JOHN C. BOLAND “Marley’s Ghost.” Short story. Charles Marley #1. Published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2005. Not yet reprinted or collected.

   For someone who qualifies, I believe, as a Little Known Writer, John C. Boland certainly has been a very prolific one. He has, first of all, several dozen short stories in AHMM as well as EQMM, not only under his own name but also as by Max Gersh and James L. Ross. This plus more than a dozen full-length novels, beginning in 1991, some of them once again as by James L. Ross. (I do not know if he is related the thriller writer John Boland, who wote several dozen novels back between 1955 and 1970.)

   As for Charles Marley, who adventure “Marley’s Ghost” is his first recorded adventure, he is a retired CIA agent who seemingly can’t stay away from people he knows from his past. This includes Oleg Ossovsky, his counterpart in espionage back in the days of the old Soviet Union. The latter is now in New York and working on his memoirs, although Marley assumes he very well may have other irons in his fire.

   What’s really on Oleg’s mind now, however, is a fellow named Vlad Davidovich, whom he keeps bumping into, and whom Marley also remembers as a Russian pianist he was trying at one time to help defect. That the task did not work out was due to Oleg’s intervention, let us say.

   The tale that follows is a tough, complicated one, filled with the moody atmosphere of the Cold War, even at this late date. Besides the fact that he comes out on top in this debut story, sort of, we don’t learn a lot about Marley himself — he’s still somewhat of an enigma — but perhaps that changes over the course of the next eight stories, so far. Summing things up, though, a complete collection is in order, that’s what I say.

       The Charles Marley series —

Marley’s Ghost (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan/Feb 2005
Marley’s Package (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2007
Marley’s Woman (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 2007
Marley’s Havana (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2011
Marley’s Revolution (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2011 [2012 Edgar Nominee]
Marley’s Rescue (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2012
Marley’s Winter (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2012
Marley’s Lover (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Apr 2015
Marley’s Mistress (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2019

LOREN ESTLEMAN – Edsel. Detroit #4. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996.

   My main complaint about this is that it isn’t an Amos Walker book. I’m sure Estleman is making entirely too much money with the Detroit series to go back to writing about old Amos, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing he would.

   Connie Minor, the Greek newspaper columnist who was the narrator of the first Detroit book, Whiskey River, has fallen on hard times in the intervening years. The mid-fifties find him a newspaperman no more, reduced to working as an advertising copywriter. His fortunes take a turn (I didn’t say what kind) when one of Henry Ford II’s (“the Deuce”) executives offers him the job of selling America on the company’s proposed new car that will become known as the Edsel.

   He takes the job, only to find his life still isn’t simple. He finds himself embroiled once again with gangsters and politicians, and trying to find out who ordered the attempted assassination of Walter Reuther.

   I said in these pages a long time ago that whatever type fiction Estleman chose to write, one thing remained constant: he was a storyteller. He still is. Probably how interesting you find this story will depend on how interesting you find the fifties. I went from a sixth-grader to a firefighter, so I found it very interesting.

   Estleman tells it with sot of a newsreel perspective and a caustic, semi-flip wit that goes down well. I wouldn’t say that any of the characters rather than Minor really came to life. Edsel is a quick and entertaining read, though perhaps not quite up to the first three in the Detroit saga. And nowhere close to as good as an Amos Walker.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe #1. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1939. Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #7, digest paperback, 1942; New Avon Library [#38], paperback, 1943. Movie photoplay edition: World, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted many times since. Film: Warner Bros., 1946 (screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman; director Howard Hawks; Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe). Also: United Artists, 1978 (screenwriter-director: Michael Winner; Robert Mitchum as Marlowe).

   It is difficult to imagine what the modern private eye story would be like if a forty-five-old ex-oil company executive named Raymond Chandler had not begun writing fiction for Black Mask in 1933. In his short stories and definitely in his novels, Chandler took the hardboiled prototype established by Dashiell Hammett, reshaped it to fit his own particular vision and the exigencies of life in southern California, smoothed off its rough edges, and made of it something more than a tale of realism and violence; he broadened it into a vehicle for social commentary, refined it with prose at once cynical and poetic, and elevated the character of the private eye to a mythical status — “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

   Chandler’s lean, tough, wisecracking style set the tone for all subsequent private-eye fiction, good and bad. He is certainly the most imitated writer in the genre, and next to Hemingway, perhaps the most imitated writer in the English language. (Howard Browne, the creator of PI Paul Pine, once made Chandler laugh at a New York publishing party by introducing himself and saying, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Chandler. I’ve been making a living off your work for years.”

   Even Ross Macdonald, for all his literary intentions, was at the core a Chandler imitator: Lew Archer would not be Lew Archer, indeed might not have been born at all, if Chandler had not created Philip Marlowe.

   The Big Sleep , Chandler’s first novel, is a blending and expansion of two of his Black Mask novelettes, “Killer in the Rain” (January 1935) and “The Curtain” (September 1936) — a process Chandler used twice more, in creating Farewell, My Lovely and The Lady in the Lake, and which he candidly referred to as “cannibalizing.”

   It is Philip Marlowe’s first bow. Marlowe does not appear in any of Chandler’s pulp stories, at least not by name: the first person narrators of “Killer in the Rain” (unnamed) and “The Curtain” (Carmody) are embryonic Marlowes, with many of his attributes. The Big Sleep is also Chandler’s best-known title, by virtue of the well-made 1944 film version directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Elisha Cook, Jr.

   On one level, this is a complex murder mystery with its fair share of clues and corpses. On another level, it is a serious novel concerned (as is much of Chandler’s work) with the corrupting influences of money and power. Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood, an old paralyzed ex-soldier who made a fortune in oil, to find out why a rare-book dealer named Arthur Gwynn Giger is holding his IOU signed by Sternwood’s youngest daughter, the wild and immoral Carmen, and where a blackmailing abler named Joe Brody fits into the picture.

   Marlowe’s investigation embroils him with Sternwood’s other daughter, Vivian, and her strangely missing husband, Rusty, a former bootlegger; a thriving pornography racket; a gaggle of gangsters, not the least of which is a nasty piece of work named Eddie Mars; hidden vices and family scandals; and several murders. The novel’s climax is more ambiguous and satisfying than the film’s rather pat one.

    The Big Sleep is not Chandler’s best work; its plot is convoluted and tends to be confusing, and there are loose ends that are never explained or tied off. Nevertheless, it is still a powerful and riveting novel, packed with fascinating characters and evocatively told. Just one small sample of Chandler’s marvelous prose:

   That passage is quintessential Chandler; if it doesn’t stir your blood and make you crave more, as it always does for this reviewer, he probably isn’t your cup of bourbon.

         ———
   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.

DAVE ZELTSERMAN “Archie on Loan.” Short story. Julius Katz & Archie Smith #9 (?). Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept-Oct 2016.

   Julius Katz, as you may already know, is a PI based in Cambridge MA who bears a more than passing remembrance to one Nero Wolfe in many ways but who is quite the opposite in others. He is athletic for one thing, but yet also rather lazy when taking on cases and often has to be prodded into taking on new ones by an assistant named Archie.

   Archie, however, is like no other detective you perhaps have ever encountered in a mystery story before. He’s an Artificially Intelligent microcomputer that Katz wears as a tiepin and with whom he is in constant contact. On request Archie can hack himself into almost any computer system anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second, the time often annotated. No worn out pair of gumshoes for this particular Archie.

   As it turns out — and this was probably not known before this story came along — Julius Katz has a sister named Julia who is an international spy. Her problem at the moment is that three attempts have been made on her life, and she does not know why. She needs Archie (whom she did not know about before), to not only learn why, but who, and stop him, or them.

   A key to this absolutely delightful case is an extremely rare copy of Our Mutual Friend, one inscribed by Charles Dickens himself. I don’t know if Julia Katz appears in any of the later Julius Katz and Archie tales, but she’s certainly an engaging character that I’d like to read about again. Overall, though, if you’re a fan of Rex Stout’s work, then I’m sure these tales (see below) will appeal to you as much as they have to me. Besides the sheer chutzpah of coming up with the characters themselves, the mysteries themselves are very well done as well.

       The Julius Katz & Archie Smith series [may not be complete] —

Julius Katz (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2009 (*)
Archie’s Been Framed (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2010 (*)
One Angry Julius Katz and Eleven Befuddled Jurors (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2012 (*)
Archie Solves the Case (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2013 (*)
Julius Katz and a Tangled Webb (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2014 (*)
Julius Accused (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2014 (*)
Julius Katz and the Case of Exploding Wine (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2015
Julius Katz and the Giftwrapped Murder (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Dec 2015
Archie on Loan (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2016
Cramer in Trouble (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2017
Julius Katz and the Terminated Agent (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2017
Archie for Hire (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov/Dec 2018

       The Julius Katz Collection [paperback, 2014; contains the stories marked (*) above) plus “Julius Katz and the Case of a Sliced Ham,” which may be new]
       Julius Katz and Archie [novel; Kindle, 2014, paperback, 2018]

TOM MITCHELTREE – Blink of an Eye. Grant Reynolds #1. Intrigue Press, hardcover, 2004. No paperback edition.

   It’s always nice to get in at the top of a new series, especially a promising one, and here Tom Mitcheltree introduces an interesting new sleuth in Grant Reynolds, an American in Paris who investigates crimes involving American tourists before they are referred to the FBI for the Legal Attache at the American Embassy.

   It’s an interesting setup that has considerable leeway for the character as both detective and man.

   Reynolds is a former cop who quit after a tragic incident (nothing new there), a fine arts major, ex-Military Intelligence, and lawyer who has stumbled into a dream job in the City of Lights, albeit one that comes with multiple rules, like never carrying a gun, and working at the sometimes limited patience of the French police. Do something, but don’t actually be seen to have done anything, is the rule of the day.

   His first case, almost before he can get well started, involves the murder of the granddaughter of an American billionaire and the son of a Bolivian diplomat in a Paris alley.

   A simple enough case.

   Or so it seems.

   Reynolds introduces himself to the Maigret-like Inspector Gerard (I hate when Americans and the Brits insist on calling French Commissaires Inspectors, but they will do it) who is investigating the case.

   Granted the Maigret demeanor of Gerard and failing to call him a Commissaire put me a little off, but Mitcheltree soon overcomes that minor faux pas, thanks to Reynolds being a personable character, and a decent understanding of Paris that many fail in conveying. I do wish though American writers would understand not all French policemen are large men with mustaches. You would think they would have read one French mystery writer besides Simenon.

   Reynolds role puts him in an interesting position in that while still being a cop of sorts he has no more power than a private eye and no real legal standing, but still has access to the police and their investigations through Gerard who thankfully is an intelligent and capable policeman and neither comical nor colorful.

   As with any good crime novel, the fairly simple murder Reynolds wets his toes on proves to be far more complex and dangerous than he expected. An international hit man has killed the two young people and as Reynolds looks farther into the crime, he finds himself revisiting an old romance with a well-to-do young lady from his college days, and soon enough the Assassin has targeted Reynolds who has gotten too close, if he’s not quite sure to what.

   The mystery is good, there is a decent amount of suspense and a well done ending where Reynolds gets the upper hand, all adding up to a debut that, if not spectacular, is solid and shows some promise for the character. The writing is clean and literate, takes flight once in a while without being showy or pretentious, and the characters are well drawn and likable.

   I like this one better than you might think from the review. The writing is clean, the protagonist likable and interesting without being overdrawn, his angst believable but not beat over the reader’s head, and the elements are better handled than most debuts, plus Mitcheltree makes none of the mistakes so many American writers make in using a Parisian setting.

   It’s not merely that he understands the geography of the city, he gets the reality and the unreality of the city right, the ordinary day to day Paris as well as the legend. The last American writers to do half so well with Paris were Peter Stone in Charade, Marvin Albert’s Stone Angel series, and David Dodge. That’s pretty good company for any writer.

       The Grant Reynolds series —

1. Blink of an Eye (2004)
2. Death of a Carpenter (2006)
3. Crime of the Heart (2011)
4. The Conspiracy of Silence (2012)
5. Swan Song and Other Lullabies (2016)

A. E. W. MASON – At the Villa Rose. Inspector Gabriel Hanaud #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1910. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1910. Serialized in nine parts in The Strand Magazine, beginning December 1909, as “Murder at the Villa Rose.” Reprinted many times, including Scribner’s Crime Classics, US, paperback, 1979, as Murder at the Villa Rose. Filmed four times: At the Villa Rose (silent, 1920), At the Villa Rose (1930), Le mystère de la villa rose [The Mystery of the Villa Rose] (in French, 1930), At the Villa Rose (1940). Also produced as a stage play (London, 1920).

   A classic, as the Scribner’s paperback suggests? Consider the date it was first published, 1910, and here it is, back in print again. How many other books published in 1910 can you think of that you can say that about? And how many people of good taste must have read it by now? If it’s a classic, it will have had to have earned the title.

   It is dated. If it were to be submitted to a publisher as newly written, there’s no doubt a revision would be demanded. Reading the first chapter relieves some fears, however — the symptoms of old age are there, but the book has not yet succumbed to the afflictions of rigor mortis.

   In that first chapter, with precise pictorial writing, Mason described the first meeting of Mr. Ricardo with Mlle. Celie. She is on the verge of melancholy hysteria and despair outside a French casino; nest she is being soothed by the wealthy young English inventor, Mr. Wetherall.

   On the very next night, Celie’s benefactress, whose companion she is, is robbed and murdered. The girl stands accused, at least of complicity. All the evidence, as well as the testimony of the maid, points directly to her. Nor does her background as a stage-variety spiritualist speak well on her behalf.

   Mr. Wetherall asks that the famed M. Hanaud of the Paris Sûreté be called in. Hanaud is not only a gifted detective, but he is also a forerunner of all those other masterminds who know, or guess, and do not tell. Of course I know that Conan Doyle often allowed Holmes to lapse into this poor excuse for a storytelling device, but at least Holmes never insulted Watson, at least not directly, nor did he ever ridicule him for poorly asked questions, as Hanaud so badly treats Ricardo.

   Speaking of whom — on pages 79-80 of the paperback edition Ricardo very nicely summarizes the eight salient features he sees in the mystery. Included in the replies Hanaud later makes to the questions that Ricardo happens to ask is one based on one of those very points. The latter (as a gentleman) accepts the rebuke when Hanaud loudly suggests that Ricardo has foolishly missed a vital point of the case.

   The mystery is solved by page 145. The remainder of the books recounts that final version of the reconstructed crime, and Hanaud’s feeble attempt to explain the guesses in deduction that he made.

   Well, as you can see, I was already biased. This may be too harsh a judgment, and by no account should you take this to mean that Hanaud’s version is impossible. It’s just that the facts, as described, I submit there is no reader who would have come to the same conclusion as Hanaud did by guesswork, pure and simple.

   A classic? From a historical point of view, perhaps so. As a mystery, it’s an outdated one.They just don’t write them like this any more.

   Andrea Motis (born May 9, 1995) is a Catalan jazz singer and trumpeter who has been performing since the age of seven. In this video she is backed by the Joan Chamorro Quartet (Joan Chamorro double bass, Ignasi Terraza piano, Josep Traver guitar, Esteve Pi drums, Perico Sambeat alto sax).

NO MAN’S WOMAN. Republic Pictures, 1955. Marie Windsor, John Archer, Patric Knowles, Nancy Gate, Jil Jarmyn, Richard Crane, Fern Hall, Louis Jean Heydt, Percy Helton. Screenplay by John K. Butler, based on a story by Don Martin. Director: Franklin Adreon.

   Marie Windsor’s movie-making career was perhaps never destined to climb into the A-film category, but to me and many people I know, she was the Queen of the B’s, no doubt about it. She has top billing in this one, and she deserved it, even though she’s the kind of witch (“no matter how you spell it”) who’s destined to be killed off buy someone she’s crossed, and badly, soon after the halfway point.

   As Carolyn Grant, she’s the wife, for example, of a man (Suspect #1) who’s no longer in love with her, and in fact they live apart, and who would like to have a divorce to marry someone else (Suspect #2). He can’t meet her demands, however: alimony plus a six-figure additional payout. The husband’s father (Suspect #3) offers to meet her demands, but husband refuses to use his money that way.

   Carolyn meanwhile has her eye on the fiancé (Suspect #4) of the girl (Suspect #5) who works for her in her art shop. After insinuating her way into breaking up the engagement, add two more people would would be happy to see her dead.

   And that’s not all. Her lover of sorts is a local art critic/newspaper columnist [Suspect #6] who’s been plugging her art shop, to their mutual advantage, until he’s found out and fired. At which point Carolyn summarily boots him out of her life, laughing happily as she does so.

   All of which makes the first half of the movie a lot of fun to watch and await the inevitable. On the other hand, after Carolyn’s death, all of the built up tension is gone, and the movie turns into a straightforward murder mystery. It’s not a bad one as far as murder mystery movies go, and in fat it’s actually a very good one. The problem is, without Marie Windsor’s memorably brassy man-stealing performance to continue watching, anything that follows would have to have been, in comparison, a ten-story letdown.

JOHN COLLIER “Evening Primrose.” Short story. First published in 1940. Collected in Presenting Moonshine (Viking Press, 1941) and more famously in Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951; Bantam 1953). Reprnted many times. Adapted as both radio (three times on Escape, CBS) and television plays , the latter a musical by Stephen Sondheim (ABC Stage 67, November 1966).

   I read this again last night for the first time since High School and delighted in it on several levels.

   First, Collier’s prose, rich in lines like, “I felt like a wandering thought in the dreaming brain of a chorus girl down on her luck.” and “Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.”

   All in service of Collier’s dark whimsy as starving poet Charles Snell takes up residence in a stately old Department Store of Byzantine aspect (“Silks and velvets glimmered like ghosts, a hundred pantie-clad models offered simpers and embraces to the desert air.”) only to find it already haunted by the Living. Or the nearly-living, once-humans like he, who permeated themselves into the store years and ages ago, and gradually lost touch with their own humanity.

   The one exception is Ella, a foundling adopted by the reigning Grande Dame of this society and used as a servant. Still human and in her teens, she has fallen in love with the Night Watchman, much to the chagrin of our poet-narrator. And when discovered, her love raises the venomous ire of the nearly-living, who summon The Dark Men, setting up a conflict that pits our narrator and the Night Watchman against…

   It’s a short tale, perhaps a dozen pages, but Collier packs a whole sub-world into it, reawakens the spirit of those grandiose old emporiums (for those who remember them) and makes it real, even as he sketches out characters who – well, “come alive” doesn’t really fit here, so I’ll just say they become convincingly inhuman under his skillful pen.

   Even better, Collier touches on the alienation common to fantasy readers, evokes it, embraces it and rejects it without wasting a single comma. I remember being profoundly moved as a teenager by Evening Primrose’s Truth. As an adult I was just as moved by its Beauty.