CHARLES TODD – A Casualty of War. Bess Crawford #9. Setting: France/England, World War I. William Morrow, hardcover, September 2017.

First Sentence: Lieutenant Morrison died as dawn broke on the Friday morning, a casualty of war.

   Field nurse Bess Crawford treats a patient, Captain Travis, disoriented from a head wound who believes Lt. James Travis, a distant cousin and Englishman, deliberately shot him. Although released, he is brought back still insisting on the same story. Upon Bess’s return to England, she finds the captain strapped to a hospital bed and being treated for a brain injury. Bess enlists the help of Sgt. Major Simon Brandon to unravel Travis’ story and find the truth.

   From the very start, Todd touches one’s emotions. Although it’s coming to the end of the war, it is still very active and provides an interesting perspective on events and even the attitudes by some regarding providing medical treatment to captured German soldiers.

   At first, one may believe one knows where the story is going. As it progresses, things do change and a twist makes things more interesting. And, as they say, the plot thickens even more.

   Bess is such a strong character. Her nature is well-explained, as is her dedication.

   The story does read a bit like a melodrama at times. However, it turns out there is a very clever, and well-hidden, motive.

   A Casualty of War takes one from the battles of France, to London, to a small English town, all in search for truth. With the war coming to an end, it is going to be interesting to see where the series will go from here.

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Mara Tirana. Sam Durell #12. Gold Medal s1036, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1960.

   CIA agent Sam Durell has a twofold problem in this adventure: first, the USA’s first man into space has come down somewhere in the Balkans, far behind the Iron Curtain, and second, his lady friend Dierdre, who has lately become slightly involved with the previously mentioned astronaut, has also gotten herself captured, in her case by the Soviet agent anxious to keep Durell off the trail.

   There is one other complication, and that is Mara Tirana, a Soviet agent who wants to defect, but whose brother most emphatically does not. As is always the case in these adventures of San Durell, the scenery and other background is vividly etched in picturesque dtail, but as you can tell, there’s also a little too much plot here to be held in at only 175 pages. It’s bulging at the seams, and something has to give — which is a heck of a complaint to make about a book: it’s just not long enough!

PostScript:   If you’ve never read one of the Sam Durell novels, I thought I’d give you a brief taste of them. The excerpts below should give you an idea of the details that Aarons provided his readers abut locales of the world that back when these books were written were far off the beaten track for all but the most seasoned travelers. In fact, most of them still are today.

   From pages 64 and 65:

SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE. RKO, 1932. Gwili Andre, Gregory Ratoff, Frank Morgan and John Warburton. Written by Samuel Ornitz and Robert Tasker from magazine stories by Ashton Wolfe. Director: A. Edward Sutherland

SECRETS OF SCOTLAND YARD. Republic, 1944. Edgar Barrier, Stephanie Bachelor, C. Aubrey Smith, Lionel Atwill, Martin Kosleck, John Abbott and Mary Gordon. Written by Denison Clift. Directed by George Blair.

   Two very different films, each lots of fun in its own way.

    French Police is a lavish Selznick production, with splendid sets, moody photography and lots of lurid pre-Code mischief as it weaves the tale of General Moloff (Gregory Ratoff) a Russo-Chinese criminal mastermind (you know the type) who schemes to abduct an innocent young flower girl (the lovely Gwili Andre) and pass her off as Princess Anastasia, using hypnosis and drugs.

   That would be plenty for any self-respecting super-villain, but Moloff goes the extra mile, murdering inconvenient witnesses and leaving notes written in the victim’s blood incriminating other inconvenient witnesses — and that’s just when he’s in a hurry; given time and leisure, he drains his victims’ blood, covers them with plaster, and displays them as statues in his sinister palace, guarded by malevolent Orientals and surrounded with death traps.

   In short, a villain who takes his arch-fiendishness seriously, with the sort of old world polish one just doesn’t find in scoundrels these days.

   All of this is off-set knowingly by Frank Morgan as a sharp police inspector who recruits the flower girl’s burglar-boyfriend (John Warburton) to penetrate Moloff’s fiendish lair and unhatch his diabolical plots. And though I’m not sure “unhatch” is actually a word, Morgan and Warburton underplay their parts beautifully (I particularly enjoyed the scene where Warburton explains to Morgan why he thinks the World owes him a living), adding a touch of cynicism to the theatrical goings-on that keeps it slightly — very slightly—grounded in reality amid the cliffhangers and killings.

   The result is a film that seems part pulp-magazine and part send-up of pulp magazines, and an immensely satisfying blend of both.

   Scotland Yard, on the other hand, is a cheap little thing from Republic, a studio that knew how to do cheap movies just right, with a better than usual cast for them.

   We start with the defeat of Germany in World War I, with the German High Command already plotting their next strike by planning to get a mole into the decoding unit of the British War Department. Fast-forward to 1939, and the decoding unit run by C. Aubrey Smith (he of the lantern jaw and eyebrows like blunt instruments) and staffed with familiar character actors. Edgar Barrier plays the star decoder, but they no sooner break the code than he’s found dead on the floor, with his work erased.

   So it seems that the Germans got their mole in place, and the question is, which one is it? And how to find out? Fortunately for the allied cause and the film’s title, Barrier has a twin brother who works for Scotland Yard, and he steps into the dead man’s shoes to find out.

   What follows is fifty agreeable minutes of cat-and-mouse, helped along considerably by a cast of suspects that includes Lionel Atwill, John Abbott and Martin Kosleck at his sinister best, the whole thing — punctuated by vigorous fist-fights in the Republic manner.

   But there are also some telling bits of atmosphere rare for Republic: fog-shrouded streets, country cottages, and even Mary Gordon on leave from Universal’s Sherlock Holmes series as a cheerful housekeeper. And perhaps best of all, a quiet moment in the decoding office as the staff solemnly listens to King George VI’s halting radio speech declaring war, and everyone stands at attention when the radio plays “God Save the King.”

   It’s one of those little touches that lifts Secrets of Scotland Yard out of the B-Movie rut, and, together with that quintessential movie cast, help to make it memorable.

DANGEROUS TO KNOW. Paramount, 1938. Shown at Cinevent. May 1994. Anna May Wong, Akim Tamiroff, Gail Patrick, Lloyd Nolan, Harvey Stephens, Anthony Quinn, Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall. Based on the novel On the Spot (1931) by Edgar Wallace. Director: Robert Florey.

   A film that many viewers liked a lot was Dangerous to Know with the unlikely, but dynamite team of Anna May Wong and Akim Tamiroff. Even dependably good Lloyd Nolan took a back seat to the potent emoting, all the more effective because they both gave restrained performances in roles that could have been served as grade-A ham.

   The film is based on an Edgar Wallace novel and play that starred Charles Laughton in the London production, and Wong played her role on Broadway and on the road in 1930-31. Tamiroff is Stephen Recka, a crime lord whose house is impeccably run by is mistress, Madame Lan Ying (Wong). (Hedda Hopper has a small role of a society matron who characterizes Wong as Recka’s “hostess,” with an inflection in her voice that leaves no douby about her opinion of Ying’s relationship to Recka.)

   The high point of the film (and its climax) occurs as Recka plays the organ and Lan Ying hovers, apparently waiting for the opportunity to kill traitorous Recka. (Tamiroff plays the crime lord with just the right blend of cultivation and ruthless cruelty to give the character charm and draw some audience sympathy.)
   

   
CAROL O’CONNELL – Mallory’s Oracle. Kathleen Mallory #1. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1994. Jove, paperback, 1995.

   O’Connell is a painter turned novelist, and this is her first. Putnam thinks it’s going to be a good one. They paid a lot of money for it, and it’s already been published in England and sold to several other countries.

   Kathleen Mallory was a street kid and she was taken in at the age of 12 by a NYPD cop and his wife. Now she’s a Sergeant in the same department, and her father in all the real sense of the word has been murdered at the same time as the latest victim is killed by a serial killer who preys on old women.

   The Department places her on compassionate leave, but compassion is not a word she understands very well. She’s beautiful, a crack shot and a computer whiz, and underneath a thin veneer is a tough and nearly as amoral as the child she used to be. Mercy is another word that has little relevance to her as she begins tracking her prey.

   O’Connell may be this year’s Minette Walters, and this could easily be an Edgar winner for either First or Best Novel. Yes, I thought it was that good. It’s a powerfully written book, and often beautifully so. An Example: “She lay still in the body and quiet.”

   And watch for the passage about the insane pigeon — surely none of the more unlikely subjects upon which to base a memorable paragraph, but there it was. The third person narrative is mostly from Mallory’s viewpoint, though there are several illuminating shifts.

   The plot is convoluted, with maybe one or two too many threads to the skein, but the book’s strengths lie in O’Connell’s prose and the vivid characterizations of Mallory and a number of others. It isn’t a perfect book, but it’s a very, very strong one, and I think the field has another star here, folks.

      The Kathleen Mallory series —

1. Mallory’s Oracle (1994)
       — 1995 Anthony Award — First Novel (Nominee)
       — 1995 Dilys Award — Mystery Novel (Nominee)
       — 1995 Edgar Allan Poe Award — First Novel (Nominee)
2. The Man Who Lied to Women (1995) aka The Man Who Cast Two Shadows
3. Killing Critics (1995)
4. Flight of the Stone Angel (1997) aka Stone Angel
5. Shell Game (1999)
6. Crime School (2002)
7. The Jury Must Die (2003) aka Dead Famous
8. Winter House (2004)
9. Find Me (2006) aka Shark Music
10. The Chalk Girl (2012)
11. It Happens in the Dark (2012)
12. Blind Sight (2016)

THE GUILT OF JANET AMES. Columbia Pictures, 1947. Rosalind Russell, Melvyn Douglas, Sid Caesar, Betsy Blair, Nina Foch, Hugh Beaumont, Denver Pyle (debut uncredited). Screenplay by Louella MacFarlane, Allen Rivkin & Devery Freeman, based on the novel by Lenore Coffee. Directed by Henry Levin.

    The Guilt of Janet Ames is an uneven film. An oddity in its time of films about the trauma of returning soldiers, it is about the trauma of a war widow (Rosalind Russell in the title role) instead, and more about self-inflicted wounds than grief.

   In an era when the psychological film came into its own, it both embraces and dares to poke subtle fun at the genre (a monologue by Sid Caesar that is both very funny and a self-critique appears in the middle of the film), a woman’s picture with a noirish edge, a sometimes too heavy-handed psychological melodrama, a handsomely designed and experimental attempt to show the mental state of its heroine on screen (with Frank Tuttle listed among the design credits), and for a brief section a rather bright romantic comedy of the type its stars were best known for. Einstein and the theory of Relativity even play a role.

   It is also schmaltzy, powerful, borderline sadistic, and a fine showcase for Russell and Douglas.

   On her way to meet a man, Janet Ames is hit by a car and taken to a local Los Angeles hospital. In her pocket is a Congressional Medal of Honor and a list of five men’s names.

   One of those names is Smithfield Cobb (Melvyn Douglas), a once famous reporter who has poured himself into a bottle and has just about hit bottom. He has a last chance if he takes a plane to Seattle at midnight (or does he?), assuming he can get past Danny’s, the dive he hangs out in.

   An important metaphor is introduced here, Smitty’s penchant for discussing the George DuMaurier play and novel Peter Ibbetson with the bartender, a story about a man who escapes his prison cell by flights of fancy. It’s never clearly established if that plane ticket is a real chance, or just another escape mechanism.

   Smitty used to work the hospital desk before he lost that job too, and the police recognize his name on the list and summon him to identify the woman, and he recognizes her all too well. He carries her picture in his wallet though he never met her.

   Janet Ames is only shaken by her accident but is hysterically paralyzed, refusing to leave the hospital or her wheelchair. She turns out to be bitter and angry because her husband David threw himself on a grenade during the war to save five other men. Why did he have to die, and what value did they have in return?

   This could easily have played out as a heartwarming story about sacrifice, but to its credit, even when it seems to be going there, something more is at play, because The Guilt of Janet Ames is a mystery, with Douglas cast as detective, defense attorney, and prosecutor, and Russell, as the embittered and unreasonable title character victim, defendant, and plaintiff.

   And note the title, it isn’t called The Innocence of Janet Ames.

   I won’t give them away, but there are as many twists to this plot as any Agatha Christie novel, and at any given moment, you don’t quite know what you think you do. Ultimately it is about forgiveness, mostly of ourselves, and about the kind of hidden trauma left by the war, any war, among those who fought and who waited.

   It worked for me. If the romance is a bit contrived, if the mood is at times uneven, if fate’s Woolrichian hand seems all too obvious in places, the leads pull it off, and it is certainly an interesting film to look at. I would be surprised if any two viewers see this film the same way.

   Like the truth in this film, your experience will almost certainly vary.

   Scheduled for publication from Stark House Press in March of next year:

   The strange island story utilizes island locations to examine human society and human nature, taking the reader on a journey into the weird, the bizarre, and the unsettling. Nineteen classic tales from Arthur Conan Doyle, Julian Hawthorne, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, M. P. Shiel, John Buchan and more; plus one new story from the editor himself!

HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL. CBS, 1957-1963. 225 30 minute episodes. Richard Boone (Paladin), Kam Tong (Hey Boy). Created by Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe.

   I picked up several episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel a while back and found them, within their limitations, quite enjoyable. The Half-Hour Dramatic Series is nowadays a Lost Art, and it was interesting to see it in practice again.

   Quick cuts, elliptical storytelling and tight focus might lead one to expect these would be fast-paced affairs, but they aren’t at all. You see, it’s much cheaper to advance the plot by photographing two actors talking in a room, so there’s a lot of that going on here. Long journeys and even grueling Desert Treks are suggested by about ten seconds of footage, and Fight Scenes, for the most part, are short and to the point. I’ve never seen so many guys knocked out by one punch in all my life, and I wonder if this simplistic approach to Conflict Resolution might have had some effect on my bidding mind in those days.

   Anyway, the high point of the series is and always was Boone’s tough, intelligent acting, back in the days when he was Lean and Hungry, and when scriptwriters could let him actually get violent from time to time. Those familiar with Boone’s later acting — particularly the patently phoney, self-indulgent portrayal of The Drawling Cowpoke from Hec Ramsey, who always talked tough but never actually did very much — should get to see him in these.

THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN. Columbia, 1938. Joan Blondell , Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan, Robert Paige, Thurston Hall. Director: Alexander Hall.

CHANDU THE MAGICIAN. Fox Films, 1932. Edmund Lowe (Chandu/Frank Chandler), Irene Ware (Princess Nadji). Bela Lugosi (Roxor). Based on the radio serial of the same title. Cinematography by James (Wong) Howe. Art direction by Max Parker. Directors: William Cameron Menzies and Marcel Varnel.

   The high point of Monday morning’s screenings was There’s Always a Woman, starring Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas as a husband-and-wife team who split up professionally and then, separately, have a go of solving the murder of Mary Astor’s husband (played by Lester Mathews), Blondell’s scatterbrained zaniness proved to be a good match for Douglas’s more conventional detecting as an investigator for the D.A.

   My choice of top overall pick for the convention, however, would probably be Chandu the Magician. Edmund Lowe stars as Chandu, with Bela Lugosi, lithely clad in close-fitting black sweater and slacks, as Roxor, the “malignant” super-villain, ready to reduce humanity to an anarchic mob, which he would command as ruler of a (much-reduced) universe.

   Not for Roxor the imperial trappings of Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials. It’s power he wants, and it’s his burning ambition — along with his magnetic eyes — that makes Roxor a more menacing villain than Charles Middleton’s Ming.

VERA CASPARY – Laura. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1944. Reprinted many times, including: Bestseller Mystery #B74, paperback, no date stated. Popular Library #284, paperback, 1950. Dell D188, paperback, Great Mystery Library #3, 1957. Avon, paperback, 1970. The Feminist Press at CUNY, softcover, 2005. Film: 20th Century Fox, 1944. TV adaption: Season 1, episode 2 of The 20th Century-Fox Hour, as “A Portrait of Murder,” 19 October 1955. TV movie: ABC, 24 January 1968 (co-screenwriter: Truman Capote). [See also the comments.]

   The main strength of Vera Caspary’s writing is her depth of characterization; in fact, in many of her mysteries the actual crime takes a back seat to her detailed studies of the persons involved. In this, her first novel, the persona of Laura Hunt, the heroine- initially thought to have been the victim of a brutal murder is so well described that the reader can visualize her and anticipate her actions and reactions long before she appears on the scene.

   The other principals — a crime writer and close friend of Laura’s, and the investigating officer who finds himself falling in love with his image of her — are likewise drawn in meticulous detail, through the use of their individual narrative voices. (The story is told in sections, each from the viewpoint of one or the other of the main characters.)

   The story they tell is basically a simple one. A young “bachelor girl,” Laura Hunt, has been shot to death in her apartment in Manhattan’s East Sixties.She took the force of the blast in the face, and is virtually unrecognizable except for her attire. Mark McPherson, a police officer with a distinguished record, is assigned to the case and acquires much of his knowledge of Miss Hunt from her friend, a sexually amorphous writer named Waldo Lydecker.

   There was a fiance in Miss Hunt’s life — an impoverished copywriter from the ad agency where she worked; and an aunt who is quick to complain about the fiance’s shiftlessness — and to use him when convenient. As McPherson delves further into Laura Hunt’s life, he becomes entranced with the dead woman, a fascination that Lydecker, who narrates the first section, notices and plays upon.

   When McPherson takes up the narrative, we find that Laura is not really dead; she had loaned her apartment to a model frequently used by her agency and gone away to her summer cottage for a few days’ contemplation before her impending marriage. McPherson’s attention is now focused on the question of who killed the ordinary little model who was temporarily using Laura’s apartment, and his suspicions eventually point to Laura herself The ending, narrated by McPherson, with an intervening section told by Laura, is predictable, but completely satisfying.

   Laura was made into a classic suspense film of the same title, starring Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Gene Tierney, and directed by Otto Preminger, in 1944. In another notable novel, Evvie (1960), Caspary’s characterization of a genuine murder victim is even more sharp and haunting than that of Laura Hunt. And her mastery of the deviant but still socially accepted personality is demonstrated to great effect in Bedelia (1945) and The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966).

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   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.