SUPER-SCIENCE FICTION, February 1958. Cover: Kelly Freas. Overall rating: 2 stars.

JACK VANCE “Worlds of Origin.” Novelette. [Magnus Ridolph #10.] Magnus Ridolph uses cultural analysis to solve a murder in space. Maybe a good idea, but it turns out a bit ridiculous. (1)

ARTHUR ZIRUL “Secret Weapon.” A Trade Bureau agent discovers a planet inhabited by beings with telekinetic powers. Without a name author it must take more than length for novelette status. [The story is two pages longer than the one by Vance.] (2)

KELLER ERNST “The Red, Singing Sands.” A woman must choose which of two beings is her husband and which a Martian. (2)

ROBERT SILVERBERG “Prison Planet.” Novelette. After 500 years of isolation a planet once used for deporting criminals is discovered to be relearning the secret of space travel. Predictable. (3)

CALVIN M. KNOX “The Happy Sleepers.” The world’s population begins to fall into continuous sleep, but without affecting the brain’s activity. (2)     [NOTE: Calvin M. Knox was a pen name of Robert Silverberg.]

RICHARD R. SMITH “The Old Timer.” Two Earthmen learn too late the oldest Martian’s secret (2)

ROBERT F. YOUNG “Time Travel Inc.” An obvious story of two men’s journey through time to witness the Crucifixion. (3)

LEONARD MEARES – Feud at Greco Canyon. The Braddock Detective Agency #4. Robert Hale/Black Horse Western, UK, hardcover, 1994. No other edition known.

   The Braddock Detective Agency consists of a well-matched husband-and-wife pair, Rick and Hattie Braddock. He’s a jack of all trades, having grown up moving all over the west with a travelling repertory group and carnival show. He’s a master of disguise and an actor very much adept at improvised dialogue, a card sharp and a piano player. She’s beautiful and has a past that includes stints as a chorus girl who is skilled at both make-up and characterization, a magician’s assistant, and as a knifethrower’s target. Or in other words, what better pair can you imagine to tackle outlaws, owlhoots and other miscreants of the Old West?

   Well, they do at times have to take cases the Pinkertons would probably pass up, In Feud at Greco Canyon, for example, they’re hired by the well-to-do daughter of the sheriff there who is getting up in years and is doing his best trying to stop a huge feud between the two major landowners in the area. One is a rancher, the other a farmer.

   The Braddocks go in undercover, he as a card sharp, she as a saloon singer. (See above.) The key to stopping the feud turns out to be finding the man who shot and killed one of the riders for one of the two sides, with one on the other accused of the deed and awaiting trial.

   Meares does not take the case all that seriously, however. A light tone prevails. There is a lot more talk than action, and by that I mean a lot. The one shootout at the end takes less a page or two, and what is happening during it is not clearly defined. On the other hand, a subplot consisting of a incipient love affair between a deputy sheriff and the new schoolmarm takes up a couple of full chapters in comparison, which may (or may not) tell you all you need to know before you decide to seek this one out (or maybe not).

   In its own way, though, this one is fun to read, somewhat on the level of a Durango Kid B-western from the 40s. (I mean no disrespect here. The Durango Kid was my favorite cowboy in the movies when I was a kid.) Meares was an Australian writer of mostly westerns, with a few mysteries thrown in, but close to 750 books in all. Some of his westerns were published in the US by Bantam as by Marshall McCoy. These include books in both his “Larry & Stretch” and “Nevada Jim Gage” series, both of which became collectors’ items here for a while, perhaps more for their James Bama covers.
   

      The Rick & Hattie Braddock series —

Colorado Runaround, 1991.
The Major and the Miners, 1992.
Five Deadly Shadows, 1993.
Feud at Greco Canyon, 1994.

Today, March 5th —

   I went to the toy store and asked the assistant where the Schwarznegger dolls were, and he replied, “Aisle B, back.”

CONVICT’S CODE. Monogram Pictures, 1939. Robert Kent, Anne Nagel, Sidney Blackmer, Victor Kilian, Norman Willis, Maude Eburne, Ben Alexander. Director: Lambert Hillyer. Currently available for viewing here on YouTube.

   You’d have to be a real fan of old movies to recognize more than one or two of the names above with resorting to IMDb to look them up, but they were all professional performers with loads of credits. I imagine Ben Alexander’s name stands out the most, and his was only a small part. I recognized him by his voice before I saw who he was. He was very young, only 28 at the time, although he’d been making movies since he was five.

   Robert Kent was a complete unknown, but with 71 credits included on IMDb, obviously I haven’t been paying attention. In Convict’s Code, he plays the convict, obviously the leading role. He plays Dave Tyler, a former football star who’s been in prison for three years, locked up for a robbery he didn’t commit.

   Released on parole, he vows to prove his innocence, but the six eyewitnesses who testified against him seem all to have died or disappeared. This is not surprising, at least to the audience, who all knew this is what was going to happen as soon as he shook the warden’s hand goodbye.

   But here is where some suspension of disbelief comes in. After meeting with is parole officer, who goes through all of the things Dave can and cannot do (mostly cannot), Dave unknowingly goes to work for the very same man (Sidney Blackmer) who framed him. And this same guy has a sister (slim and very pretty Anne Nagel) whom he dotes on, and with whom Dave soon finds himself falling in love.

   There is more, and all of the players play their roles most enthusiastically, making what could have been a very dull affair not that much of a chore to watch. Turning off your mind and not asking questions helps, but sometimes that’s all you don’t mind doing on a cold winter night around midnight.

GABRIEL’S FIRE “Pilot.” ABC, 12 September 1990. James Earl Jones, Laila Robins, Madge Sinclair. Director: Robert Lieberman. Currently available for viewing on YouTube here.

   Gabriel Bird is a former cop who has spent the last twenty years in prison. The details remain fuzzy in this first episode, but it seems as though he killed a fellow officer during a botched raid. When his best friend in prison is killed, Victoria Heller, that friend’s lawyer (Laila Robins), comes calling on him for help, but he refuses.

   Ms Heller, a do-gooder who insists on doing good, manages to get him out of prison, which alienates him even more. It takes a while to persuade the cranky old man to help her solve the case, but he does and even more, by the end of the show, ends up agreeing to become her chief investigator, but only, he warns, “one case at a time.”

   Critics loved the show (well, liked it a lot) but audiences didn’t. It lasted one season (22 episodes) and resurfaced the next year under a new name, Pros and Cons, and lasted 13 more episodes before being cancelled at mid-season.

   Speaking personally, but who better, I found this, the pilot, not particularly easy to like. It’s burdened with a premise that’s confusing (why does this guy want to stay in jail, anyway), and the story line too dark. I have read that in the second season they tried to lighten things up, but there’s no way to independently verify that. Only this, the pilot of the first season seems to exist, and no one seems ready to pick up the rest of the series for streaming or release on DVD.

CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – Rest You Merry. Professor Peter Shandy #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978; Avon, paperback, 1979, 1988. Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, 1993.

   Charlotte MacLeod is the find of the year for this reviewer. Although this mystery has a Christmas season setting, don’t wait for Christmas to read it. Peter Shandy, professor at Balaclava Agricultural College, co-producer of the Bacalava Buster – a giant rutabaga – and of Sprightly Sieglinde — a fast-growing viola — is a top-notch addition to the ranks of chuckle-stimulating amateur detectives.

   After Shandy has over-decorated his home in a grand fling at Balaclava Crescent’s annual Grand Illumination for Christmas, he ducks out to avoid repercussions, returning to find the body of Mrs. Jemina Ames, his neighbor and wife of his agricultural collaborator, behind the sofa in his living room. He recognizes that this is no accident, and is set to proving that by the college’s overpowering president.

   Another murder and a budding romance later — he does just that. Along the way we meet Crimble, a sexually athletic custodian; Tim Ames, the very deaf husband of the dead woman; Hannah Cadwell, friend of Jemima and wife of the upright financial officer of the college; the Dysarts, who give parties at which lots of alcohol is imbibed and Heidi Heyhoe, a coed who is mainly occupied with pulling sleds around the Crescent.

   I can’t begin to convey the humor of the tale, yet it is also a serious investigation into human motives. I’m going to read more MacLeods.
   

NOTE: This review was paired with the following one-paragraph one by Bob Adey:

   The light humorous detective novel is a very easy form to come unstuck on, but Miss (or is it Mrs.) MacLeod doesn’t. Her picture of college life and the effort of Professor Peter Shandy to uncover the identity of the killer on the campus contain some genuinely funny passages. The author handles her cast with considerable skill and Shandy’s late romance is also nicely done. The detection is also more than satisfactory, so the book is to be recommended on all counts.
   

   If all has gone well, here are updated lists of both Mystery and SF paperbacks I have for sale. Warning: These lists are long. The one for mysteries is 90 pages in its WordPerfect format. For anyone reading this, please take a 30% discount in either category.

         Mystery Paperbacks

         SF Paperbacks

WARNING: This is the 12 minute version. Wait until you have time to listen to it from beginning to end.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Kill Your Darlings. PI Gat Garson. Walker, hardcover, 1984. Tor, paperback, 1988. Thomas & Mercer, softcover, 2012.

   Max Allan Collins is not merely a writer of mystery novels (and of the Dick Tracy comic strip); he is also a mystery scholar, collector, and fan. This book, third in a series featuring his detective alter ego, Mallory (like Collins, a mystery collector, fan, and writer from a small town in Iowa), is an “inside” story about mystery fans and fandom. It takes place at the Bouchercon, the annual convention for mystery fans and writers. (By a remarkable coincidence, Collins sets the story al the same Chicago hotel where the 1984 convention was actually held.)

   The murder victim is Roscoe Kane, a veteran paperback mystery writer, His once-popular detective, Gat Garson, is out of fashion, and Kane is on the skids. He’s at the con to receive an award from the Private Eye Writers Association, but drowns in the bathtub – an apparent accident – before the presentation. Mallory, Kane’s friend and fan, isn’t satisfied by the medical examiner’s hasty verdict and noses around, suspecting that Kane’s death might be linked to the upcoming publication of a “lost” Hammett Continental Op story.

   In an introduction, Collins makes the disclaimer that his fictional Bouchercon attendees, writers and fans, are mostly composites of real characters. However, initiates will have little trouble identifying many of them, including a self-absorbed guest of honor named Keats – the creator of a sensitive-macho private-eye character. Other inside jokes and fan tributes are scattered throughout; e.g., Collins’s borrowing of a gaudy metaphor from Spillane’s Vengeance Is Mine in the climactic shooting scene.

   This fast-moving and inventive novel is the newest addition to the very small subgenre of fandom mystery novels. Two others are Bill Pronzini’s Hoodwink (murder at a pulp collector’s convention) and Edward D. Roch’s Shattered Raven (murder at the MWA Awards Banquet).

   Mallory is also featured in The Baby Blue Rip-Off (1983), No Cure for Death (1984), and A Shroud for Aquarius (1985).

     ———
   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.

Bibliographic Update: Add to the books in the Mallory series: Nice Weekend for a Murder (1986).

CONSTANCE CORNISH – Dead of Winter. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1959. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition. No US paperback edition.

   After the death of her husband Paul, Abbey Humphrey had decided to leave Manhattan and the big city life for the slower pace of a small town in Vermont, but when she discovers the body of the husband of Jenny, a good friend and neighbor, in her home when she returns from a weekend trip to New York City, she also learns that maybe she hadn’t been fitting in as well as she thought she had.

   There are secrets, she finds out, beneath the surface, no matter where you are, and in a small New England town, more people know them – or rumors about them – than maybe is true in a big city. Gossip and friends who are nosier than you think they were, and suspicions, abound.

   The story takes place just before Christmas, but the chill comes more from not knowing who’s responsible for trying to pin the murder on her, and less from the chill in the air. The police are of little help. They seem to suspect everyone, but Abbey perhaps even more than the others.

   What this one-shot novel, by an author I have found very little about, really is is a detective story with some bite. There are plenty of clues and alibis to be checked out, both solid pluses as far as I’m concerned. There’s no way a series could be made of this one, but I would have thought Constance Cornish might have written another one, but she didn’t. Based on this one single example, I think she should have.

   The photo of her there to the left comes from the jacket’s back cover. It also states that Constance Cornish was an actress on Broadway, and that she also acted – and wrote – for radio. Googling for more information didn’t turn up anything for me. You may have better luck. The jacket also says she was married to George A. Cornish, Executive Editor of the New York Herald-Tribune. An online obituary for the latter confirms that he was survived by his wife, the former Constance Brown.

Note: Another online review of Dead of Winter can be found here: