ANDREW GREIG – Romanno Bridge. Quercus, UK, hardcover, March 2008; softcover, October 2008.

Genre:   Suspense. Leading characters:  Kirsty Fowler and an ensemble cast; 2nd in series. Setting:   UK/Europe.

First Sentence:   A man on a motorbike finally came to the end of the road.

   Journalist Kirsty Fowler is told a story by an elderly gentleman, Billy Mackie, in a retirement home. What she’s told is that copies of Scotland’s Stone of Scone, or Coronation Stone, have been made and copies hidden.

   She also learns another, much older stone, the Stone of Destiny, the true coronation seat of Scotland’s oldest kings. These stones have been protected by three men, and now their descendants, known as Moon Runners and identified by a heavy silver crescent-shaped ring containing a peridot.

   Someone named Adamson, a very nasty knife-wielding villain, is after the stones, and Billy is murdered shortly after passing his ring on to Kirsty. Now it’s up to Kirsty and her friends to find and protect the stones.

   Dear Authors: If you are writing a sequel, please do not assume the reader has read the prior book(s). Unfortunately, that oversight was, in large part, the reason why I did not particularly care for this book.

   There were a lot of characters, but it isn’t until almost the end of the book we really understand that many of them had all worked together before. Without that information, their coming together now really didn’t make much sense.

   Even had that not been the case, or perhaps because it was, the characters were not well developed; I had very little empathy or even liking of them. The only two characters who did seem significant were Billy, who was literally short lived, and Adamson, a completely sociopathic killer.

   You do eventually learn about the characters, but by the time you do, it’s almost too late to care about them. There were huge coincidences. Everyone seems to make just the right connections and find just the person they are looking for with unrealistic ease.

   You’re running from a killer and you just happen to pass the bus stand where somewhere from your last adventure just happens to be standing?

   There are positive elements to the story. The opening is very visual and compelling. The premise of the story is intriguing, and the suspense is effective and palpable. The author’s voice is quite good, with touches of humor:

   I laughed aloud at this and realized my cats perform the last two of those functions. Although there are a lot of words and expressions which are unfamiliar to me as an American, the context made their meaning clear so I didn’t feel I’d missed anything.

   It wasn’t a non-stop read. It took me a couple days, but I was never tempted to not finish the book. Greig’s style is quite good, but not good enough that I’m likely to read another book by him.

Rating:   Okay.

Editorial Comment:   The earlier book in this series was The Return of John MacNab (1996), a retelling (in modern dress) of John Buchan’s John MacNab (1925). A review of Return, the newer book, appears here (in Lowland Scots).

CRACKER. ITV [UK]. 27 September to 8 November 1993. Robbie Coltrane, Geraldine Somerville, Kieran O’Brien, Barbara Flynn, Lorcan Cranitch, Christopher Eccleston. Series creator and lead writer: Jimmy McGovern.

   The big success of the moment is Cracker. There have been three stories, all written by Jimmy McGovern, the first with two episodes, then three and finally two again.

   The main character is Fitz, a psychologist, played by Robbie Coltrane. In the first story, “A Mad Woman In The Attic”, a student of Fitz’s is killed and he is asked to help by the parents. The gimmick here is that although Fitz can uncover what makes other people tick, he cannot cope with his own life.

   He is a compulsive gambler, a heavy drinker and, during this first episode, his wife walks out on him when she finds out he has squandered all the family money. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the girl turns out to have been the victim of a serial killer, but this turns out to be a taut and entertaining tale.

   The second story, “To Say I Love You”, deals with a stammering youth who, meeting up with a girl, eases his frustration by going on a lawless rampage with her. The ending is tense and exciting.

   The third story, “One Day A Lemming Will Fly”, had, perhaps, more of a message, but I found it the least satisfying of the three. Overall though a series well worth looking out for. Following its overwhelming success, a new series is planned for next year.

Editorial Comments.   Not only was there a new series the next year, but there were four in all, plus (I believe) two standalone made-for-TV movies. Repeats were shown in the US on the A&E cable network, and a US version lasted four months in 1997-98, this one starring Robert Pastorelli (of Murphy Brown fame). All of the above are available on DVD, and the likelihood is high that I will soon persuade myself that I can’t live without them any longer.

   Comments on the US version are welcome. I never saw it. Perhaps very few people did.

W. F. MORRIS – The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley. Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1930. British edition: Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1929, as Behind the Lines.

    Tankard, the narrator of the opening chapter of this novel, is a soldier in the British army in the First World War.

    He recounts a strange encounter, when, while captured by the Germans, he saw his friend Peter Rawley in civilian clothes about to be executed by the Germans in a chalk quarry near Bapaume:

    The novel then picks up a year earlier with Peter Rawley before the events at Arras and recounts his own strange story that began with a fellow officer, Rumbald, a charming but reckless fellow of dubious virtue:

    Rawley has to give Rumbald his point, but when Rumbald later assaults Rawley during a confrontation at a forward post Rawley accidentally kills him, and panicked, deserts, which saves his life when the forward observation post is blown up by a German shell — convincing everyone that Peter Rawley is dead and Rumbald killed by the shell.

    The rest of the novel recounts Rawley’s adventures dressed as a civilian behind enemy lines and his encounter with another deserter, Alf Higgins. Morris proves to be a master at depicting the loneliness of the battle zone and its eerie otherworldly quality.

    Rawley’s adventures, and his and Alf’s eventual redemption when the German’s break through the British front, form the rest of the novel ending with Alf and Rawley before a firing squad about to be executed:

    The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley is an entertaining tale with a satisfying resolution, and Morris seemingly had experience in the war which he used to good effect. Though there is no detective interest per se in the book it is clearly marketed as a mystery.

    I don’t know anything about W. F. Morris save that in To Catch a Spy, Eric Ambler said of his novel Bretherton that it was one of the best portraits of a spy working behind the lines in wartime. The dust jacket from this one describes a previous novel, G.B. a Story of the Great War, as realistically weird and this one as “… a mystery story from an entirely new angle.”

    Morris writes well and underplays the obvious melodrama of his story. with the theme of the loss of identity in the confusion of war dating back to The Odyssey, and well handled here. Rawley is portrayed as a human and likable man who finds himself in circumstances beyond his control and how he extricates himself from his dilemma is a well told story of the confusion of war and a “quaint” tale of wartime adventures.

Note: Though this is a novel of wartime adventure, the Dodd Mead edition is marketed as a mystery, as pointed out above, with ads for books by G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, R. Austin Freeman, John Rhode, and Anthony Gilbert on the back cover; and the book is referred to as a mystery novel in the inside dust wrapper copy. Al Hubin also includes it in Crime Fiction IV.

Editorial Comment:   Hubin says this about W. F. Morris, 1893-?   Born in Norwich; educated at Cambridge; battalion commander during WWI; was Assistant Master, Priory School. Listed are seven novels published between 1929 and 1939, one marginally. From the titles, several of them also seem to have wartime settings.

[UPDATE] 07-03-10. [1] Earlier today Jamie Sturgeon sent me a link to an article about Morris. Check it out here.

   The essay//review is incomplete online, but it’s still very informative, including as it does the year that Morris died, 1969, a small piece of data that I’ll quickly send to Al Hubin for the next installment of his online Addenda to CFIV. Mostly, though, the piece is about Morris’s book Bretherton, and it goes into considerable detail about it.

[2] Thanks to the website that David has steered me to in the Comment he left, I’ve been able to add two covers images to this review he wrote.

“The Long Silence.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 25). First air date: 22 March 1963. Michael Rennie, Phyllis Thaxter, Natalie Trundy, James McMullan, Rees Vaughn, Vaughn Taylor, Connie Gilchrist, Claude Stroud. Teleplay: Charles Beaumont and William D. Gordon, based on the short novel (“Composition for Four Hands”) by Hilda Lawrence. Director: Robert Douglas.

   Ralph Manson (Michael Rennie) simply can’t believe his luck. First, he embezzles $200,000; but the person who can pin Ralph’s malfeasance on him, Robbie Cory (Rees Vaughn), goes missing. Just when everyone thinks Robbie may be dead, however, he shows up with the evidence against Ralph.

   But Ralph’s luck still holds: Nobody knows Robbie has returned, so when he and Robbie get into a violent argument — during which Ralph, craven coward that he is, begs Robbie to give him at least a head start — Ralph loses control and kills Robbie.

   When his head clears, Ralph sets about making this murder look like a suicide. He takes Robbie’s body upstairs in the Manson mansion (his place in name only, since he has married into the millions belonging to his wife, Nora, played by Phyllis Thaxter). He hangs Robbie’s corpse from a chandelier and proceeds to type out a suicide note.

   But while he’s in the throes of composition, Nora, one floor down, hears him and goes upstairs to Robbie’s room, where she sees Ralph typing and quickly realizes his deception. Just when Ralph’s goose looks like it’s cooked, however, Nora tries to run away but tumbles down the stairs. The doctor will diagnose full-body paralysis and aphasia, duration unknowable.

   So Ralph’s luck STILL holds, since Nora can’t do or say anything. All he has to do is wait until she’s alone and overdose her cocoa or quietly smother her in her sleep — whatever the occasion might call for; it’s just a matter of time.

   But Ralph’s luck will run out when he fails to anticipate just how eloquent a completely paralyzed person can be.

   This one’s worth watching just to see Michael Rennie playing against type; here he’s a despicable gigolo rather than his normal stalwart authority figure. Rennie’s criminous credits include, but are not limited to: The Patient Vanishes (1941), Uneasy Terms (as hardboiled P.I. Slim Callaghan, 1948), Phone Call from a Stranger (1952), 5 Fingers (1952), Les Miserables (1952), Dangerous Crossing (1953), Soldier of Fortune (1955), The Third Man TV series (as Harry Lime, 1959-65), two episodes of Batman (as The Sandman, 1966), The Power (1968), and the appearances on The F.B.I.

   James (or Jim) McMullan occasionally got involved with crime in movies or TV: 13 installments of Chopper One (1974), three episodes of Cannon, two of Joe Forrester, three on S.W.A.T., three of Barnaby Jones, She’s Dressed to Kill (TVM, 1979), 14 episodes of Dallas, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).

   You can watch “The Long Silence” on Hulu here.

Editorial Comment: The cover art for the Ace Double paperback (G-539) was done by Bob Schinella. An close-up image can be found on this auction page, at least for now.

MEGAN ABBOTT – Die a Little. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, February 2005.

    There are books that come along, every once in a while — in mystery fiction, that is — which belong almost in a category of their own. Die a Little, a first novel, is one of them.

    It might be described as Southern Calilfornia “noir,” but if I were to say that, it would immediately bring someone like Raymond Chandler to mind, I’m sure. But while the milieu is the same — Los Angeles, Hollywood — brought up to date into the early 50s, rather than the 30s and 40s, this is a book that I can’t imagine Chandler ever having written.

    The problem I’m facing right now is that “noir” is one of those words that means something different to almost everyone. To me it’s when a story is has a sense of darkness to it — well, yes, I know — a sense of desperation and/or despair. Woolrich is noir, and in a way, I can almost imagine that he could have written Die a Little. Almost.

    “Noir” to me is a story that happens to everyday people. Everyday people, that is, who sometimes, not always, have a bit of shady side to them. They find themselves in situations in which they struggle to get to out, and all they do is find themselves more and more caught up in the webs that fate has trapped them in.

    “Noir” is not everyday cheap thugs messing up their own lives in crummy, violent ways. “Noir” is not a private eye going about his everyday business, snooping into the business of others. “Noir” is not bizarre sex, the kinky stuff. Although, on the other hand — and this is important — any of these might be. It’s the tone, it’s the feeling, and it’s instinctive. I know it when I read it. And this book has it.

    “Noir” from a female point of view. Megan Abbott is not the first woman to write noir, but no one, male or female, has used the female point of view in quite the same way before — that of fascination and frustration, worry and envy. Could Woolrich have written this book? Keep reading.

    Lora King is a schoolteacher. Her brother Bill works for the L.A. district attorney’s office. They seem very close to each other, at least so far as the reader can tell from the way Lora tells the story. We never are privy to any of Bill’s thoughts, only Lora’s, and when Bill falls in love with — and marries — a victim of a minor automobile accident named Alice, it is, although she does not quite say this (although she does), it is as though her world has been turned upside down. And inside out.

    Alice, shall we say, is flamboyant, glittery, coarse (in a refined way), loud, trashy, with a mysterious (or even worse, dishonorable) past, with uncouth (and couth) friends and associates, but mostly uncouth, as Lora quickly discovers — very much the opposite of the siblings Laura and Bill. Bill is enchanted, Lora is protective, and Lora (although she never says so) is fascinated. Alice is a someone who has lived. Bill and Lora, up to now, never have.

    There is an eerie sense of mystery that envelops the three of them, so massively that at times there seems to be no room to breathe, for either the characters or the reader. When Lora goes with Alice to visit the latter’s friend Lois, Lora briefly eavesdrops on the other two when they do not know she is listening. From page 71, here is how she tells what happens:

    Lora begins to investigate Alice, her past, and the hold she has on her brother. From pages 110-111:

    In a book like this, it is the men who are the fragile ones. Alice is obviously the strongest, most inscrutable, of the three, but Lora, as it turns out — but that would be telling.

Note: A shorter version of this review appeared in Historical Novels Review.

MARCUS SAKEY – The Blade Itself. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover: January 2007; reprint paperback, November 2007.

   Danny, a former small time criminal, has lived as a “civilian” for years, since a pawn-shop burglary went horribly wrong. Now his former partner Evan — the man who made things go horribly wrong — is out of prison and has come looking for Danny.

   The latter starts to make all the wrong decisions, putting himself and his longtime love into jeopardy, even as he rationalizes every decision he makes as the right one to get Evan out of his life. His choices start to become more and more like choices his former, criminal self would have made.

   In this sense, though not in every sense, The Blade Itself (the title is from Homer) is a noir novel. The noir quality is also supported by the vivid Chicago setting and unflinching descriptions of the unglamorous world of small-time criminals, young men living “the life” because they don’t see the possibility or the point of anything else.

   I won this book playing trivia at one mystery convention or another, but it’s worth paying for. Recommended.

MARCUS SAKEY – Good People. Onyx, paperback, 2009. Hardcover edition: Dutton, August 2008.

   I was prepared for a good read based on a strong recommendation by the co-owner of my local mystery bookstore, somewhat bolstered by Dennis Lehane’s blurb that concludes by anointing Sakey “as exactly the electric jolt American crime fiction needs.”

   A young couple, burdened with financial problems and their continuing, unsuccessful attempts to have a child, have taken in a boarder. After his sudden death (apparently from natural causes), when they go in to clear out the apartment, they find a cache of several hundred thousand dollars.

   When the “good people” decide to keep the money and compound their crime by lying repeatedly to the police, the tenant’s former partners in a bank job that had netted them the money, learning of their partner’s death, lay siege to the couple.

   The situation continues to spiral downward, with the innocent (the wife’s sister) suffering more than the guilty. There’s a “happy” ending of sorts for the couple, who, because of their duplicity, get the baby they want but don’t deserve, an ending that left a sour taste in my mouth.

   The only “jolt” I got from this contemporary noir, cobbled together from shopworn materials put to better use by any number of better writers, going back decades, was when I thought of the eight dollars I wasted. It’s enough to make me, finally, decide to pull my library card out of storage and limit my purchases to less chancy ware.

DAVID FULMER – The Fall. Five Stones Press, trade paperback, March 2010.

Genre:   Mystery/amateur detective. Leading character:  Richard Zale; standalone. Setting:   New York City/Pennsylvania.

First Sentence:   Later, after it was all over, I spent some time thinking about how it was for him at the end.

   Actor and voice-over artist Richard Zale makes the trip back to his hometown after learning about the death of a childhood friend. While feeling guilty for having been out of touch for so long may have drawn him back, questions about his friend’s death keep him there. Why would someone terrified of heights commit suicide by jumping from an outcrop of rock?

   The common man in an uncommon situation is a theme I appreciate, when done well, and Fulmer does it very well. At the same time, he wisely gives his protagonist, Richard Zale, skills to survive, having been a Vietnam veteran and a former boxer.

   It’s this type of detail I appreciate as it makes the character’s actions logical and reasonable. Yet he balances the survival attributes off with a man who is questions his career and can look at his current life in relationship to his past.

   This makes the character interesting and compelling to read. Zale is not, however, the only well-developed character. The supporting characters not only come to life under Fulmer’s deft hand, but ultimately provide the adage that people are not always what they seem.

   This leads to the plot; one which starts with memories triggered by an old song. It is not a story of high action, but one earmarked by subtlety and answers which lead to more questions and with just the right bitter sweetness in the relationships. Perceived motives change and tension increases nicely with the story to a suspenseful and unexpected conclusion.

   As in all his books, Fulmer takes us to the location of his characters and allows us to hear their voices. His dialogue is natural and easy. Fulmer makes a very successful transition from historical mysteries to the contemporary in this very good character-driven story.

   I highly recommend this book, and every book this man writes.

Rating:   Very Good.

           Novels:     # = Early last century (1907-1913) Creole PI Valentine St. Cyr.

    * Chasing the Devil’s Tail. Poisoned Pen Press, hardcover, November 2001. Shamus award winner. [#]

    * Jass. Harcourt Books, hardcover, January 2005. [#]
    * Rampart Street. Harcourt Books, hardcover, January 2006. [#]
    * The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues. Harcourt Books, hardcover, January 2007
    * The Blue Door. Harcourt Books, hardcover, January 2008. Shamus award nomination.

    * Lost River. Harcourt Books, hardcover, November 2008. [#]
    * The Last Time. Stay Thirsty Press, digital Kindle book, June 2009.
    * The Fall. Five Stones Press, trade paperback, March 2010.

CARTER DICKSON – He Wouldn’t Kill Patience. William Morrow & Co., US, hardcover, 1944. Wm.Heinemann, UK, hc, 1944. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Dell #370, mapback edition, 1954; Berkley X1339, pb, 1966; International Polygonics, 1988.

   The only reputedly good Sir Henry Merrivale I had not read before now, Patience had been set aside by me as a little treasure to be opened someday. I decided to read this weekend and I quite enjoyed it.

   Other critics and readers, including Doug Greene, have noted the problems with the later HM novels (particularly the last two), with the great HM becoming completely farcical and rather repellently reactionary.

   But back to Patience….

   This is the one involving a mysterious gassing deaths in a locked and sealed room of a London zoo director and a snake named Patience. It’s soon suspected that murder is involved!

   Sir Henry, who appears in the first few pages, is on hand to solve the crime, along with Inspector Masters, who does very little, and a pair of rival magicians, one male and one female, who provide Carr’s much favored bickering love interest.

   I found the obligatory bickering lovers easier to take here because they are theatrical people to start with (and the man actually is not that bad). No other memorable characters outside a splendidly misanthropic zoo caretaker, but they are sufficient and not irritating (except for a middle-aged woman who at least is meant to be irritating).

   There is some fine slapstick humor at Merrivale’s expense in the beginning of the tale, and he is in good form throughout it. The zoo setting is nicely none, amusing and sinister by turns, and it is merged with the the current London Blitz very effectively.

   Near the end something happens which may seem absurd, but it is all beautifully explained a few pages later.

   Ironically, the weakest part of this book may be the sealed room problem, the explanation of which may disappoint some by being not quite so miraculous. But it is fairly clued, as is the identity of the murderer. This may not be considered one of the great Carr’s, but, all in all, I found it one of his more entertaining tales.

Editorial Comment:   Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr, aka Carter Dickson. This is the fifth in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. The Problem of the Green Capsule was the fourth, and you can read it here.

WARNING: PLOT ALERT!   In Comment #8, some aspects of the solution are discussed.

GUY ENDORE – Detour at Night. Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1959. Paperback reprint: Award, 1965. British edition: Victor Gollancz, UK, 1959, as Detour Through Devon.

   A former professor of linguistics and now one of the hopeless and homeless, Frank Willis wants to go nowhere and is in no hurry to get there. Nonetheless, by mistake he ends up in Devon, Indiana, where he had been reared in an orphanage, attended and later taught at the college, married the richest woman in town, and been found not guilty of having murdered one of his students.

   On this cold, wet night in Devon, Willis relives some of his experiences and makes the reader aware of his fascination with language, the ways and the whys of speech, a fascination that I would hope any reader would be caught up in.

   When Willis is not examining and, indeed, savoring the language, he conveys considerable tension over the crime that he is suspected of having committed, a crime the details of which are not learned until halfway through the book.

   Not a great mystery, by any means, in the sense of whodunit. Yet Willis is a gripping character, caught in a web he knows he can’t escape. Despite my being unable to give him much sympathy, as he seems to be looking for, I would deem this novel as most enjoyable.

  Criminous Bibliography:     [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

ENDORE, (Samuel) GUY. 1900-1970.
   The Man from Limbo (n.) Farrar 1930
   The Werewolf of Paris (n.) Farrar 1933 [Paris; 1871]

   Methinks the Lady (n.) Duell 1945
   Detour at Night (n.) Simon 1959

Editorial Comment:   While for most of his career Guy Endore was also a well-known screenwriter, it’s the second of these novels that he’s most famous for. The Werewolf of Paris is without a doubt an absolute classic.

   I wish I could thank Bill for his review of this book. It shows a side to Endore as a writer that I knew nothing about before.