KINKY FRIEDMAN – Elvis, Jesus & Coca Cola. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1993. Reprint paperback: Bantam, 1996. The Kinkster #6.

   Admit it now: it’s a hell of a title, quintessentially American, and no one but Friedman could — or would — have come up with it. Love him or loathe him, and lots do each, he’s an American original.

   Kinky’s got the blues. One of his best friends has died, and it’s hit him hard. The friend was working on a movie about Elvis impersonators, and his father asks Kinky to see if he can find the working copy of the film, which is missing.

   Kinky doesn’t figure that will be any problem, but something else quickly becomes one — Uptown Judy (to distinguish her from Downtown Judy), one of his occasional ladies, is missing from her apartment and there are bloodstains on the floor.

   Then the dead friend’s assistant who was supposed to have information about the missing film turns up murdered. The Kinkster and his motley crew of assistants go to work trying to make sense of it all.

   I’m always at somewhat of a loss trying to write about Friedman’s books. There’s no way in the world to pass along the flavor, and the flavor is what it’s all about. The plots range from very little to pretty weak, and we aren’t talking in-depth characterization or narrative flow. We’re talking about a unique brand of prose. Sayin’s. Aphorisms.

   A way of writing, and writing about life, that will strike you either as wise and very, very funny, as it does me; or profanely, obscenely, and misogynistically unfunny, as it has others. It’s said too often and is too often untrue, but trust me this time: he’s one of a kind. Sui generis.

   Whether that’s a blessing or a curse is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

   I think he’s a hoot, myself.

Editorial Comment:   I never met Barry myself. He lived in Texas, I lived in Connecticut. He attended mystery conventions, I seldom did nor have I since. But we were in DAPA-Em together, and we enjoyed each other’s reviews there, and swapped mailing comments there. We were friends, albeit through the mail and through each other’s zines only.

   Barry worked for the Dallas Fire Department until his retirement in 1989, but he didn’t discover mystery fandom for another two years or so. Ah, Sweet Mysteries was the name of the zine that he produced for the apa, each of them running 20 pages or more. Besides his own zine, his reviews began popping up in all of the major, well-known mystery fanzines of the day: The Armchair Detective, CADS, Deadly Pleasures and many others. You name it, he was there.

   Not only was he prolific, but he always managed to put his finger on what made each novel he reviewed work, or (in such cases) why it didn’t. Instinctively and incisively, he seemed to know detective and mystery fiction inside out. He had a critical eye, but he invariably used it softly while cutting immediately to the essence of a story.

   Barry died in 1996 — suddenly, without any warning. George Easter, who still publishes Deadly Pleasures, almost immediately set up the Barry Awards in his name, to honor the Best in Detective and Mystery Fiction on a yearly basis. See George’s website for more information.

   I’m pleased more than I can say that Barry’s wife Ellen has granted me permission to reprint Barry’s reviews from Ah, Sweet Mysteries on this blog. Thank you, Ellen, very much.

ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS. Universal Pictures, 1940. Allan Jones, Nancy Kelly, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Robert Cummings, Mary Boland, Peggy Moran, William Frawley, Leo Carillo. Screenplay: Gertrude Pursell, Charles Grayson, John Grant (uncredited), adapted by Kathryn Scolla & Francis Martin from the novel Love Insurance, by Earl Derr Biggers. Songs by Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein & Dorothy Fields. Director: A. Edward Sutherland

   This was the film debut of Abbott and Costello (Lou Costello had appeared in some silent films in bit parts) and it leaves you wanting more of them and less of almost everything else in the film save for Robert Cummings and Peggy Moran, including the forgettable Kern, Hammerstein, and Fields songs Allan Jones regularly breaks into.

   That to one side, it’s a pretty good screwball romantic comedy that benefits from an expert cast.

   Robert Cummings is Steve Harper, a less than bright playboy who has fallen in love with Cynthia Merrick (Nancy Kelly), but who finds his way to true love opposed on two fronts — first by a series of mishaps with Cynthia’s Aunt Kitty (Mary Boland) and secondly by his ex-girlfriend, Mickey Fitzgerald (Peggy Moran), who isn’t planning on letting him get away.

   Enter Steve’s old pal Lucky Moore (Allan Jones, father of singer Jack Jones). Lucky is an insurance man par excellence, and has a bright idea — he’ll sell Steve a $1 million dollar policy guaranteeing that Steve and Cynthia end up together. It’s a cinch. Love insurance — why didn’t anyone think of it before?

   Lucky’s father isn’t so sure about that so he makes Lucky find an underwriter for the ‘sure thing’ policy — nightclub owner William Frawley, who assigns two lunkheads in his employ to make sure things don’t go wrong — Bud and Lou …

   Obviously just about everyone in the film is suffering from a serious lack of good judgment. It’s one of those plots where if anyone listened or paused to think, the whole facade would crumble. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the characters, no one even thinks about having a rational thought for the span of the film.

   Earl Derr Biggers’ novel was filmed before in 1919 and 1924, like his highly famous Seven Keys to Baldpate and The Agony Column, both highly popular works and filmed multiple times. (Readers here hardly need reminding Biggers was also the creator of Charlie Chan.)

   As Mickey schemes to get Steve back and Steve tries to win over Aunt Kitty, the problems multiply, and bumbling Bud and Lou don’t help. And when Lucky meets Cynthia he falls head over heels for her and she for him.

   Cynthia sails for the Tropics to get away from the mess, and naturally Steve follows with Mickey in tow, Lucky along to sabotage his own best interests, and Bud and Lou dispatched to make sure Steve and Cynthia get together and stay together. Once there Leo Carillo gets thrown in the mix as a Latin Lothario.

   Despite the minor songs, the film is bright and funny, and if you fins yourself wishing for more of Bud and Lou or even Cummings and Moran, Allan Jones and Nancy Kelly are attractive leads, and if they can’t quite compete with the zaniness of the others involved, they handle this extremely well. It’s not their fault that Cummings has a thousand times more screen presence than Jones, or that Peggy Moran has all the best lines other than the boys (Bud and Lou).

   There is an abbreviated version of ‘Who’s On First?’ on hand and several of the boys routines as well as the usual wise cracks and smart lines:

   There is also what may well be the first Humphrey Bogart joke on film:

   One Night in the Tropics is a good minor musical that moves fast and features bright players and crackling dialogue. Other than those they did at MGM, production values were somewhat higher than later Abbott and Costello films, and the cast is excellent.

   That said, you are bound to wish there had been more of the boys and Cummings and Moran and less of Jones and Kelly.

   The boys’ next outing was Buck Privates, and they never took a back seat to anyone again in their own films, though Kathryn Grayson and John Carroll get quite a bit of screen time in Rio Rita where the boys are slipped into an old plot.

   Overall this one is bright and funny, and for once the romantic comedy aspect is good enough to hold your attention when the boys are off screen. But it’s a shame Peggy Moran and Robert Cummings weren’t teamed again. They are almost as much fun as Bud and Lou, which you can’t always say about the romantic leads in this kind of film.

Note: Thanks to the IMDB website for providing the exact wording of the first two sets of quotes.

MILES BURTON – Death Visits Downspring. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941. UK edition published as Up the Garden Path, Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1941.

   It was 1941, the war clearly was here to stay for some time, and Americans evidently were ready to read about it in their English detective fiction. John Dickson Carr had placed Murder in the Submarine Zone (Nine–And Death Makes Ten) the year before, and in 1941 Agatha Christie would ask her readers the tantalizing question N or M? while Margery Allingham would investigate a Traitor’s Purse.

   For his part, John Street that year contributed two wartime detective novels with espionage elements, one a “John Rhode,” They Watched by Night (Signal for Death), the other, the title under review here, a Miles Burton. While They Watched by Night is the better of the two tales, Death Visits Downspring makes an entertaining read. (I use the American title to distinguish the book from a 1949 John Rhode novel that in England also used the title Up the Garden Path!)

   The novel opens with murder appearing at night on the doorstep of Downspring’s own police sergeant. His wife and a woman friend of hers are discussing the upcoming dance in aid of the Comforts Fund (we learn the “Raggle Taggle Band” has been engaged — apparently a good thing!) when a knock is heard at the door.

   Mr. Noakes, the butler at Valley View, the local great house, has come to talk to the police sergeant, but the latter man was called away suddenly. As a disappointed Noakes leaves and the police sergeant’s wife shuts the door behind him, he is violently struck down. Murder!

   Inspector Arnold is sent by the Yard to take over the case and, being Arnold, he fails to make much progress for much of the novel. (Arnold actually does manage to solve several solo cases — apparently Street wanted to show that miracles can happen occasionally.)

   Meanwhile, there is a second murder — another bludgeoning — and it appears that somewhere in the neighborhood intelligence is being transmitted to the enemy. (German planes periodically drop bombs and engage in aerial fights during the story.)

   Miles Burton’s brilliant amateur gentleman detective, Desmond Merrion, is working in intelligence for the duration of the war (as Street himself once did) and he arrives on the scene in the last 40% of the novel to put an end to the espionage and, incidentally, solve the murders too.

   Miles Burton’s novels often tend to be fairly cozy affairs, and Death Visits Downspring is no exception to this general rule. As usual, Street writes with authority about village life (“The inspector’s experience had taught him that when a native said it as impossible to lose the way it turned out to be exceptionally difficult to find”), and much of the pleasure to be derived from the novel comes from its authentic atmosphere.

   No real gentry appear, despite the fact there is a great house, Valley View, in the vicinity. Valley View, we learn, is modernistic barracks of a place that was built built by a wealthy, knighted pickle king who has passed on to that great cannery in the sky; and it is now occupied by strangers from London, crippled Alvar Dorn, his striking daughter Roma and their three pugnacious Cockney maids.

   Similarly, at nearby Brook Bungalow live other relative newcomers, romance novelist Ellen Daintry and her evacuated, rambunctious nephew, Peter. Additional characters like Captain Baldock, tradesman Mr. Fisherton, commercial traveler Charlie Gatwick and market gardener Reuben Pentecost are not exactly out of the top drawer, and they are none the less interesting for that!

   In the novel there are two mysteries: who committed the murders and how exactly is information transmitted to the enemy. While neither mystery is fiendishly difficult for the seasoned reader, both should provide sufficient entertainment to the mystery buff. Combining these mysteries with the wartime village atmosphere, John Street gave readers an enjoyable detective novel.

ALAN BRADLEY – The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. Delacorte Press, hardcover, March 2010. Trade paperback: Bantam, December 2010.

Genre:   Traditional mystery. Leading character:   Flavia de Luce, 2nd in series. Setting:   England, 1950s.

First Sentence:   I was lying dead in the churchyard.

    Ten-year-old Flavia de Luce is ignored by her father, and continually set upon by her sisters. To compensate, she has her grandfather’s old laboratory, where she indulges her love of chemistry and skill with poisons, her bicycle, Gladys, and her skill at solving puzzles.

   In The Weed That Strings Flavia befriends a beloved BBC puppeteer, Rupert Porson, and his “assistant,” who are stranded with a broken-down fan. When Rupert is electrocuted during a performance of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Flavia knows it was no accident and finds that Rupert’s claims of not knowing anyone in the area were less than truthful.

   Flavia de Luce has quickly become one of my favorite characters. At ten years old, she is still a young girl, albeit a brilliant one, with no friends, a father who ignores all his children, and two sisters who continually abuse her, both physically and emotionally.

   I was very pleased by a wonderful scene with Flavia’s Aunt Felicity. Flavia has the logic and observation skill of Sherlock Holmes and thinks of everything in terms of their chemical composition.

   Flavia is not the only wonderful character, however. Bradley has a gift for creating an ensemble of quirky, yet believable, characters. I particularly enjoy Dogger, the shell-shocked ex-WWII soldier with pre-cognitive abilities; Dieter, the German who became a prisoner of war after being shot down due to the Brontës; and Inspector Hewitt, who takes Flavia seriously and realizes it is through her knowledge and access to people in the town that allowed the case to be solved.

   The story is a wonderful blend of science, music, art and literature, and is set at a very interesting time. World War II has ended, yet there are still issues of the aftermath. While television is coming into being, radio is still the prevalent household entertainment.

   It is the 1950s, yet the family feels more Victorian than modern. The story builds more slowly than the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and employs less humor, although it is still there.

   There is quite a long set-up to the murder, but it still has great impact when it happens. It reminds me a bit of Agatha Christie who liked to introduce all the characters in order to provide plenty of suspects prior to the murder.

   And, as often with Christie, I certainly did not identify the villain prior to it being revealed. This is not a “young adult” mystery, but a very good mystery whose protagonist happens to be a young adult. I am looking forward to Flavia’s next case.

Rating:   Very Good Plus.

The Flavia de Luce Series:

      The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)
      The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010)
      Seeds of Antiquity
      A Red Herring Without Mustard
      Death in Camera
      The Nasty Light of Day

Note:   Not all of these have publication dates; it is likely that most have not even been written yet.   Source: The Flavia de Luce website.

THE LOOKOUT. Miramax, 2007. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Sergio Di Zio. Screenwriter & director: Scott Frank.

   Here’s a crime film that I doubt ever played anywhere in Connecticut, and if it did, it passed through with no notice at all.

   It’s flawed, perhaps even fatally, but the performances done to perfection all the way through, some of which I’ll remember for a long time, and I recommend the movie highly. Two thumbs up, using both hands.

   Now that I have the preliminaries out of the way, what’s it about? Even as the movie begins, very very slowly in paving its own deliberate way, the title’s there in your mind, and all odds are that as you’re watching, you’ll know, like me, exactly what’s going to happen, eventually.

   What this is, is the story of Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from beginning to end. A star hockey player in high school, his world is turned upside down when a terrific automobile accident kills the couple in back seat, forces the amputation of his girl friend’s leg – she was sitting in the passenger seat beside him – he was driving, and it was his fault – and he’s trying to put something that resembles a life back together again.

   Gordon-Levitt is a marvelous young actor. He could have played his character’s obviously diminished mental capabilities too broadly, so that we can’t possibly help but take notice, but what he does, he does subtly, and he does it right. Just a bit of clumsiness now, a touch of awkwardness then, and in between, stopping ever once in while to take out his notebook to be sure he knows what he should be doing next.

   (One flaw here is the unanswered question as to how Chris Pratt would ever be allowed to drive a car, but he does; otherwise there’d be no way for him to get to the bank where he works as the overnight janitor. He hopes to work his way up to a teller.)

   I used the word Bank just a second ago. As soon as you the viewer see this, and you think of the movie’s title, you say to yourself, I know where this movie’s going. And you’d be right.

   Two more good performances. First by Matthew Goode, as the scummy but utterly convincing fellow who convinces Chris that robbing the bank would be a good idea, and secondly by Isla Fisher, the girl who helps in the convincing part by seducing Chris – there’s no better word for it – into taking on the role they have planned for him – that being, of course, the double-barreled task of letting Goode’s gang in and acting as Lookout once they do.

   (Another flaw is that once she’s played her part, Isla Fisher’s character has no place to go, and she flat out disappears from the rest of the movie.)

   The bank robbery does not go well (do they ever?) and we’ll leave it at that, although there is still a long portion of the movie yet to go. Those who have been waiting for the action to start — well, their patience is at last rewarded.

   At which point in these comments I see I have not mentioned Jeff Daniels, and I should have. He plays Chris’s roommate Lewis in the apartment they share.

   They make a good twosome, as Lewis is blind, but outwardly cheerful about it. (Inwardly we are not so sure.) It is not easy playing someone who’s blind, but Daniels, brusque and slightly overpowering in the role, is nonetheless charming and perhaps not as carefree as he lets on.

   Pfui. When I sat down and started writing this review, I intended to keep it short. And here am I telling you the whole story. But I’ve gone back over what I’ve written, and I don’t see anything I’d care to cut. Sorry.

   (One final flaw. This movie, carefully paced, ends more happily than it has any right to be. I’ll stop here. If you see the movie, or if you have seen it, you’ll know what I’m saying. Not that I have anything against happy endings, but if I’d been in charge, I’d have made some changes, if you know what I mean.)

HENRY KANE – Trinity in Violence. Avon 618, paperback original, 1955; reprinted as Avon T-264. Signet G2551, pb, October 1964.

   Here we have three novelettes featuring Henry Kane’s long-running New York detective Peter Chambers. The Chambers stories tend to be pretty routine private-eye capers, but Kane’s handling of this stock material is quite unusual. The characters deliver their lines in a peculiarly arch fashion, which veteran PI fans are equally likely to find either refreshingly novel or plain silly.

   Also, in the midst of typical guns-and-gangsters melees, Chambers is wont to toss off sly asides to the readers, saying, in effect, “How about this for a typical private-eye cliche?” The Chambers books can provide enjoyable light entertainment if the reader finds Kane’s quirky, playful approach palatable.

   Best of these tales is “Skip a Beat,” with one of those once-popular story ideas you don’t see anymore: A famous newspaper columnist is about to announce that a leading citizen is actually a closet Commie, but he gets knocked off before he can spill it; Chambers cleans it up.

   Slapdash plotting comes to the fore in “Slaughter on Sunday,” in which a prominent hood hires Chambers to extricate him from a murder frame; it involves a sort of locked-room problem (a transparent one, at best), a gimmick for faking paraffin-test results, and several gaping plot holes.

   “Far Cry” finds Kane’s durable “private richard” romancing a hood’s mistress and breaking up a hot-car exporting racket.

   Some of the better Chambers novels include A Halo for Nobody (1947); Until You Are Dead (1951); Too French and Too Deadly (1955; another locked room opus, better than the one above, but no challenge to John Dickson Carr) and Death of a Flack (1961).

   Chambers’ female counterpart, Marla Trent, appears in Private Eyeful (1960),and the two collaborate in Kisses of Death (1962). Avoid at all costs the dreadful X-rated Peter Chambers novels published by Lancer in the early 1970s!

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

      Previously reviewed on this blog:

The Midnight Man (by Bill Pronzini, 1001 Midnights)
A Corpse for Christmas (by Steve Lewis)
Laughter in the Alehouse (by Al Hubin)
Until You Are Dead (by Steve Lewis)

HENRY KANE – The Midnight Man. The Macmillan Co. (A Cock Robin Mystery), hardcover, 1965. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, September 1966. Paperback reprint: Raven House #9, 1981.

   Henry Kane is best known as the creator of Peter Chambers, a tough but urbane New York “private richard” whose adventures were quite popular in the late Forties and throughout the Fifties.

   (Some of the early Chambers short stories appeared in the sophisticated men’s magazine Esquire, which once devoted an editorial to Kane, calling him an “author, bon vivant, stoic, student, tramp, lawyer, philosopher … the lad who works off a hangover conceived in a Hoboken dive by swooshing down large orders of Eggs Benedict at the Waldorf on the morning after … the man who can use polysyllables on Third Avenue and certain ancient monosyllables on Park Avenue.”)

   Kane wrote dozens of novels and scores of stories featuring the exploits of Peter Chambers; and yet, ironically enough, his most memorable private eye is not Chambers but a 250-pound ex-cop named McGregor. In fact, his three best mystery novels are those in which McGregor is featured — The Midnight Man, Conceal and Disguise (1966), and Laughter in the Alehouse (1968).

   Like Chambers, McGregor is urbane, literate, and a connoisseur of beautiful women, gourmet food, and vintage booze. Unlike Chambers, he is prone to pithy literary quotes instead of suave wisecracks, and prefers to use wits and guile in place of guns and fists to solve his cases.

   He is not a career PI with an office and a secretary; he is a newly retired New York City police inspector, “pushing fifty, ramrod-straight and robustly handsome,” known around headquarters as “the Old Man,” who dabbles at private investigation (he has a license, of course) just to keep a hand in.

   He is more likable than Chambers, has more depth and sensitivity, and his three cases are less frivolous and more tightly plotted than any of the Chambers stories.

   In The Midnight Man, McGregor has undertaken the job of closing down an illegal after-hours enterprise at a fashionable Upper East Side nightclub. The case begins as a simple one — the club’s neighbors don’t like the idea of drunks carousing in the wee hours — but it soon turns complicated: The after-hours operation is being run by a major New York mob figure named Frank Dinelli, whom McGregor would love to put in the slammer.

   When the late-night doorman, whom McGregor has bribed and who was instrumental in a successful raid on the club, is shot to death practically in McGregor’s presence (he arrives just in time to grapple with the killer), the case becomes personal.

   Working with his pal, Detective Lieutenant Kevin Cohen, he follows leads that take him to the studio of millionaire photographer George Preston, to the offices of Park Avenue dermatologist Robert Jackson, and to a fancy loan-sharking operation that Dinelli is sponsoring.

   They also take him to a second murder, this one featuring an ingenious method of execution, which McGregor solves through the same combination of deduction and guile with which he wraps up the rest of the case.

   Kane has a fine ear for dialogue; there is some witty repartee here, especially between McGregor and a variety of New York cabdrivers. Of course, cops don’t really talk the way McGregor and Cohen do, but that’s a minor flaw.

   As the jacket blurb says, “If high crime in high society is your cup of tea, you’ll especially relish this fast, crisp, upper-echelon saga of mayhem in Manhattan.” And from Anthony Boucher: “Kane has, as usual, a pretty sense of story-shape and a nice way with clues. There is a cleverly gimmicked murder, a lot of colorful night life, and much fun (and good food) for all.”

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

   Call this post “Cataloging My Collection.”

   I have no idea if anyone is interested or not, but here goes anyway. Part of what I do in my spare time is go through boxes of paperbacks I have in dead storage, catalog the books I find inside, and rebox them and put them away, in places where theoretically I can find them again easily. I’m still working on the latter part of that.

   I’ve been doing this since the Fall of 1968. I know this exactly since that was the first semester I was not in school, either as a student or as a teacher. It was also the year the Detroit Tigers were in the World Series (I’m talking baseball here) and I remember typing up books individually on 3×5 index cards sitting with an electric typewriter before the television set.

   Once I started my first full-time teaching job here in Connecticut, I gave that up, but I made sure I brought all the books — and the 3×5 index cards — with me when we moved. I don’t know what year it was that we got our Apple IIe (with around 64K of memory), but when we did, I transferred all of the info on the cards into computer files, and started adding the books I’d accumulated in the meantime.

   These files now exist only as a notebook filled to its two-inch capacity with printouts from a dot matrix printer. I’m sure it would be impossible to read the floppy disks now, if I still had them, but I have the data. (I also gradually discarded the 3×5 index cards, in case you were wondering.)

   When we started using PC’s, I didn’t transfer any of the old data, but I continued on, but essentially starting over, adding more and more books to a new computer file of data. I’ve always used word-processing programs, rather than database ones, and luckily I began with WordPerfect, which I still use, and so far I’ve had no problem with losing data to formats no longer readable.

   In any case, here’s a small segment of the PC-based data. If you see any missing books or authors, either I don’t have them — or I do, and the data’s in my notebook with the dot matrix printouts. (A third possibility, of course — and for new books, an extremely high one — is that I have it and haven’t Gotten To It yet.)

   The box numbers are included, along with an indication of the condition. (I didn’t do this originally.) There are also some notes about the authors themselves and cover artists, too, but I haven’t done this consistently over the years.

GENEVIEVE HOLDEN –
   Something’s Happened to Kate (Ace G-558; c.1958) M305 vg-g
LARRY HOLDEN –
   Dead Wrong (Pyramid G306; c.1957; Pyr edn, 1957) M152 vg+
   Hide-Out (Eton 132; c.1953) M239 fair-poor
WILLIAM HOLDER –
   The Case of the Dead Divorcee (Signet 1539; c.1958; 1st pr., June 1958) M22 fine
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING –
   The Blank Wall (Pocket 662; c.1947; 1st PB Pr., Jan 1950) M28 good
   The Blank Wall (Ace Double G-512; c.1947) M158 g-vg
   The Girl Who Had to Die (Ace Double G-512; c.1940) M158 g-vg
   Kill Joy (Ace Double G-534; c.1942) M37 vg-g
   Net of Cobwebs (Ace Double G-530; c.1945) M94 vg+
   Speak of the Devil (Ace Double G-534; c.1941) M37 vg-g
   The Unfinished Crime (Ace Double G-530; c.1935,1963) M94 vg+
   Who’s Afraid (Bonded Mystery #14) M179 fair
   Who’s Afraid (Ace Double G-524; c.1940) M89 vg-g
   Widow’s Mite (Ace Double G-524; c.1952-53) M89 vg-g
ISABELLE HOLLAND –
   Counterpoint (Fawcett Crest 24423; c.1980; 1st FC pr., July 1981) M294 n.fine
   The deMaury Papers (Fawcett Crest 23606; c.1977; 1st FC pr.) M323 good
   Flight of the Archangel (Fawcett Crest 20977; c.1985; 1st Ball edn, Dec 1986) M304 n.fine
   A Lover Scorned (Fawcett Crest 21369; c.1986; 1st Ball edn, Nov 1987) M303 fine
REBECCA HOLLAND –
   Danger on Cue (Raven House #18 [60018]; c.1980; 1st pr., June 1980; pub Dec 1980) M280 n.fine
       Note: This is one of two books by this author in CFIV under this pen name.
JIM HOLLIS –
   The Case of the Bludgeoned Teacher (Avon 725; c.c.1955; orig pub as Teach You a Lesson) M19 g-vg
   Teach You a Lesson (see The Case of the Bludgeoned Teacher)
J. HUNTER HOLLY –
   The Assassination Affair (Ace G-636; c.1967; TV tie-in: The Man from UNCLE #10) M189
      Note: Of the two “UNCLE” books written by the author, the other seems to been published only as a British hardcover. She is perhaps known better for her work as an SF-Fantasy writer. (Both of her other two entries in CFIV are SFnal in nature.)
HUGH HOLMAN –
   Another Man’s Poison (Signet 718; c.1947; 1st Signet pr., Apr 1949) M98 vg-fine
   Slay the Murderer (Signet 684; c.1948; 1st Signet pr., Sept 1948) M322 g-vg
TIMOTHY HOLME [UK] –
   The Devil and the Dolce Vita (Futura 3712; c.1982; Futura edn pub 1988) MB286 fair-good
   A Funeral of Gondolas (Futura 3078; c.1981; Futura edn pub 1986) MB286 good
H. H. HOLMES –
   Nine Times Nine (Penguin 553; c.1940; 1st Peng edn, Jan 1945) M47 fair
H. H. HOLMES –
    See also ANTHONY BOUCHER.
HAZEL HOLT –
   Mrs. Malory and a Death in the Family (Signet 21989; c.2006; 1st pr., Nov 2006) M220
   Mrs. Malory and the Only Good Lawyer (Signet 19264; c.1997; 1st Signet pr, Dec 1998) M288
HENRY HOLT [UK] –
   Calling All Cars (Collins Crime Club #12; 7th CC pr., Sept 1936) MB277 poor
ROBERT LAWRENCE HOLT –
   Good Friday (Signet 15703; c.1987; 1st Signet pr., Sept 1988) M143 vg-fine
      Note: The author has only one other entry in CFIV.
SAMUEL HOLT –
   I Know a Trick Worth Two of That (Tor 50463; c.1986; 1st Tor ppbk pr., Mar 1988) M290 vg+
   What I Tell You Three Times Is False (Tor 50465; c.1987; 1st Tor ppbk pr., June 1988) M139 fine
      Note: “Samuel Holt” is a pseudonym of Donald E. Westlake. In all he wrote four books listed in CFIV under this name.
VICTORIA HOLT –
   The Black Opal (Fawcett Crest 22271; c.1993; 1st Ball edn, Jan 1994) RS11 vg
   Bride of Pendorric (Crest t885; c.1963) RS3 vg-g
   The Curse of the Kings (Fawcett Crest Q2215; c.1973; FC edn, Aug 1974) RS10 vg-g
   The King of the Castle (Fawcett Crest T1162; c.1967; 1st FC pr., Aug 1968) RS14 vg+
   Kirkland Revels (Crest M1385; c.1962; 7th FC pr., Mar 1970) RS9 vg-fine
   The Legend of the Seventh Virgin (Fawcett Crest 2-3281; c.1964-65) RS9 vg+
   Lord of the Far Island (Fawcett Crest 2-2874; c.1975; 1st FC pr.) RS10 vg-fine
   The Mask of the Enchantress (Fawcett Crest 2-4418; c.1980; 1st FC pr., Sept 1981) RS2 vg
   Menfreya in the Morning (Crest t1020; c.1966; 1st FC pr., May 1967) RS2 vg-g
   Mistress of Mellyn (Crest t1132; c.1960) RS15 vg+
   The Shadow of the Lynx (Fawcett Crest P1720; c.1971; FC edn, July 1972) RS4 vg+
HUGH HOLTON –
   The Devil’s Shadow (Forge 57042; c.2001; 1st Forge ppbk edn, June 2002) M217
   Windy City (Forge 56714; c.1995; 1st Tor ppbk edn, Apr 1996) M111 vg+

   Uploaded late last week was Part 37 of the Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. In terms of size, it is the longest installment yet, consisting of 84 pages in manuscript form or (for computer buffs) approximately 177K online.

   And of course you’re certainly welcome to stop by and look around. Much of the data consists of the usual: corrections to previous data, added birth and death dates — too many of the latter in recent months, alas — identities behind pen names discovered, settings and series characters added. Even though the closing date of the Bibliography remains fixed at the year 2000, there is no end to the information that keeps coming in.

   The most welcome of the new data is an increased emphasis on biographical information provided for a large number obscure, mostly forgotten writers. Not overwhelmingly so, just enough to remind readers that authors had other parts to their lives as well.

   Here’s an example, beginning with the previous entry for

ÄIDÉ, (Charles) HAMILTON (1826-1906); Born in Paris.

      The Cliff Mystery (Arrowsmith, 1888, hc)
      Morals and Mysteries (Smith, Elder, 1872, hc)
      *-Poet and Peer (Hurst, 1880, hc) Harper, 1880.

          to which has been appended

AIDE, (CHARLES) HAMILTON. Add: moved to England in 1830; educated at Greenwich and University of Bonn, then served in British army until 1857; traveled widely, then lived (and died) in London; multilingual; composed music, painted and wrote poetry and fiction.

   Not all of the authors covered are as obscure, perhaps, as Mr Aide; he was close to the top, alphabetically speaking, that’s all!

      Adapted from an email from David Vineyard:

   Just a heads up for hardboiled fans. BBC7 is currently reading Dashiell Hammett’s Nightmare Town and beginning Sunday will air a full length (90 minute) dramatization of The Big Sleep (Ed Bishop of UFO as Marlowe).

   A dramatic series of Father Brown with Andrew Jack is winding down and there are dramatizations of Poirot and Lord Peter (Ian Carmichael) on going. There is also a scheduled dramatization of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday coming up.

   They recently completed two Dick Francis thrillers and a reading of Edmund Crispin’s Frequent Hearses. They are also concluding The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and about to start Casebook.

   You can still catch the Hammett reading from the beginning for the next three days.

Editorial Comment:   I used “Old Time Radio” as the category to put this post in, rather than create a new one, even though it’s not really correct. After checking out everything that’s available to listen on the BBC7 site, all I can do is wish that days were ten times longer, or if not that, perhaps I needn’t get seven or eight hours of sleep every night?