RICK BOYER – The Whale’s Footprints. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1988. Ivy Books, paperback, 1989.

   The Whale’s Footprints, the latest of the Doc Adams stories by Rick Boyer, has a well-developed plot and effective misdirection, but the characters seem to emote rather than feel and communicate.

   Doc and Mary’s son Jack, studying whales at Wood’s Hole on Cape Cod, brings a friend, Andy, home for the weekend. But Andy dies in the night — someone has fiddled with his epilepsy medication. And the police rather think Jack might have been the fiddler.

   Doc and Mary, enraged and horrified, begin exploring on their own. Andy, it develops, wasn’t quite the blameless young man he might have appeared. Not that this clears Jack. Oh, no….

      The Doc Adams series —

Billingsgate Shoal (1982)     [Edgar Winner, Best Novel, 1983]
The Penny Ferry (1984)

The Daisy Ducks (1986)
Moscow Metal (1987)

The Whale’s Footprints (1988)
Gone to Earth (1990)

Yellow Bird (1991)
Pirate Trade (1994)
The Man Who Whispered (1998)

THE GHOST GOES WEST. London Films, UK, 1935 / United Artists, US, 1936. Robert Donat, Eugene Pallette, Jean Parker, Everly Gregg, Elsa Lanchester. Screenplay by Robert Sherwood; cinematography: Harold Rosson. Director: René Clair. Shown at Cinevent 35, Columbus OH, May 2003.

   Don’t blink or you’ll miss the elegant and icy Elsa Lanchester playing a psychic.

   An American businessman buys a Scottish castle, dismantles it, and transports it (along with the resident ghost) to America where it is reassembled and restored. I kept waiting for the “magic” to happen, but this film remained earthbound until the ending when there was a somewhat brief sentimental rush that might qualify as the intrusion of a bit of magic.

   The director is notable, the cast a good one, the premise promising, but the film is overproduced and the execution flat-footed. Or maybe I’m just one of those “sophisticates” the program notes refer to who “regularly prowl the art houses” and find Clair’s American films inferior to his French work. This film is, indeed, inferior to it and I don’t think you have to be a “sophisticate” to conclude that.

PAMELA BRANCH – The Wooden Overcoat. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1951. Penguin #1354, UK, paperback, 1959. Rue Morgue, US, softcover, 2006.

   This is not the story I was expecting when I picked it up to read. I don’t what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

   Some background information first. According to Hubin, Pamela Branch wrote four mystery novels for Hale between the years 1951 and 1958. Of the two, both this one and Murder Every Monday (1954) feature the Asterisk Club, supervised by one Clifford Flush. (Confirmed from inside the front cover of this one.)

   And to connect the first two paragraphs (in case you were wondering). the Asterisk Club is the most exclusive club in the world. Membership is by invitation only, and to qualify, you must be a wrongfully acquitted murderer.

   Benjamin Cann qualifies. As he ponders the offer, he takes a room to let next door to the club, a two-family home. They are having trouble with rats. There is arsenic all over the house, as well as sticky boards to trap the vermin. Benji goes to bed and never wakes up.

   Misunderstandings arise, and the police are never called. Attempts to rid themselves of Benji’s body go awry. Clifford Flush sends in reinforcements, the beauteous Lilli Cluj. The next morning she has joined Benji in the hereafter, wherever that may be.

   Flush gets desperate. So do the couples next door. If one body is difficult, how does one dispose of two bodies that do not wish to be disposed of? And what of the rats? Mr. Beesum (Rodent Officer) thinks he will soon have them under control, but progress is being made very slowly.

   Believe it or not, as hilarious as it gets (and did Alfred Hitchcock never read this one? — or considering The Trouble with Harry, although a different novel altogether, maybe he did), this is really a detective story as well. One more murder occurs before the killer is revealed, but I don’t think the police are ever aware of it. This is certainly one block of London to stay a long way away from.

[UPDATE] 03-16-12.   A long biography of Pamela Branch, along with a well-written overview of her mystery fiction, may be found here on the Rue Morgue website. They have reprinted all four of her books, making them very easy to obtain. (A nice copy of the Hale edition of Overcoat in jacket has an asking price on ABE of $750.)

   I collect and read quite a few other types of magazines besides the pulps. A couple of members of FictionMags, an online Yahoo discussion group, asked me about my favorite magazines, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to discuss the subject.

       Slicks —

   This is easy for me to answer. My favorite slick magazine without a doubt is The Saturday Evening Post. They used the best authors and the best artists. It was weekly and some issues in the 1920’s were 200 pages.

   Usually collectors of the Post concentrate on certain authors or artists. Since thousands of issues were published you do not find many people trying to collect the entire run. However, I was one of the completists and at one point I had over 3,000 issues during the 1900-1970 period.

   The last time I moved not only could I not pick up the yearly boxes of the magazine (each box had 52 issues), but the movers had trouble also because of the weight. Eventually I sold much of the collection but I still have a complete run of 1940-1970.

   Another slick I liked a lot was American Magazine, mainly because of the mystery short novels they published. Jon Breen edited a collection of these novellas called American Murders.

       Digests —

   This is a far more difficult category for me to choose a favorite but I’ll go with Galaxy for the SF genre and Manhunt for the crime genre.

   Galaxy was the first magazine I bought off the newsstand in 1956 and it led to my present collection of many different titles. But my reason for picking Galaxy is not just nostalgic. I really feel that it was the best of the SF digests especially under the editorship of H.L. Gold and Fred Pohl.

   Pohl was smart enough to offer Robert Silverberg a deal to buy all of his stories submitted to Galaxy in the 1965-1972 period or thereabouts. Some of the best SF ever written appeared during this period and I’ve read many of Silverberg’s stories and serials more than once.

   Has there ever been a greater or higher quality number of novels in any SF magazine? I mean, think of it: The World Inside, Tower of Glass, Downward to Earth, Dying Inside, all in about two years.

   Alfred Bester wrote two great novels but they were in 1952 and 1956. J.G. Ballard wrote some great novels but they all did not appear in the SF magazines. Maybe Philip K. Dick comes closest but again, he did not write all of them for the SF magazines. Sturgeon had some great work in Galaxy but it was all novelette length.

   Can anyone show me a comparable run of novels in the SF magazines?

   Manhunt lasted 114 issues during 1953-1967 and during the fifties started the hardboiled crime digest craze. At one time there seemed to be dozens of Manhunt imitators but none of them could match the quality of the magazine that started it all.

   Unfortunately by the sixties it was all downhill and the hardboiled crime era was just about over. Two crime digest still exist, though they are not really hardboiled like Manhunt: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

   Circulations are dropping fast and in these days of the e-book revolution, we will probably see the end of the digest magazines.

       Literary Magazines —

   By literary I mean such magazines as the Hudson Review, T. S. Eliot’s Criterion, Scrutiny, Kenyon Review, and so on.

   I have just about all the back issues of many of the quarterlies and I love the Hudson Review, but my favorite is Horizon, not the hardbound art magazine but the monthly British magazine edited by Cyril Connolly during 1940-1949. It lasted 120 issues and I like it so much that I have two sets, one of loose issues and one bound set.

   There are other magazines that I have in two sets, loose and bound and you know you have to love a magazine to have it in bound and loose sets! Let’s face it, collecting books and magazines can be an addiction like alcohol, smoking, gambling, and drugs. But at least we get something to read and sometimes the books are even worth money. Not to mention that collecting old magazines won’t harm your health.

       Men’s Adventure Magazines —

   This is a sore point with me and maybe some of you can help me out. I have hundreds of issues from the 1950’s and 1960’s, most showing sensationalistic covers like Nazis partying with half nude girls, while GI’s wait to gun them down. I have yet to find a title that ran decent fiction other than maybe Cavalier in the fifties.

   I’m not talking about Playboy which actually ran high quality fiction, but the titles like Men’s Adventure, True Men and so on. The only redeeming value to these magazines are the crazy covers but I’m hoping someone here can convince me otherwise.

   Phil Stephensen-Payne has a great link to many titles of men’s adventure magazines published in the 1950’s and 1960’s http://www.philsp.com/mfi2.html

   Please someone show me something else about these magazine that is readable! I’ve just about given up. The covers are stunning and very eye catching but that’s all I see about these magazines. I guess the WW II vets loved these things but I can’t see anything other than the covers worth collecting.

   Check out the link to menspulpmags.com. It’s a real laugh.

   At one time I had a great cover painting from one of the men’s adventure magazines. It show Nazis turning girls into gold ingots. No wonder they lost the war.

          PULP MAGAZINES:

   I haven’t even touched the pulps which are such a big subject they deserve their own section separated by genre:

       General Fiction Pulps —

   These pulps are often called adventure pulps by collectors but I prefer the label General Fiction. The best ones lasted for very long periods and were very popular with male readers. All Story, Argosy, Short Stories, Blue Book, Adventure, and Popular Magazine were the main titles and I’ve collected them all:

   Adventure Magazine is my favorite and the pulp years lasted from 1910-1953, for 753 issues. The best period was during the 1920’s when editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman managed to obtain the very best action and adventure fiction. Richard Bleiler wrote the standard history of the magazine in his Adventure Index. Also Blood n Thunder Magazine devoted a special issue to Adventure a couple issues ago. I had an article picking my favorite stories.

   All Story lasted for over 400 issues, 1905-1920, when it was absorbed by Argosy. Famous for providing Edgar Rice Burroughs with a market for his Tarzan and Mars novels. Sam Moskowitz wrote an interesting history of the magazine in Under the Moons of Mars.

   Argosy became the first pulp in 1896 and lasted into the 1940’s when it became a man’s adventure magazine.

   Short Stories began in 1890 and lasted into the 1960’s. For much of that period it came out every two weeks like clockwork and printed the best action adventure. Blood n Thunder had a long two part article covering the 1920’s and 1930’s.

   Blue Book was known for quality fiction and Mike Ashley wrote a long history of the magazine which appears in Pulp Vault 14. This is the best single issue of a pulp fanzine and can be ordered on Amazon.

   Popular Magazine lasted over 600 issues, 1903-1931 and was called the training ground for the Saturday Evening Post. Another high quality pulp that had a two part article in Blood n Thunder.

       Detective and Mystery Pulps —

   This is easy because of what collectors call “The Big Three”: Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly. Hammett started in Black Mask and Chandler wrote for all three.

       Western Pulps —

   Western Story lasted over 1200 issues and is my favorite. But West during the Doubleday years of 1926-1935 was also quite good. So was Star Western and Dime Western, both published by Popular Publications.

       Hero Pulps —

   Most were aimed at the teenage boy market but at least two stand out: The Spider because of the crazy, fast moving plots and weird menace elements and Secret Agent X because it was not as childish as the others.

   I have to admit that I have a problem with many of the hero pulps because of the silly and sometimes stupid sidekicks. I know they were in there because someone figured the teenage boys would like them. Sort of like the childish sidekick humor in the B-westerns of the 1940’s.

   Some of the pulp sidekicks make the western sidekicks look brilliant. In Doc Savage we have Monk and Ham, for instance and their dialog and attempts at humor are enough to make me stop reading. Same thing with G-8 and His Battle Aces. Nippy and Bull have made me consider ripping up a $100 G-8 pulp.

       SF and Supernatural Pulps —

   Astounding definitely was the best SF pulp. Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, the best supernatural. Strange Tales, if it had lasted longer than seven issues, it would have been as good or better than the other two.

   Famous Fantastic Mysteries and the companion magazine, Fantastic Novels, are beautiful pulps. It is still possible to get a set without breaking the bank, and these magazines are another example of sets that I have in two formats: bound and unbound. I admit it’s crazy to have two sets, but who said love is logical?

       Sport Pulps —

   Street and Smith’s Sport Story was by far the best sport pulp.

       Love Pulps —

   These were the best sellers of the pulps because teenage girls and young women bought them. Love Story was the best with a circulation that reached 500,000 a week. Edited by the great Daisy Bacon.

   I’d appreciate any feedback on the above that you would care to provide. Do you disagree or have other favorites?

ADDED LATER:

   Todd Mason mentioned that the Daisy Bacon years where she edited Detective Story are underrated. This is certainly true especially the digest period in the 1940’s.

   In 1943 Street & Smith changed the format of their entire pulp line of magazines from the standard pulp size of 7×10 inches to the smaller digest size. The paper shortages during WW II probably drove this decision. Then the publishers saw that the future looked bleak for pulps and killed every digest title except for Astounding.

   But to get back to Daisy Bacon, she was the guiding force behind Love Story for two decades and then she took over Detective Story and actually introduced a more hardboiled story to the sedate magazine.

   Detective Story had started in 1915 and for most of the next 25 years steered clear of the hardboiled type of story. But Daisy managed to get some of the Black Mask writers to write for her, for instance Roger Torrey and William Campbell Gault. Fred Brown also. I cover the history and many of the authors of Detective Story in an article which can be seen here on the Mystery*File blog.

   When I say Love Story was the best of the love pulps, I’m speaking compared to each other. Since I try to collect every fiction magazine under the sun, I made an attempt, more than once, to read Love Story and some of the competition.

   I would not advise anyone to try this experiment. Despite being the best sellers among all the pulps, the love genre was very restrictive to say the least. The young ladies and teenage girls of the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, only wanted to read the same formula over and over, and the love pulps gave it to them, over and over.

   I’m speaking of the girl meets boy, they have some problems, and everything is resolved at the end. Ranch Romances was different from the others, but I see it as mainly a western title with some romance elements.

   The love genre may have been the big sellers among pulps (and even slicks since the readership was mostly women), but nowadays collectors mainly ignore them and copies can be had very cheaply. I can count very few people who collect them.

   When I bid on some copies at a recent pulp convention, several of my collector friends burst out laughing or were just stunned speechless. I could only explain my seemingly insane actions as an attempt to collect something new, since I’ve collected everything else.

Previously in this series:   The FRANK M. ROBINSON Collection Auction.

SMOOTH AS SILK. Universal Pictures, 1946. Kent Taylor, Virginia Grey, Milburn Stone, John Litel, Jane Adams, Danny Morton, Charles Trowbridge, Theresa Harris. Remake of the film A Notorious Gentleman (1935). Director: Charles Barton.

   I don’t know, but if you were to ask me, the movie theaters in the US during 1946 and 1947 were filled with an abundance of crime films just like this one, filmed in black-and-white and on a budget and therefore considered by many to be “noir” looking back today.

   But not by me, not really, not in this case. There’s no sense of “doom” nor “fate” in Smooth As Silk, only a whole lot of crooked activity going on by people that ought to have known better, but of course they don’t, starting with Kent Taylor’s character, a lawyer you might even call shady, simply because he can get a rich man’s nephew, a drunken playboy, acquitted from a charge of manslaughter, simply by coming up with a couple of mighty convenient witnesses.

   Or maybe it is noir, since his success in the courtroom does not carry over to his love life, as the uncle (aka the rich man) repudiates his side of deal and refuses to consider Taylor’s girl friend (Virginia Grey) for the part he promised to do so for her. Whereupon the girl friend’s true colors come out, since she really does want the part and decides to make a play on her own, or make that two plays, and either way, no pun intended.

   Things turn sour for him, in other words, and quickly. When the rich uncle is found murdered, there are several ways the D.A. (played by Milburn Stone, who is also making a play for the would-be actress’s kid sister, Jane Adams) can decide to play the investigation, and that goes for the killer as well. The title of the movies refers, I believe, to Kent Taylor’s character, but as slick as he is, he can’t find a way out of this one.

   As you can see, I’m sure, there is a lot of plot to this story, just over 60 minutes long. There’s no depth to the characters, needless to say, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch, should you ever come across it, wherever your travels may take you.

THE BIG KNIFE. United Artists, 1955. Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Ilka Chase, Everett Sloane, Miss Shelley Winters. Based on a play by Clifford Odets. Director: Robert Aldrich.

   [This review follows that of director Robert Aldrich’s The Last Sunset, which you may find here.]   Too bad Aldrich couldn’t have worked similar magic with The Big Knife because he had all the elements: a corrosive play by Clifford Odets, edgy camerawork, and an off-beat cast: Rod Steiger; Ida Lupino, Wendell Core, Shelley Winters, Everett Sloane and Jean Hagen, all headed up by Jack Palance as Charley Castle, a talented actor (something of a stretch) who wants out of his contract and on to better roles.

   To be fair, The Big Knife has some nice stuff in it. There’s a neat dichotomy in Castle’s character: pampered and polished on the outside but inwardly rotting away.

   Rod Steiger is engagingly hammy, played off against the effortless ease of Sloane and Corey, but someone let the women go w-a-y over the top, and three really talented actresses come off as little more than caricatures.

   And then there’s the pace — or rather there isn’t. Knife is the kind of classic tragedy that needs fatalistic momentum; we should see Charley Castle’s destiny come careening at him in the course of a single day, like Oedipus.

   Instead, director Aldrich and adapter James Poe open Odets’ play out and let it meander around, a fatal mistake with material like this. It weakens the concentration a drama needs with characters like these, and we come away wondering who to really care about.

   Oddly, the one memorable characterization in the whole thing is Wendell Corey — never the most electrifying of actors — as lethal press agent “Smiley” Coy. When Smiley pours himself a drink and talks casually of killing off Shelley Winters you get a real chill. Which may be part of the problem: any movie where Wendell Corey is scarier than Jack Palance has its priorities twisted.

STIEG LARSSON – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, May 2010. Vintage, trade paperback/mass market paperback, February 2012.

   It was a long wait, nearly eighteen months since I read The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second book in the Lisbeth Salander series, and I wasn’t sure how quickly I’d get up to speed on this one – which finally came out in paperback only late last month – beginning as it does exactly where the previous one left off, with Salander being flown into a hospital after being shot in the head and buried alive at the end of the other one.

   Or was it the other way around? Not that it makes a bit of difference as far as the situation she’s in.

   It should come as no surprise that she survives, but she does spend most of Hornet’s Nest recovering – and preparing herself for the criminal trial she faces as soon as she’s released, along with the threat of being returned to a mental institution and the “care” of psychologist Dr. Peter Teleborian, whom she well knows as being responsible for her previous confinement.

   She didn’t give in then, and she doesn’t give in now. She also has the unwanted (but not unneeded) help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his sister, attorney Annika Giannini. There is, in fact, an entire cadre of friends she has, some she knows about, others whom she doesn’t. But without a will of iron, she’d have been crushed long ago.

   The hornet’s nest that’s referred to in the title is the huge scandal that will erupt when her side of the story is told, one that goes to the highest echelon of the Swedish government and the biggest scandal in the country’s history. Worse than Watergate in the US? Perhaps.

   I don’t suppose that anything I may say will persuade you to read this book or not. If you read and enjoyed the first two books in the series, you will do as I did and start reading this one as soon as you come home from the store with it.

   If you found the first two books lacking and didn’t finish them, there’s no sense your reading this one. If you haven’t even started the first one, what are you waiting for?

   It may not to be your taste, and yes, there are flaws aplenty in Larsson’s writing, but on the other hand, there must be a reason for the success of this series, and I wish I could put my finger on it any more successfully than I have so far. All I can say to the naysayers, is that Larsson had the knack of telling a stories that will knock the socks right off your feet, if you allow it.

   Book three in the series is well over 800 pages long in paperback, and it took me two weeks of reading 30 to 50 pages a night – until I came to the last 250 pages, which I read in a very short two hour period without even getting up to stretch. This book is wicked good, the most entertaining book I’ve read in two or three years, and even more, (almost) all of the various threads of the plot are tied up very nicely at the end. Bravo!

W. GLENN DUNCAN – Rafferty: Poor Dead Cricket. Gold Medal, paperback original, 1988.

   Poor Dead Cricket is the third in a series about Rafferty, a Dallas private eye. Having propounded many of Lachman’s Laws myself, including the first, “Never read a book with a Swastika on the cover,” which Jon Breen once quoted in EQMM, I was glad to see that Duncan thinks similarly, and he gives many of Rafferty’s Rules, such as (#39) “Smiting the wicked sounds biblical, but mostly it’s just good clean fun.”

   So is this book, about a decent, albeit wise-cracking detective who gets involved in an environmental case similar to the one involving Karen Silkwood. Rafferty does an excellent job in reconstructing the character of Cricket Dawes, who is killed before the book begins, and he sorts out the good and bad people while nicely imparting the flavor of Texas and its speech.

       The Rafferty series —

Rafferty’s Rules (1987)    Film: Cinepix, 1992, as Snake Eater III: His Law.
Last Seen Alive (1987)
Poor Dead Cricket (1988)
Wrong Place, Wrong Time (1989)
Cannon’s Mouth (1990)

Fatal Sisters (1990)    [Winner, Shamus award, Best Paperback Original, 1991]

   Some of Rafferty’s Rules are listed here on the Thrilling Detective website. Here are a couple of good ones:

11. To feel really dumb, be a smart ass once too often.

16. When you can’t tell the bad guys from the good guys, it’s time to get the hell out.

AGATHA CHRISTIE – The Mysterious Mr. Quin. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1930. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1930. Reprinted many times in paperback. Note that the Bestseller paperback, 1940, omits three stories. Film (from the short story “The Coming of Mr. Quin”): Strand, 1928, as The Passing of Mr. Quin.

   Mr. Satterthwaite, although 62 years old, is described as a dried-up man. (Views on age have changed over time.) He is wealthy, loves the good things in life, definitively British and is a keen observer of people. The last attribute increases with each encounter with Mr. Harley Quin.

   Mr. Quin is a gentleman of mystery: Is he real with supernatural powers, or Ms. Christie’s very own, and very different version of Holmes? Quinn was, in fact, Ms. Christie’s favorite character. In her autobiography, she describes him as “a friend of lovers and connected with death.”

   She does allude to the classic Harlequin in “The Soul of the Croupier” when Satterthwaite expresses surprise seeing Quin. Quin responds “It should not surprise you,” he said. “It is Carnival time. I am often here in Carnival time.”

   In general, I’m not a fan of short stories, but I find myself frequently re-reading these. I do love Satterthwaite’s line of “I can put up with vulgarity, but I can’t stand meanness.” The stories have a slight supernatural quality to them, but always with a logical explanation possible, and certainly to the solutions of the crimes.

   I enjoyed Christie’s perception of 1930s England as being multi-cultural and non-denominational, but wonder who true that was. What I most enjoy, however, is that each story stands alone and is intriguing and compelling on its own merit.

Rating:   Excellent.

   This is a list of the female licensed PI’s featured in American TV series only. We will save the amateurs such as Murder She Wrote ’s Jessica Fletcher, female spies such as Mrs. Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and female cops such as Samantha Spade in Without a Trace for other lists.

       THE LIST:

HONEY WEST (ABC 1965-1966). Based on a series of books by G.G. Fickling (Gloria and Forrest Fickling), the series starred Anne Francis as licensed PI Honey West. Honey West’s first television appearance was in Burke’s Law episode “Who Killed the Jackpot” (April 21, 1965).

MOST DEADLY GAME (ABC, 1970-1971) Yvette Mimieux played Vanessa Smith, one of three criminologists who worked together solving unusual murders.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 1976-1981) Charlie’s “angels” were female PIs Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), Jill Munroe (Farah Fawcett), Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack), and Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts).

REMINGTON STEELE (NBC, 1982-1987) PI Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) created a fictional male boss for her agency to attract clients who thought the idea of a female PI was too feminine. Then one day he walked in…

TUCKER’S WITCH (CBS, 1982-1983) Catherine Hicks as Mrs. Amanda Turker. PI and witch. See: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=6805

PARTNERS IN CRIME (NBC, 1984) PI Raymond Caulfield left his agency to his ex-wives, proper brunette Carole Stanwyck (Lynda Carter) and fun loving blonde Sydney Kovak (Loni Anderson).

ME AND MOM (ABC, 1985) PI Kate Morgan (Lisa Eilbacher) solved crimes with her mom’s (Holland Taylor) help.

LEG WORK (CBS, 1987) Margaret Colin as former assistant district attorney turned PI Claire McCarron, who liked to live beyond her means in New York.

DIAMONDS (CBS Lste Night, 1987-1988) Married couple Christina Towne (Peggy Smithhart) and Mike Devitt (Nicholas Campbell) played PIs on a TV series. The series got cancelled and they got divorced. Later they decided to start their own PI agency.

SYDNEY (CBS, 1990) Sitcom starring Valerie Bertinelli as PI Sydney Kells.

BAYWATCH NIGHTS (Syndicated, 1995-1997) Ryan McBride (Angie Harmon) and Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) leave the beach to become PIs.

SNOOPS (ABC, 1999) PI agency owned by PI Glenn Hall (Gina Gershon). The staff featured Dana Plant (Paula Marshall), Roberta Young (Paula Jai Parker) and token guy Manny (Danny Nucci).

WILD CARD (Lifetime, 2003-2005) Zoe Busiek (Joey Fisher) teamed up with Dan Lennox (Chris Potter) as PIs for an insurance company. Rae Dawn Chong played PI Sophia Mason in the first season.

VERONICA MARS (UPN 2004-2006) (CW, 2006-2007) Veronica (Kristen Bell) was a student and part time PI in her father’s PI agency.

SEX DECOY (Fox Reality, 2009) Reality series with PI Sandra Hope. She and her operatives entrap cheating husbands for our viewing pleasure.

THE GOOD WIFE (CBS, 2009–present). Law drama. PI Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjab) works for the law firm Lockhart Gardner.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 2011) Remake with new “angels,” Kate Prince (Annie Ilonzeh), Eve French (Minka Kelly), and Abby Sampson (Rachael Taylor).

       PI or Not PI:

KHAN (CBS, 1975) PI Khan (Khigh Dhiegh) was helped by his two college aged children, a son, and his criminologist student daughter Anna (Irene Yah-Ling Sun).

MOONLIGHTING (ABC, 1985-1989) Model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) was horrified to discover she owned the Blue Moon detective agency. The agency employed one PI, David Addison (Bruce Willis). David and Maddie solved crimes and found ways to drive up each other’s blood pressure.

EYE TO EYE (ABC, 1985) PI Oscar Poole (Charles Durning) teams up with ex-partner’s young sexy daughter, Tracy Doyle (Stephanie Faracy).

TOTAL SECURITY (ABC, 1997) High-tech security firm with large staff including Jody Kiplinger (Debrah Farentino) and Ellie Jones (Tracey Needham).

V.I.P. (Syndicated, 1998-2002) Pamela Anderson plays Vallery Irons, the “Remington Steele” of bodyguards. While the public believes Vallery is the world’s greatest bodyguard, it is her staff that does all the work. The staff included ex-spy Tasha Dexter (Molly Culver), Nikki (Natalie Raitano) weapons expert, Kay (Leah Lail) computer expert, and Quick (Shaun Baker) marksman and ex-boxer.

THE HUNTRESS (USA, 2000-2001) Dorothy “Dottie” Thorson (Annette O’Toole) and her daughter, Brandi (Jordana Spiro) ran a bounty hunting business.

EYES (ABC, 2005) Harlan Judd (Tim Daly) ran a high-tech investigation firm. The female members of the staff included Nora Gage (Garcelle Beauvais), Meg Bardo (A.J. Langer), Leslie Town (Laura Leighton), and Trish Agermeyer (Natalie Zea).

   Did I miss anyone?

   I recommend the Thrilling Detective website as a good place to look, especially this page: https://www.thrillingdetective.com/tveyes.html

   Other sources include the usual “suspects”: IMDB.com, TV.com, and Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine, Ninth edition).