POKER FACE.“Dead Man’s Hand.” Peacock, 26 January 2023. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Natasha Lyonne (as Charlie Cale, a casino worker who goes on the run), Benjamin Brat (as Cliff LeGrand, the casino head of security, who is on the chase after her), Ron Perlman (as Sterling Frost Sr., the casino owner (voice only in this first episode)). Guest star: Adrien Brody (as Sterling Frost Jr.). Written, created and directed by Rian Johnson.

   The gimmick in this one, a new well-received streaming series that I think qualifies as a solid hit, is that casino cocktail waitress Charlie Cale has the unique ability to know when someone is lying to her face. Until things got too hot for her, she made a lot of money playing poker, where an ability would be hugely helpful.

   And of course knowing who is telling the truth and who is not would come in equally useful in solving crimes, including murder, which she does quite easily in this first episode, the only one I’ve seen so far. Invited in to a high stakes poker game by the manager of the casino where she’s working, she solves the killing of a maid she knows well, but in doing so, gets so far into hot water that by the end of the episode she’s forced to head out of town as fast as she can.

   The show is told in Colombo-type fashion, as we the viewer first she the killing and then flashing back to see exactly where Charlie manages to fit in. And as the last sentence of the previous paragraph suggests, each followup episode is a page out of The Fugitive’s notebook.

   Charlie is a brassy, self-identified “dumb ass” with wild hair type, and Natasha Lyonne is perfect for the part. (I think she had a great deal to do with the creation of the character.) The first season consists of ten episodes, with lots of well-known guest stars, and I’ve read that the series has already been renewed for a second season.

   The only drawback that I can see is that as a superpower, being a human lie detector could easily make solving crimes all too easy. Superman had Kryptonite to keep him in check. What’s Charlie’s Achilles heel?

   It’s too bad you have to sign up for Peacock (a subsidiary of NBC) to see this, but on the basis of this first episode, it’s well worth the money, given that there’s other stuff there to watch as well.

JOHN D. MacDONALD – Deadly Welcome. Dell First Edition B127, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1959. Cover art by Bob McGinnis. Reprinted several times in paperback over the years, eventually by Gold Medal.

   Alexander Doyle is a wanted man. Wanted by the Pentagon to have him transferred from the State Department to do a special assignment for them. It seems that an officer with considerable talents and abilities has had a heart attack, but while recuperating, his wife was murdered, and even though his sister is nursing him now, he feels unable (or is simply unwilling) to come back to work.

   Doyle’s job. Find the killer of Colonel M’Gann’s wife.

   What the Pentagon knows is that Doyle comes from the same small town in Florida, the kind of place that’s wary of strangers, but they believe that Doyle can easily be accepted by the locals, where others would not. What the Pentagon seems not to know is that Doyle left town under a black cloud, accused of a robbery he did not commit, but by agreeing to leave and join the army, everything would be hushed up.

   What the Pentagon definitely does not know is that Doyle had a one-night fling with the dead woman. What Doyle does not know is that the dead woman’s younger sister is all grown up now, and that she has had a crush on him ever since high school.

   Can he go home again? That’s the question. He agrees, but with a pain of reluctance in his gut. Mix in a passel of townsfolk who can’t stop talking as well as a self-important deputy sheriff who is a whiz with a nightstick, and you have the mixings of a story you won’t stop reading once started until you’re done.

   The detective aspect of things is minor. It’s the people who matter in JDM’s story, and the sense of memories that always come back whenever you or someone tries to go home again. That’s the essence of this book, and (I have to mention this) the fact that the dead woman’s sister, the victim of an attempted rape a few years bfore, is someone who needs the same kind of TLC that JDM’s later hero protagonist became famous for — by extending it to the wounded women who came into his life.

ARTHUR J. REES – The Threshold of Fear. Colwin Grey #1. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1925. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1926.

   
   Richard Haldman is a disaffected veteran of the Great War unhappy with what he finds when he returns home to England after the War. Without money, family, fortune, or friend he sees his future as grim, but then things seem to brighten up when he decides to spring for a last decent meal with his last shilling, and in an alcove at his hotel spies a beautiful young woman:

   
   Following this encounter with this strange young woman Haldman runs across a copy of The Times and an ad for a job as a chauffeur-mechanic for a gentleman who requires discretion, and soon enough finds he has been hired, “You are engaged by Colonel Gravenall, of Charmingdene, St. Bree, Cornwall. He desires that the chosen applicant shall be sent at once. Could you go to Cornwall by the ten o’clock train to-night?”

   And it is at Charmingdene where he will meet his employer, Colonel Gravenall, in ancient Cornwall:  Cornwall had known me in other days, and had shown me its cromlehs, logan stones, black cairns, and giants’ caves, Haldman tells us, anxious to begin his new job where “the loneliest and highest place in Cornwall,” the hamlet of St. Bree.

   We are in the realm of the true Gothick thriller with ancient terrors threatening to break through the too thin veneer of civilization and the heavy atmosphere of the supernatural wavering like a white mist on the edge of our hero’s too thin grip on the world he thinks he knows.

   And as you might expect what he finds at Charmingdene is an atmosphere of dread, Gravenall a not particularly prepossessing Anglo-Indian officer Haldman doesn’t warm to who asks probing questions about whether the young man has ever been to South America or Peru, and who seems anxious to keep things hidden.

   There too he will meet the mysterious Dr. Penhryn (a bronzed and bearded man who appeared to me like a giant from the stalwart dimensions of his upper frame. But when he descended, as he immediately did, I observed that he was a much smaller man than I had at first supposed, for his fine, upright body was set upon two dwarfed and twisted legs…); Edward Chesworth, Gravenall’s nephew and Penhryn’s patient (suffering from a most unusual form of nervous disorder, which causes him to shun all society and to shrink from the sight of strangers ) who has another life he led in South America and Peru; and, the mysterious girl from London who is now behaving mysteriously and shadowing Charmindene but refuses to trust Haldman.

   And all that would still add up to very little than a bit of mystery if not for the drum, the mysterious sound of the drum that drives Edward mad, and then a death at Chamingdene.

   For anyone thinking of bailing, this is not a supernatural novel. It was highly praised in its day, 1925 as a top notch psychological thriller, which it is, modern in its details if not its setting. Arthur J. Rees was a popular mystery and thriller writer, an Australian though his thrillers usually are set in Cornwall. This and several of his thrillers are available in PD Ebook form from Internet Archive for anyone wanting to delve before collecting, and this one was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries as one of its classics of the genre.

   Haldman becomes closer to Edward and learns his strange story. As a young man in Peru Edward stumbled into a strange valley and a lost civilization. After nearly drowning he is resurrected by a witch doctor who told him he was dead for three days before he brought him back and now Edward believes Death has returned for him, the drum his call for Edward to return to his domain.

   Mad, perhaps, but Edward believes it, and there is a drumming that comes from nowhere and is driving Edward to return to the watery grave he once escaped.

   Then too Haldman falls for his mysterious haunted woman, who turns out to be Edward’s sister frightened her brother is going mad and will kill himself in his frenzy when the drum comes too close.

   At this point the book takes yet another turn as Haldman leaves St. Bree for London to consult Colwin Grey, a Sherlockian private detective and ex solicitor who cuts through the fog of the supernatural to unveil a plot of pure evil and with Haldman his Watson, turns the tables on a deadly killer whose motive is pure sadism revealing a portrait of a killer far madder than poor Edward.

   There isn’t much more I can say short of spoilers, other than this is a fine chiller, well written, well plotted, and atmospheric without slapping you in the face with it. I was so impressed by Grey’s short appearance near the end of the book unraveling the darkness surrounding Chamingdene, and the truly evil plot that threatens to destroy Edward, that I went out and found two more of Rees’s thrillers I’m waiting to read.

   The Threshold of Fear won’t let you down as a thriller even if the horrors are human and not supernatural. It holds up really well for a novel written in 1925, and if not a fair play mystery in any sense it is a truly enjoyable thriller that will keep you in your seat.

RICHIE BROCKELMAN, PRIVATE EYE. “A Title on the Door, and a Carpet on the Floor.” NBC, 31 March 1978 (Series 1, Episode 3). Dennis Dugan (Richie Brockelman), Barbara Bosson (Sharon Deterson), Robert Hogan (Sgt. Ted Coopersmith). Guest Cast: Carol Lynley, Charles Siebert, Rene Auberjonois, Jim McKrell. Screenplay: Steven Bochco & Stephen J. Cannell. Director: Arnold Laven. Available on YouTube here.

   Coming in at perhaps exactly the middle of this short-lived private eye series, it is difficult to explain what was the driving force behind it. It started out first a made-for-TV movie, then a two-hour episode of The Rockford Files. Following this it was picked up a short series episodes on NBC, then appearing once again as another two-hour episode of The Rockford Files. (If I have any of this wonrg, please so advise in the comments.)

   Suffice it to say, perhaps, that it was the apparent youthfulness of Richie Brockelman that was intended to be its appeal, at 22 the youngest PI in town, complete with a semi-dorky haircut and a somewhat funny name. Otherwise it was just another PI show taking place in LA with lots of scenes with cars driving from one place to another.

   In this particular episode, both Richie and his secretary are hired by a much bigger outfit to come work for them, even while Richie is still investigating the death of a client’s husband. Does the discerning viewer think that someone at the much bigger outfit has a nefarious reason behind this? The discerning viewer does, and the discerning viewer would be absolutely correct.

   I may have made this sound less interesting than it was, but in all seriousness it was no better nor worse than the standard TV PI fare at the time. In this case, at least, “no worse” was not enough, and the plug was pulled after only the five episodes.

  WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – The Bloody Bokhara. Dutton, hardcover, 1952. Dell #746, paperback, 1953.

   Lee Kapralian is twenty-six, second generation Armenian, WWII vet for the red white and blue, all-American in his heart, and handsome as the devil’s twin. His father is of the older generation, and doesn’t want his kids losing their culture mixing romantically with Americans.

   Lee works for his father in a Persian rug store. Persian rugs aren’t as popular as they used to be and it’s a hard way to make a living. Most folks don’t see the difference between hand woven ancient rugs and wall to wall carpeting. They both cover the floor. And carpets are cheaper and brand new.

   Life is okay enough for Lee, if steeped in tepid mediocrity, until Claire walks into the store. She’s gorgeous as Satan’s mistress and twice as dangerous.

   Claire’s got some rugs she’d like appraised. Would Lee come back to her apartment with her to check them out?

   Would I? Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, sure. I’ll take a look at your rugs, lady. And he does. And they are beautiful, rare and fine. Like Claire. But one of the rugs has a bloodstain. A bloody bokhara (which is a type of rug : the bokhara part — not the blood; the blood washes right out like a bloated body upon the shore).

   And the bloodstain bespeaks its provenance. Like Claire.

   And does Lee like Claire! Whoa. He’s gone for her. A Gone Guy. And surprisingly, she for him. I mean — at least that’s what she tells him. And who is he to question beauty. Who gives and gives. And takes.

Lee, the ordinary, extraordinarily handsome guy, leaves his family for the girl and his father’s business for selling these bloody rugs. Giving them a good washing first. Of course. Claire asks if it’s okay if she takes a shower. Of course, Claire. Of course.

   In the end the shocker is there’s really no shocker. It kind of goes the way it should go. But it could’ve plausibly gone in many other ways. And the anticipation is the thing anyway. There’s nothing but anticipation. Fear and hope are never here. They never come. Yet we dwell on them. Til our very last breath.

   It’s a well done book, and notable for being a story of mid-century Armenian family dynamics woven into a fairly typical noir — using Persian rugs as the mcguffin to tie in the dissolution of the Armenian family, the forgetting of history, to the squandering of one’s moral fiber in pursuit of a buck and a beauty. A carpet for a rug. With just the faintest hint of red.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK, Editor – Murderer’s Row. Dell, paperback, first printing, May 1975; reprinted January 1980.

   There perhaps is not a lot to be said for reviewing one of  these anthologies from the Hitchcock magazine. You read and enjoy this kind of story, or you don’t, and the collections seem only to sift out no more than the worst clinkers.

   Nor is there anything outstanding this time either. The best of the lot is “The Artificial Liar,” by William Brittain, on how to program a liar, with the intriguing possibility that it just may work. Fletcher Flora has a good private eye yarn, as Percy Hand proves himself to another client in “For Money Received.” Richard Deming tells a good cop story, “Nice Guy.” Intriguing is Rog Phillips’ “The Hypothetical Arsonist,” which deals with a firm calling itself Justice, Incorporated, but he flubs the story miserably.

   Other stories by the usual AHMM regulars: Frank Sisk, Henry Slesar, Theodore Mathieson, Ed Lacy, Edward D. Hoch, Richard Hardwick, C. B. Gilford,  David A. Heller, Richard O. Lewis, and Arthur Porges. Solid writing. strong openings, endings that don’t surprise quite as much as they should. It is a fine choice to help fill the nooks and crannies of an omnivorous mystery reader’s day.

Overall rating:   C plus.

      Contents:

Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
Nice Guy by Richard Deming
The Bridge in Briganza by Frank Sisk
Thicker Than Water by Henry Slesar
The Artificial Liar by William Brittain
For Money Received novelette by Fletcher Flora
The Compleat Secretary by Theodore Mathieson
The Hypothetical Arsonist by Rog Phillips
Who Will Miss Arthur? by Ed Lacy
Arbiter of Uncertainties by Edward Hoch
Slow Motion Murder novelette by Richard Hardwick
Never Marry a Witch by C.B. Gilford
The Second Thief by David A. Heller
The Nice Young Man by Richard O. Lewis
A Message for Aunt Lucy by Arthur Porges

MICHAEL DELVING – The Devil Finds Work.  Dave Cannon #2. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1969. Belmont, paperback, 1971.

   Of the six bibliomysteries Michael Delving (Jay Williams) wrote about the adventures, in England, of the two American partners of a Connecticut-based rare-book and manuscript firm, The Devil Finds Work is the only one featuring both Dave Cannon and Bob Eddison.

   In the small town of Bartonbury, the two dealers are offered a collection of material belonging to Tristram Vail, a notorious Satanist who was once called “the wickedest man in the world.” They also find themselves caught up in the investigation of the theft of a silver cup from a desecrated church. When Vail’s secretary. Richard Foss, is found dead during another attempt to rob the church, Chief Inspector Codd — whom Delving introduced in the first Cannon/Eddison adventure, Smiling the Boy Fell Dead (1966) —  is called in from Scotland Yard to investigate.

   The odd activities of Vail’s ambiguous friend Anthony Gaunt play a role in the mystery. As does Bob (who is a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma) being challenged by the local pub’s darts champion to a match in which Bob will use a bow and arrow and lined target, and the other player will use a regulation dart board with appropriate adjustments made for distance.

   Another plot thread is Bob’s romantic interest in Jill Roseblade, the niece of an eccentric woman named Miss Trout, who owns a valuable Book of Hours coveted by the two partners. It is Codd, with help from Dave and Bob, who finally sorts out the disparate elements and solves the mystery.

   Each of the characters in The Devil Finds Work is fully developed (Bob is especially well drawn), and the narrative is packed with vivid descriptions of village life, the English countryside and architecture, and various works of art. Delving was also a master at conveying the differences and similarities between the English and American ways of life. (Anthony Boucher said of him: “I can’t think of anyone since John Dickson Carr who has better handled England-from-an-American-viewpoint.”)  And his knowledge of rare books and art is that of both an expert and connoisseur.

   The other five books in the series are equally fine, in particular Die Like a Man (1970), in which Dave, traveling in Wales, is offered an ancient wooden bowl its owner claims is the Holy Grail; and A Shadow of Himself (1972), which is concerned with a seventeenth-century Dutch painting and in which Delving divulges the outcome of the romance between Bob and Jill. Because of such personal elements that carry over from book to book, a sequential reading of the series is recommended.

———
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.

THE NARROW MARGIN. RKO, 1952. Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White, Queenie Leonard, David Clarke, Paul Maxey. Directed by Richard Fleischer; written by Earl Fenton, Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story, 1953.

   Narrow Margin is a film that will surprise and delight the viewer who comes to it without expecting too much. Like Fleischer’s other noir classic, Violent Saturday, it’s taut, professional, and engaging without being as riveting or moving as a film like Out of the Past or Detour.

   I place that caveat up front because it’s easy for a film buff to come to this movie with great expectations. Director Richard Fleischer showed a lot of promise early in his career and The Narrow Margin was one of his most promising efforts. Then, too, the script is coauthored by Martin Goldsmith, whose novel and screenplay for Detour formed the basis of one of the undisputed classics of the film noir.

   In fact there are a few echoes of that earlier work in this one, particularly in the relationship between Charles McGraw as a down-at-the-heels cop on the verge of corruption and Marie Windsor as the shrill, shrewish, shrike o! a Gangster’s Widow whom he is assigned to escort by train to testify at a trial. Both Goldsm1th and Fleischer steer clear of the deeper possibilities inherent in the story, though, and concentrate instead on the superficial aspects of McGraw’s mission.

   Fortunately, having decided to be superficial, they proceed to be stylish as well. The script, terse and occasionally witty, serves the plot and actors very nicely indeed,  and the camerawork, roving up and down the narrow corridors and in and out of the cramped compartments of the train where most of the action is set, earns top marks for graceful planning.

   The choreography here comes across with subtle dexterity as well: As the characters move about, they alternate between clumsy struggles against their restricted environment and a smooth, natural flow inside it, impressive and suspenseful either way. And one particularly nasty fight inside a traveling compartment not only predates the Sean Connery/Robert Shaw set-to in From Russia with Love, but also excels it.

   And now a word about the Cast.

   It attains the remarkable felicity that seems reserved only for B-Movies, where there are no Stars to tailor scripts for. The Narrow Margin like Mask of Dimitrios or And Then There Were None, is a film where the Character Actors have taken over,. and it is also one· of those rare occasions where they have decent material to work with.

   As the brassy widow central to the plot, Marie Windsor caps off a career of playing schemers, gold-diggers and ladies of negotiable virtue. To paraphrase the joke, one watches her in this film and gets the feeling that you could go to the dictionary, look up “sleazey” and find her picture.

   An unknown actor named Paul Maxey does a very nice turn as an enigmatic, grossly obese Railroad Cop (and the camera makes the most of him navigating his bulk relentlessly through the dwarfed corridors) but the truly outstanding role goes to Charles McGraw as the cop, distrusted by his superiors, blamed for the death of his partner, and sorely tempted by the bribes of his adversaries.

   Charles McGraw spent his life doing small parts in B-Movies and smaller parts in A-Films. Fans with good memories might recall him as the kindly doctor in The Wonderful Country or the inept comic chauffeur in Once More My Darling, but his major claim to fame was as one of the two assassins (William Conrad was the other) in the 1946 film of The Killers.

   Possessed of extraordinarily beady eyes for a mammal and the raspiest voice since Lionel Stander, McGraw always looked just a little too tough to play a hero, as if any bad guys who came up against him just obviously wouldn’t have a chance.

   By the time of The Narrow Margin,  however, he had already been hopelessly typecast as the Muscle Heavy in dozens of westerns, costumers and gangster pies, all of which add a pleasant tension to his character when he wrestles with the temptation to either sell out his traveling companion or simply strangle her to shut her up. It’s one of those engagingly off-beat performances in a quirkily enjoyable film that seem to have happened only (and all too rarely) in B-pictures.

EARL DERR BIGGERS – The Chinese Parrot. Charlie Chan #2. Bobbs Merrill, hardcover, 1926. Reprinted many time, both in hardcover and paperback. Film: TCF, 1934, as Charlie Chan’s Courage,

   The Charlie Chan stories are classics of detective fiction. However, classics of the past are not always to be read with enjoyment in the present. I reread The Chinese Parrot to see how well it holds its own with modern mysteries. My verdict is that it does so very well.

   The many details which are of its own time add to the interest rather than detracting from it: the use of the telegraph, the “flivvers,” the ubiquitous Chinese “boys” as servants. The story is one of murder — surmised rather than known, an atmosphere of something wrong rather than a crime to be unraveled.

   It progresses as theory after theory put forth by young Bob Eden is proven wrong by Charlie Chan’s detective work. It is most unbelievable when Bob continues to bend to Charlie’s plea not to hand over the pearl necklace which he is supposed to deliver.

   Evidence of anything wrong at the Madden ranch is slim indeed; I have trouble believing that any impatient young man would procrastinate so on only the word of a Hawaiian detective he has never known before.

   However, it is necessary to the story that he delay, so delay he does.And delay at last brings the story to a smashing conclusion. Dated? Yes, of course. Outdated? Never.

IRA WOLFERT – Tucker’s People. L.B. Fischer, hardcover, 1943. Bantam Giant A798, paperback 1950, as The Underworld. University of Illinois Press, softcover, 1997. Film: Basis for Force of Evil, directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield.

   Wolfert was a NYC reporter who covered Dutch Schultz. Schultz got big in bootlegging. After repeal he needed a new racket. Numbers seemed like a good bet. In the numbers racket, you pick three numbers. If your 3 number combo hits, you win 600 to 1 on your bet. In 1931, Thanksgiving landed on November 25. 2 + 5 = 7. As a result, numerous numbers players could be predicted to bet on some variation of 2/5/7 on Thanksgiving.

   There were scores of independent numbers bankers in Harlem. Dutch figured out a way to fix the numbers coming out that Thanksgiving: 527. This bankrupted Harlem’s numbers bankers. Dutch came to the ‘rescue’ of the bankers, offering to pay off all the winners in exchange for the bankers joining Dutch’s Bank. In this manner Dutch was able to take over and consolidate the Harlem numbers racket, ‘earning’ upwards of $20 million a year.

   With that kind of money rolling in, Dutch bought the boss at Tammany Hall: Jimmy Hines. Hines fixed the cops, raided the numbers banks that refused to cave, and looked the other way on the concomitant sleaze and violence accompanying the racket.

   Then came along reformer DA Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey couldn’t be bought and he came after Dutch. This tied Dutch’s hands, giving opportunity to competing mobster Lucky Luciano to step up, step in, and take over. By force. And Dutch was slain.

   Wolfert took this story, changed the names, and wove it into a fictionalized account: Tucker’s People.

   It takes the major players: a numbers banker, an enforcer, a nerdy, nervy numbers accountant, and Dutch’s stand-in (Tucker), and attempts to weave a symphony out of these discordant instruments of the 30’s mobster soundscape.

   My copy of the book ran over 500 pages. And it surely felt like it. The prose was leaden and preachy. While the idea for the book was grand, it felt like Wolfert let grand ideological purposes get in the way of a good story. Wolfert appears to have wanted to make the story of Dutch Schultz into a morality play about how monopolies destroy the little guy — first by taking him over financially, then taking his soul. And when the little guy is no longer useful, flushing him down the drain.

   I have nothing against morality plays. But nothing destroys a good story like didacticism. If Wolfert was a better writer, he might’ve been able to make it work. Similar grand efforts have been successful. Like Robert Deane Pharr’s Book of Numbers and Vern E. Smith’s The Jones Men. Sadly, this one doesn’t join them.

   Made into the film Force of Evil in 1948, starring John Garfield: