (indeed the two of them hardly bother to shake hands before tumbling into bed — even James Bond has to work harder at it) and feels a bit of guilt about working behind his back, then begins to smell a couple of rats — Lan and Peng.

   So, what’s the problem?

   It’s one that I’m finding increasingly with modern thriller writers. They understand the form, the basics of character, plot, and the development of the two, but they seem somehow tentative about it all. They seem almost frightened to put their heroes through the wringer.

   What is missing from too many thrillers these days are the thrills.

   Frank Gruber once wrote about the formula he used for most of his fiction. It was an elaborate one and had several numerically listed points, but at the end he gave a simpler version of it for would-be writers: the hero gets into trouble in line one of page one and increasingly as the book progresses he gets deeper and deeper in trouble to the point that it seems impossible for him to survive, much less win out, then as close to the last line of the last page as is possible he turns the tables and wins out decisively at the last possible moment.

   It’s still a pretty good formula for a thriller, but few seem to remember it these days.

   Carrie Bock is so far ahead of Peng and Lan that there isn’t a lot of suspense as to what is going to happen to her. You know going in that the hero or heroine is going to win, but the trick of these is to make you (and them) sweat getting there — the only sweating in this one is implied, and mostly between the sheets — and not only between Carrie and Jim Chen — not the covers of the book.

   This isn’t a knock, but it is meant as encouragement. Mathieson has all the elements at this fingertips, but he hasn’t learned how to orchestrate them for the most effect. He seems to like his heroes a little too well, and feel a bit too kindly toward his villains. (They meet their fate off stage, and while it is a terrible fate, it would have been better shown with full nasty effect than simply told to us second hand –at least half of a good thriller is the catalyst of emotional release at the climax when he villain meets a visceral and, hopefully, well deserved end — even Claudius in Hamlet dies on stage.)

   Who wants to read a tidy thriller?

   I enjoyed this, but because I enjoyed seeing a new writer with some skills testing the water. I hope for the next book he takes the plunge. Faint heart never won fair publisher’s advance.

   This is just on the edge of being what I suspect he wants. It just needs that little twist of the knife to not merely get you to turn the page, but to compel you to turn the page.

   Fu Manchu would have made it much worse on Sir Denis Nayland Smith (this one could use a super-heated rat cage and desperate rodent looking to escape through someone’s skin), and Doctor No came close to feeding James Bond to a giant killer octopus — never underestimate the importance of sheer melodrama in a thriller. Even cheap thrills are still thrills.

   Good taste and subtlety aren’t always virtues, even Graham Greene and Eric Ambler knew when to get their hands dirty. And that’s what is missing here. That sense that anyone might get their hands dirty, break a sweat (even during sex), or that the fate of the free world or the protagonists is ever in doubt.

   There is an old rule in thriller writing: every third chapter should end in a cliffhanger and every fifth chapter should be a reversal of fortune for the hero. He also fails the standard “false climax, anti-climax, true climax” structure that is key for a thriller, but by then it hardly matters.

   Everything is there, it’s just all too “nice,” too clean, too zipped up and sanitized for our protection. Maybe I’m just too jaded, but I can’t help but think a thriller ought to be just a little pulpy and unwholesome. I’d much rather a thriller had loose ends than pink neatly tied bows.

   You can’t write a cozy thriller.

   Why would you try?

   This comes so close, it almost qualifies as a thriller just for that, but I can’t really recommend it on the basis that I was in suspense seeing if the author was going to generate any suspense or thrills.

   And it wouldn’t hurt if he were a bit more gruesome abut the horrors of his bio-agent too. I never thought I would be complaining about the lack of grue and gore in any book, but damn it, if you plan to scare me with one of these someone’s face ought to at least melt.

   And one last thing. This is about the third book I’ve read this month that is structured like a television episode or film, and not like a novel. I love movies too, I’ve even written screenplays, but they are not the same form — which is why the book is so often so much different than the film.

   I don’t know anything about Gordon Mathieson (great name for a thriller writer though), but I am going to suggest he go to fewer films and perhaps read a few more thrillers — and not just the great ones or current ones. There is much today’s writers could learn from writers like John Creasey who kept readers turning pages from 1932 on for over six hundred books.    [FOOTNOTE]

   A good thriller is more than the sum of its parts, it is also a visceral experience for the reader and the writer. You ought to reach the end both with a sense of satisfaction, and a feeling you had just had something of an adventure yourself. It’s called escapism, not somnambulism. The nap should come after you finish the book, not during.

[FOOTNOTE]   In one of the Baron novels, Deaf Dumb and Blonde, there is a scene in John Mannering (the Baron)’s home where a villain has a gun at his back, and the front doorbell rings.

   It’s a policeman, and as Mannering is compelled down the stairs, gun at his back, Creasey wrings a good four pages (a bit over a thousand words I’d estimate) of nerve wracking prose out of the time it takes to walk down a stairway as the Baron weighs his options, what action he will take, and the consequences to himself and others.

   You can’t do that in a movie, not in quite the same way, and every writer who even thinks about generating suspense and thrills ought to learn from that. Cinematic isn’t always a compliment. If it was, none of the Harry Potter books would be over a hundred pages long.

CHARLAINE HARRIS – Dead to the World. Ace Books, hardcover, May 2004; paperback: May 2005.

   Not the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series, but the first I’ve read. The premise of the series, on which the TV show True Blood is based, is that affordable synthetic blood has been developed, and vampires have taken the opportunity to “come out” and integrate into larger society, since they can now survive without presenting a threat to humans.

   The premise of the book is that Sookie’s brother has gone missing, and his disappearance seems be related to the efforts of a powerful gang of shapeshifter witches to take over businesses owned by vampires. Sookie tries to unravel all this using her ability to read minds and her connections to the vampire community.

   By the way, werewolves are real, too.

   I enjoyed reading the book, I appreciated the spectacular human-vampire sex scene, I was happy to sample the series, but I probably won’t read any more. Apparently my suspension of disbelief is not quite willing enough.

Editorial Comments:   L. J. Roberts reviewed Dead in the Family, the 10th in the series, here on this blog earlier this month. (Dead to the World is the fourth.)

   I don’t suppose that Tina’s review will change anyone’s mind, as expressed in the comments that followed L.J.’s, but at least I now have a better idea of what the books are about. And, no, now that my curiosity is satisfied, between the two reviews, I don’t think I’ll read any of them myself.

   Incidentally, there is an “in” joke in Tina’s last line. The name of her zine in DAPA-Em, from which she has given me permission to reprint her reviews, is called The Willing Suspension of Disbelief, currently up to issue #34 (July 2010).

SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW. Republic, 1945. Jane Frazee, Brad Taylor (Stanley Brown), Harry Langdon, Minna Gombell, Amelita Ward,Tim Ryan, Paul Harvey, Holmes Herbert, Bert Roach. Director: William Beaudine. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   When radio star and songwriter Jimmy Rhodes Richard Davies) slips out of town without completing the songs for a program that could save a struggling radio station from bankruptcy, the desperate station manager (Paul Harvey) hires an aspiring song writer Lynn Ford (Jane Frazee) to complete the songs, believing her to be Rhodes’ partner.

   Before this is all sorted out, Frazee’s attractive acting and singing, abetted by some artful comic ploys by Harry Langdon, made this a pleasant lead-in to the weekend’s screenings.

   The sixteen speaking parts listed in the credits end with “Drunk,” played by Bert Roach, who, in the late silent and early sound period, played leading and supporting comic roles, a dependable and amusing actor.

   And returning to Harry Langdon, a comedian for whom I never really cared, he was, for a time, a major silent player. He brings to the role of Chester Willouby, assistant to the station manager, an unassuming charm that surprised me and made me wonder if I shouldn’t revisit some of his silent film successes.

Editorial Comment:   Harry Langdon died on 22 December 1944 at the still young age of 60. Swingin’ on a Rainbow was the last movie in which he was to appear.

TARZAN AND THE HUNTRESS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1947. Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, Johnny Sheffield, Patricia Morison, Barton MacLane, John Warburton, Charles Trowbridge. Based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Director: Kurt Neumann.

   Based on the pages of TV Guide that I torn out and slipped inside the case, I taped this movie from a local station in September 1991, VHS of course. (I don’t know if DVDs were around then or not, but certainly not do-it-yourself recordable ones.) It’s been stored in the basement ever since, and it still plays fine.

   Unfortunately the local station (WTXX in Waterbury) played this late at night and spiced it up every so often with colorful ads for adult services such as 1-900-HOTPINK. Those were the days, my friend.

   Johnny Weissmuller made only one more Tarzan movie, Tarzan and the Mermaids, before he morphed into Jungle Jim, but Brenda Joyce (who followed Maureen O’Sullivan) appeared twice more as Jane, appearing in Tarzan’s Magic Fountain with Lex Barker before calling it quits on her movie-making career. And Johnny Sheffield, growing up before the viewers’ eyes, became Bomba, the Jungle Boy soon after this one, in 1949.

   As “Boy,” though, he may have been getting taller and filling out more, but in Huntress he wasn’t smart enough to realize that trading two lion cubs to some hunters on safari for a flashlight was an altogether too bone-headed of a stunt for him to stay out of Tarzan’s doghouse for very long,

   Of course the members of that same safari, picking up specimens for zoos in the US after the war, aren’t smart nor wise enough to realize that even though they’re not killing animals, crossing Tarzan’s wishes isn’t the smartest thing to do, especially on Tarzan’s home turf.

   The “huntress” in this movie is Tanya Rawlins, played by Patricia Morison, a beautiful brunette who’s nominally in charge of the expedition, but she’s too petite to overrule villain Barton MacLane, who plays her guide. In doing his job far too enthusiastically, for example, he finds it necessary to bump off the local native leader who stands in their way.

   The movie’s 72 minutes long, but it feels longer, even though there’s only about 30 minutes of actual plot to go with it – which probably goes a long way in explaining why it does feel as long as it does. There’s lots of stock animal footage, lots of neat shots of Tarzan swinging from vine to vine, one scene of synchronized swimming, and far too much monkey business. Way too much. I think Cheetah (the chimpanzee) has more screen time in this movie than any of the other actors.

JOHN G. ROWE – The Roped Square. Mellifont Sports Series #36, UK, paperback original, no date stated [1941].

   Not my usual type of reading fare, but the book’s in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, so when a copy came to hand, and being suspicious of its origin as part of a “sports” series, I thought I’d check it out, browsing my way through, and see exactly how “criminous” it actually was.

   And before I knew it, nearly an hour had gone by, and I was well over half way through (128 pages of small print). Jim Ballard, a strapping young lad, is indeed a boxer, as you may have guessed from the title, or he would be, if his mother didn’t frown so upon his desire to become one.

   A small bout, though, in which he is not only the winner but also the recipient of the ten pounds of prize money, softens her opposition a bit. But the notoriety also arouses the interest of a certain criminal element, and Jim’s father is set upon by thieves, one of which, a man with a scar, promises to tell Jim something about his past if Jim were to let him go.

   It turns out that Jim’s parents are not his real ones, they reluctantly tell him. He was abandoned on their doorstep when he was tiny, and thus Jim’s world is turned upside down. In between further boxing matches he is kidnapped into an opium den (see the cover image), dropped off a barge into a river to drown, and is discovered to be the son of a local lord.

   Which between you and I, the latter’s story should not be believed for a minute. This reads like a Horatio Alger story to me, with new revelations and narrow escapes coming more and more quickly as the tale goes on. It’s all very interesting, although Jim, while quite the boxer, is far more naive than a young man of his years should be.

   Interesting until, that is, he is shanghaied and he finds himself in irons on a ship sailing for who knows where, which is one scrape too many. The author’s only out (if you don’t mind my revealing this to you) is to have half of the crew mutiny (it wasn’t too clear which half, nor why), and all of a sudden Jim is home, the villain revealed, and Jim is champion of the world.

   The last time I was seriously online was Friday, which was when Hurricane Earl had us in New England squarely in his sights and was barreling up the coast toward us. Most of the projections were correct, though, and the storm missed us … by that much.

   We scurried around outside the house though, picking up and storing in the garage the table and chairs on the deck and anything else strong winds might pick up and dash down the street, or through a window, just in case. Sometime preparations in advance work, and it did this time. All we got was 15 minutes of rain and no wind to speak of.

   Just a little excitement to start the beginning of September and the end of summer. Wish I could say that postings on this blog are going to become a little less erratic, but I don’t think I can. Bear with me. I didn’t mean to go quiet all weekend, but that’s the way it turned out. It wasn’t planned; it just happened.

   I also am hoping to get caught up on email sometime soon. If you haven’t heard from me in a while, and you were expecting to, I apologize. Your only consolation might be that you’re not alone. I’ll try to do better.

   Looking back, I didn’t do a lot of reading in August, and that frustrates me, but everything I’ve read has been reported on here. Not reviewed have been six or so movies, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen them for me to report on them with any feeling that I could do them justice. You’ll have to wait until I watch them again, which I may.

   What follows are some announcements of sorts, some of this and more of that, as the heading says. Some might deserve posts of their own, but in order to cover them all quickly, I’ll combine them into this one long post.

    ● First of all, I’d like to to remind you that Dan Stumpf’s book ’Nada, as by Daniel Boyd, which I previewed here last July has now been published. You can buy it from Amazon and other online sources, and if I may once again, I strongly recommend that you do.

   I’ve just posted a version of my review of the book on Amazon, but I see that both Bill Crider and George Kelley have beaten me to it. (All three of us have given it five stars.)

    ● Ken Johnson has asked me to mention that he’s revised and expanded his checklist of the digest-sized paperbacks that were published mostly in the 1940s. I’m happy to do so, and in fact what I will do is publish his note to me in full:

    “I want to let people know that The Digest Index, my online reference to digest-size paperbacks, which was originally posted two and a half years ago, has now been substantially revised and reposted. It is hosted by Bruce Black on his Bookscans website and can be accessed here: http://bookscans.com/Publishers/digestindex/digestindex.htm

    “Among the revisions are the addition of 11 new imprints, the addition of series information into both author indexes (to books and contents), and the addition of artist identifications into the publisher index. Because I still lack a lot of cover artist data, I did not attempt a full artist index but instead supplied a summary of which imprints each artist was mentioned under and plugged in scanned samples of their signatures. This is in addition to tightening up the original data with more identification of abridgments and retitles, as well as additional personal data for a number of authors.

    “I’ve put a lot of effort into this Index, but it still has a lot of holes in it. Additions and corrections are always welcome. Actually, feedback of any kind is welcome; I get the sense sometimes that hardly anyone has seen it.”

   To which I reply, while I don’t go there every day, I do find the need to refer to it at least once a week. A large percentage of these books were either mysteries and westerns, making the information for me very useful. It’s a remarkable piece of work. Check it out!

    ● Finally, a comment left by the anonymous PB210 following my review of a Hugh North novel by Van Wyck Mason needs some additional exposure, I thought:

    “I tried to compare the Hugh North novels to other long running secret agent novel series by one author:

    “So far based on what I have written above, De Villiers has the overall record, while Van Wyck Mason has the record in the English language. Others more knowledgeable may have thought of a longer series by one author.

    “Anyone have any information about Herbert New?”

   I’ve not had a chance to check any of PB210’s data, nor do I know the Herbert New to whom he refers in his last question, but comments and suggestions of other authors are most certainly welcome.