RACE STREET . RKO Radio Pictures, 1948. George Raft, William Bendix, Marilyn Maxwell, Frank Faylen, Harry Morgan, Gale Robbins. Director: Edwin L. Marin.

   Although available on DVD from Warner Archives, Race Street is largely a rather obscure one. even if considered film noir, a popular category now, if ever there was one. It has a decent cast, but I think the reason hardly anyone remembers or talks about it today, is that as a film, it’s mostly a mediocre one. It has its moments, including a few flashes of hard-boiled action, but it’s far too talky to stand out in a field filled with so many other crime films that came out around the same time and had a lot more to offer.

   George Raft plays the kind of bookie whom other bookies lay off their larger bets on, but a new gang is in town (San Francisco), and they’re beginning to push their way in,. What they offer is “protection” and they show no remorse in demonstrating what happens to guys who don’t take them up on it. William Bendix plays a childhood friend who’s also a cop, and who tries to persuade Raft to let the police take care of the problem.

   Raft will have nothing to do with it, of course, not even when one of his friends dies after being pushed around a little too hard. It doesn’t stop Bendix from talking and nudging and trying to persuade him otherwise. A couple of lengthy musical numbers featuring Gale Robbins as the lead vocalist are well done, but move the story along, they don’t.

   Marilyn Maxwell as a sultry brunette this time around plays Raft’s girl friend, a very eye-pleasing girl friend, to be sure, but her role in the story is, well, shall we say not particularly well filled out. If I’d been in charge of production, say, I’d have cut the musical numbers and given her story line the amount of running time it really needed.

   Since it’s far too late for the real director to have taken my advice, alas, he didn’t. While the end result is watchable, especially if you’re a George Raft fan — and to tell you the truth, I think his performance here is one of his better ones — you probably won’t remember it for more than ten minutes or so afterward.

CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD. Schneider-Filmverleih, West Germany, 1964. Also released as Night of the Vampires. Original title: Der Fluch der grünen Augen. Adrian Hoven, Erika Remberg, Carl Möhner, Wolfgang Preiss, Karin Field. Director: Ákos Ráthonyi.

    Cave of the Living Dead , a West German-Yugoslav production, is a pretty standard vampire movie that checks all the boxes and uses all the tropes. Let’s see. You’ve got an urbane police inspector skeptical of the supernatural, superstitious peasants, an array of beautiful women (some undead, some not), and an eccentric professor living high up in a castle. And of course, some unexplained mysterious deaths.

   But for all its schlock, this movie is actually a lot of fun. Part of it comes from its mashup of genres. What starts off as a pulpy detective yarn in which a big city inspector is sent to the backwoods of Yugoslavia to investigate a series of murders slowly reveals itself to be a supernatural yarn about sultry female vampires.

   Although not a particularly graphic film in terms of violence or gore, Cave is drenched in atmosphere. Filmed in black and white with a lot of natural light courtesy of candles or torches, this somewhat obscure horror film exudes a neo-Universal Horror classics aesthetic. It transports the viewer into its own claustrophobic village world.

   True, the dialogue is hardly sophisticated. And the plot often runs around in circles. But if you are looking for a unique Halloween month viewing, this one, which I personally watched on DVD, is worth a look.

MARGARET MARON “Lieutenant Harald and the Treasure Island Treasure.” Short story. Lt. Sigrid Harald. Published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989. Collected in Lieutenant Harald and the Treasure Island Treasure & My Mother, My Daughter, Me (Mystery Scene/Pulphouse Short Story Paperback #3, 1991).

   In this short but well-told tale Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD finds herself far from her usual comport zone, the crowded concrete streets of Manhattan. Oscar Naumann, an old friend living in upstate Connecticut whom she apparently had met in one or more of her earlier novel-length cases, now needs her help. At stake is a young girl’s inheritance from her now deceased uncle.

   Living on an island configuration of land, the map, a lifelong lover of maps — and buried treasures — the key to finding what he left his favorite niece in his will is a map he was still working on when he died. This is the puzzle that Sigrid must decipher. Any lover of maps and Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale, “Treasure Island,” will enjoy this one as much as I did.

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Bibliographic Notes:   There have been nine novel length cases for Lt. Harald, the most recent being Take Out, which appeared in 2017 after a hiatus of 22 years. Her only other short story appearance has been “Murder at Montegoni” (EQMM, Sept/Oct 2008).

The vocalist for this hot jazz band, Parisian style, is Tatiana Eva-Marie:

JOHNNY COOL. United Artists, 1963. Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, Richard Anderson, Jim Backus, Joey Bishop, Brad Dexter, Wanda Hendrix, Marc Lawrence. Based on the book The Kingdom of Johnny Cool, by John McPartland. Director: William Asher.

   The character played by William Campbell in Backlash [reviewed here ], is named Johnny Cool, which is also the name of a violent low-budget movie from 1963 starring Henry Silva, who played Mexicans, Orientals and Indians in the movies, but was actually born in New York.

   Here he’s a Sicilian bandit exported to America to wipe out the rivals of deposed gang lord Marc Lawrence. Said rivals seem to be composed mostly of the outer fringes of Sinatra’s “Rat Pack.” (I think about half the cast was in Ocean’s Eleven) plus personalities and character actors like Mort Sahl, John Dierkes, John McGiver, Elisha Cook Jr and Jim Backus.

   With a line-up like that, Johnny Cool should have offered some fun, but it’s a largely mechanical thing, with lots of action but little excitement, dealt out by director William Asher — whose credits include Return to Green Acres, I Dream of Jeannie and the “Beach Party” movies.

   In Asher’s listless hands, the film gets no sense of progress or momentum; it’s simply a series of lackluster set pieces on the way to an oddly creepy ending that was probably accidental.

   Incidentally Johnny Cool was based on a Gold Medal Original by John McPartland, The Kingdom of Johnny Cool, which as the distinction of being unreadable.

ROBERT UPTON – The Faberge Egg. Amos McGuffin #4. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1988. No paperback edition.

   Amos McGuffin has been a San Francisco PI for 18 years, but he’s never had a case like this one. First. his ex-wife and daughter disappear. The trail leads to the man who killed his mentor in the PI business when he first started out., and then on to the egg hunt.

   A hunt conducted by a pair of gay German war vets, before the KCB gets involved, as well as his partner’s daughter. The resemblance to Hammett is unmistakable. I suppose you’d call it an homage. Whenever it’s this blatant, I think you’d have to, but it’s still enormous fun.

      The Amos McGuffin series —

1. Who’d Want To Kill Old George? (1977)
2. Fade Out (1984)
3. Dead On the Stick (1986)
4. The Faberge Egg (1988)
5. A Killing in Real Estate (1990)
6. The Billionaire (2017)

JIM DAVIS “Gone Fishing.” Short story. Brad Carter #2. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2012.

   This one’s eleven pages long, but it reads so quickly, once you’re done, you’ll think you’ve read only a longish vignette. That’s a fact also probably true because the story itself is so quick and dirty, and well deserving of its placement in the Black Mask section of that particular issue of EQMM in which it appeared.

   As a PI Brad Carter ekes out a living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but when he’s hired by a prim and proper maiden aunt to find her nephew, wanted and on the run for rape and aggravated assault, the trail takes him deep into the Ozarks, from a biker bar to a meth lab way up in the hills. Any resemblance to the hillbillies of old, such as in the Li’l Abner comic strip, is purely illusional.

   The introduction to the story says that Jim Davis, the author, was planning on further adventures of Bradley Carter, who proves himself as a survivor a couple of times over in this one, but there was only one other, that being “Golf Etiquette” in the February 2011 issue of EQMM. That’s too bad. I enjoyed this one.

DAVID ROSENFELT – Bark of Night. Andy Carpenter #19. Minotaur Books, hardcover, July 2019.

First Sentence: Frank Salvio checked into the hotel under an assumed name, using fake identification.

   Truman, a healthy French bulldog, was left to be euthanized at the veterinary office where attorney and rescuer Andy Carpenter takes his dog. Truman is chipped, but the man who dropped him off is not his apparent owner. When Andy finds the owner has been murdered, it sets him off on an interstate investigation involving far more than one bulldog.

   The first thing to know is that, in spite of the cute dog on the cover, this is no cozy. Dead bodies abound. The other thing to know is that, in spite of their number, the murders aren’t described in gruesome detail.

   From the very beginning, the case is delightfully twisty, almost a bit too much so. Rosenfelt engages the reader and ensures one wants to know what happened as much as do the characters, and there are a lot of characters. This is one time when a cast of characters might have been helpful.

   The members of Andy’s team, all of whom are given good, succinct introductions, are quirky and enjoyable. Everyone should have a Marcus in their life — or maybe not. Most of all, there’s Andy. There’s something rather delightful about having a protagonist who is a picky eater, not a crack shot, or a boxing/martial arts expert but is, in fact, a bit inept, and admits it. Even when he tries to lose at a game, he accidentally wins.

   Andy’s, and Rosenfelt’s, expertise is the law. It is interesting learning how an investigation team goes through a location of interest,and these are the details which provide veracity to the plot. A well-written courtroom scene can provide tension. What is nice is that he explains the process and legalities along the way and that he writes very good dialogue— “Am I doing down for this?” he asks, the fear evident in his voice. “You’re sitting here in handcuffs, Joey. You’re already down. We’re about to start digging you out.”

   The explanation of what is behind all the deaths is a terrifying one, all the more because of its believability. The escalation of the plot’s timetable makes things exciting and tense. The only slight complaint might be that after everything which has occurred, the ending seemed too quick and the subsequent actions of the person behind it all seemed unlikely.

   Bark of the Night has more bodies than some small towns, yet very little actual violence. No, it’s not the best of the series, but Andy Carpenter fans will still find it an enjoyable read as much because the proceeds help support the Tara Foundation.

Rating:   Good.

   I’m doing better every day. Haven’t used OxyContin since I was in the hospital. Had to use a walker for about a week, but have been getting around with a cane for most of the past few days. Lots of nurses and various therapists have been stopping by, and I’ve been doing the exercises they’ve given me to do, and that has helped a lot, I’m sure. My daughter Sarah leaves for home in Illinois tomorrow, and I have followup visit with my doctor on Monday, but right now, I’m doing just fine.

RICHARD BARRE – The Innocents. Will Hardesty #1. Walker, hardcover, 1995. Berkeley, paperback; 1st printing, December 1997.

   I don’t know anything about Barre other than this is his first novel, and he had his own advertising agency. Michael Seidman [at Walker] is very high on him, for whatever that’s worth.

   Will Hardesty is forty-ish, a ’Nam vet and a PI who’s pretty much drunk his practce away because of a teenage son dead in an accident he blames himself fo And a marriage that’s slipping away from him. Happy days? Not.

   Then the skeletons of several children are discovered near Saddleback Butte, not too far away from his home south of Santa Barbara. A medallion found with the bones is enough to identify one of the dead children to his father, and Hardesty is asked to find the man who killed him. The children died many years ago, but their deaths will bring more, now.

   Well, Michael may have something here. This is one of the better first novels in the hardboiled crop of late. Hardesty is a refreshingly imperfect hero, not above lashing out when he’s hurt and not beyond making mistakes that others pay for.

   Barre’s rose is clean and straightforward, and he paces his story well through shifting viewpoints and third-person narration. The story is action-oriented rather than cerebral, but it’s done well and will hold your attention until the end. Barre is at work on a second Hardesty novel and I’ll look forward to it.

      The Wil Hardesty series —

1. The Innocents (1995)
2. Bearing Secrets (1996)
3. The Ghosts of Morning (1998)
4. Blackheart Highway (1999)
5. Burning Moon (2003)