JOSEPH HONE – The Valley of the Fox. St. Martin’s Press, US, hardcover, 1984. Reprint paperback: Collier, US, 1989. First edition: Secker & Warburg, UK, hardcover, 1982.

   Joseph Hone has written some fine espionage novels — The Oxford Gambit, The Sixth Directorate and The Private Sector — so The Valley of the Fox comes as a surprise.

   Peter Marlow, retired spy featured in the earlier Hone books, marries a beautiful but mysterious widow named Laura whose anthropologist husband was killed in Africa. Laura has a daughter named Clare who doctors have pronounced “autistic” but who holds many surprises.

   Marlow’s life is idyllic until a masked man enters his house and kills Laura and attempts to kill Peter. Marlow, finding out he’s being framed fqr his wife’s murder, flees into the surrounding English countryside. There he meets a bizarre woman named Alice who helps him rescue Clare from the nearby hospital and allows Peter and Clare the run of her strange estate.

   The plot continues to twist and turn as Marlow investigates his dead wife’s past and the deadly secrets Clare holds. This is not an espionage novel in the conventional sense but Hone manages to pull off an off-beat novel about a retired spy in an incredible plot.

   Recommended!

   Bibliography [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HONE, JOSEPH. 1937– .
       The Private Sector (n.) H. Hamilton 1971. Peter Marlow.
       The Sixth Directorate (n.) Secker 1975. Peter Marlow.
       The Paris Trap (n.) Secker 1977

       The Flowers of the Forest (n.) Secker 1980. US title: The Oxford Gambit. Peter Marlow.

       The Valley of the Fox (n.) Secker 1982. Peter Marlow.

MARTHA GRIMES – Jerusalem Inn. Little, Brown & Co., hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprints include: Dell, 1985; Onyx, 2004.

   Superintendent Richard Jury meets a woman in a graveyard. He finds her attractive, makes a dinner date, and when he comes to keep it, she is dead — poisoned.

   His investigation takes him to the Jerusalem Inn, a country pub where snooker is played in the back room. Meanwhile, fate is busy drawing Jury’s amateur detective friend, Melrose Plant (aka the Earl of Caverness) his Aunt Agatha, and their mutual. friend, Vivian Rivington, to the same vicinity for a Christmas house party.

   The guests consist of artists and writers who are taciturn, and dilettantes who definitely aren’t. Nicest of the bunch is young Tommy, ace snooker player, otherwise known as the Marquess of Meares.

   Another murder ensues, and a confusion of motives. Jury moves along to a conclusion, but slowly. This is a contemporary version of the old-fashioned British Christmas house party murder mystery, and as such, it really ought to have a final chapter in which everyone is gathered together and everything is explained. Too many loose ends are left untied for my liking.

      Previously reviewed on this blog:

The Black Cat   (by Ray O’Leary)
The Case Has Altered   (by Steve Lewis)

“Run for Doom.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 31). First air date: 17 May 1963. John Gavin, Diana Dors, Scott Brady, Carl Benton Reid, Tom Skerritt. Teleplay: James Bridges, based on the novel Run for Doom (1962) by Henry Kane. Director: Bernard Girard.

   Nickie Carole (Diana Dors) is beautiful and talented. She works as a nightclub singer for Bill Floyd (Scott Brady), whose interest in her is intensely personal; sometimes to get her attention he slaps her around a little, but she seems to enjoy it. Floyd takes her for granted, however, and that will prove to be a fatal error.

   Yes, Nickie is bad news, but that doesn’t stop naive young medico Don Reed (John Gavin) from wanting to marry her. Even after his father (Carl Benton Reid) tells him the findings of a private eye — that Nickie has already beeen married three times to well-to-do men — Don insists on marrying her.

   When his father dies unexpectedly, Don comes into a lot of money; so whenever he waves a diamond sparkler under her nose, Nickie’s big eyes get bigger and Don gets even more attractive.

   But the girl can’t help it; Nickie tries to seduce another man just to make Don jealous and because she’s bored with married life. What results from this fracas is a lifetime blackmail plan for Don unless he can figure out how to rid himself of this troublesome wench.

   And then Floyd re-enters their lives with his own solution to the Nickie Carole dilemma, this time one that involves more than just slapping her around a little…

   Diana Dors (a Brit whose accent is always on the verge of manifesting itself) had a reputation for being merely a sex kitten in the Jayne Mansfield tradition, but here she proves that she can act as well as sing provocatively in a strapless evening gown. There isn’t a false note in her performance; she is the perfect femme fatale — and she gets to perform two song numbers, as well.

   In addition to Psycho (1960), John Gavin was a spy in OSS 117 (1968) and had two TV series, Destry (1964) and Convoy (1965). Hitchcock reportedly was unhappy with Gavin’s performance in Psycho, but he more than makes up for it here, traversing the emotional gamut from funny to morose and from naive to sinister.

   Henry Kane wrote for TV as well as roughly 30 novels and about as many short stories, many of which featured his series character Peter Chambers. As for other media: Martin Kane, Private Eye (6 episodes, 1951-52), Mike Hammer (1 episode, 1958), Kraft Theatre (2 episodes, 1958), the screenplay for Ed McBain’s Cop Hater (1958), Brenner (1 episode, 1959), Johnny Staccato (1 episode, 1959), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (2 episodes, 1963).

   He even wrote a TV tie-in novel to Peter Gunn (1960), a character some claim may have been “inspired” by Kane’s own Peter Chambers.

   You can see “Run for Doom” on Hulu here. For more on Henry Kane and his series character Peter Chambers, read Steve Lewis’s review of Until You Are Dead, earlier here on this blog.

JONATHAN CREEK. “The Judas Tree.” BBC-TV, 04 April 2010. Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek), Stuart Milligan (Adam Klaus), Sheridan Smith, with Natalie Walter, Paul McGann. Director: David Renwick.

   Earlier this year we have had a one-off “Easter Special” of this long-running series (the first one was in 1997) with the 95-minute (no adverts) “The Judas Tree”.

   When the series first started (back in 1997) it was a breath of fresh air, with impossible crimes — some with supernatural overtones — solved by a charismatic but entirely rational detective.

   In recent years, although the puzzles continue to beguile, the explanations fail to convince. The elaborate plots are still of great interest but the unravelling of them leaves, much to be explained.

   Also, now that we have “specials” rather than series we get longer stories which are padded out by entirely unfunny comedy sequences with magician Adam Klaus, Creek’s employer in his day-job. (At least this time not as preposterously as in the previous Creek, the Christmas 2008 special.)

   Anyway, in this one Creek is called in when Emily Somerton, housekeeper to crime writer Hugo Dore, encounters some strange happenings. Soon there is a violent death and Emily is accused of the crime. The explanation, when it comes, is ingenious all right, but unfortunately full of holes.

   I enjoyed watching it as it went along and the explanation that we got was good, even very good, in parts but the overall feeling was one of disappointment.

   As an interesting aside we saw the dust wrappers of five of Dore’s books and I was obsessive enough to copy them down. Each was subtitled “An Ellison Starberth Mystery” and the titles were:

       The Gilded Unicorn.
       Blind Skeleton Murders.
       The Case of the Whispering Attic.
       The Riddle at Hangman’s Cloister.
       The Four Wax Footmen.

   The first two seem to be a nod to John Dickson Carr (a combination of The Gilded Man and The Unicorn Murders, followed by The Blind Barber and The Skeleton in the Clock possibly) and just maybe the last is also (The Four False Weapons and The Waxworks Murder [UK title], maybe).

   But I have no idea about the other two. Any suggestions would be very welcome.

CARL HIASSEN – Strip Tease. Knopf, hardcover, 1993. Warner, paperback, 1994.   Film: Columbia, 1996, as Striptease (with Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds & Armand Assante).

   Hiassen has been one of those writers whose virtuosity I grant, but whose product simply hasn’t appealed to me. Several people told me that his latest was less off-the-wall than previous ones, so I decided to try it.

   We start with a Florida congressman who every now and then goes a little pussy crazy, if you’ll pardon the indelicacy. This time it takes the form of assaulting a drunk who’s pawing a nude dancer who’s an ex-FBI clerk.

   The dancer is divorced from one of the worst kind of scumbags, who nevertheless got custody of her daughter because of a bible-toting judge. Then there’s a local cop, a Cuban, who gets involved because of a body that turns up in Montana while he’s on vacation.

   Throw in a political fixer, a few sugar growers, and a sleazy lawyer or two, and you have yourself a typical Hiassen cast.

   Well, it was a little straighter than his norm, though I don’t know how much that says. Hiasson’s palette really doesn’t have any muted shades. There aren’t any weedeater prostheses, but there’s a Chinaman bitten on the penile appendage by a long snake.

   Has Florida really taken over the country’s title for most sleaze and slime, or have    the writers really just settled upon it as an easy target? There seems to be an unlimited market for low-down Florida novels, and they all seem to sell.

   While I don’t like them nearly so well as America does, if you’re going to read one Hiassen [this one] is a good choice. He has a real eye for the odd and the underside, and a biting wit. There are actually a few characters in this one that it’s possible to like, though I don’t know that I’d care to live next door to any of them.

   If you like ’em down, dirty, and strange, this is for you.

SELDON TRUSS – Always Ask a Policeman. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1952. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1953.

   What does Goodge’s dreadful lodging house have to do with the pompous Cosmo Almond, soon to be candidate for Member of Parliament? It harbors, if that’s the word I want, the ineffable Miss Dysart, who is in love with Romance, finds invisible bugs on her clothing, and may or may not be threatening Cosmo’s life, such as it is.

   The lodging house also contains Miss Pym — no, not our Miss Pym; this one is a clergyman’s daughter who poses nude at a dubious art studio patronized by Cosmo’s male secretary — an odd medical student who keeps getting picked up by the police to “assist their inquiries,” and the loathsome Goodge himself.

   Since Miss Dysart has appealed to the Yard to find Cosmo, Inspector Gidleigh of Scotland Yard — who talks like John Appleby but without the wit — is keeping an eye on this situation. Mr. Horace of the well-read but not respected Daily Snapshot both helps and hinders the investigation. But what and who are being investigated?

   Certain aspects of the novel will be clear to the experienced mystery reader, but this is still an engrossing investigation. If only all the characters had not spoken as though they had been educated at Oxford…

Bibliographic Data:   Inspector Gidleigh appeared in 24 of the author’s detective novels, published over a period of time ranging from 1936 to 1965. Truss’s full list of mystery fiction appeared between 1928 and 1969, well over 40 years, approximately 45 novels, including three as by George Selmark, but he’s almost assuredly unknown to any but the most serious collector today.

Hi Steve,

A while ago I asked you about man-on-the-run novels and you and David Vineyard gave me a magnificent reply. I am still working my way through that long list of books and shall be for quite some time! In the process I have already discovered several fine authors whom I had not known of, or read, before.

I have another enquiry that perhaps you and David can help me with. As well as man-on-the-run stories I enjoy reading tales of searches for buried treasures and artefacts. This type of story seems to have made a big comeback in recent years but it’s really the older novels I’m interested in. For example, one that I read a few weeks ago was David Dodge’s Plunder of the Sun, about lost treasure in Peru. Another was Archie Roy’s Deadlight, about a search on the Scottish Island of Arran for buried scientific notes that disclose a new technology.

Of course, once found, the “treasure” can turn out to be a Pandora’s Box, releasing something malicious or vengeful or deadly, and I like these kinds of stories too.

Can you and David, and the readers of your excellent blog, suggest any more such novels?

Thank you in anticipation,     — D.

And here’s David Vineyard’s reply:

Hmm, if you don’t mind I will forget anything past about 1990 so I don’t have to do too many of the Cussler and other types. Here is a quick list and perhaps it can be expanded upon by myself and others. I won’t go back so far as Rider Haggard and Stevenson, and I’ll limit myself to thrillers too.

THE THIRD HOUR by Geoffrey Household

VIVIERO LETTER and THE GOLDEN KEEL by Desmond Bagley

LEVKAS MAN, THE GOLDEN SOAK, and ISVIK by Hammond Innes

TREASURE by A.E. Hotchner

GIRL ON THE RUN by Edward S. Aarons

TROJAN GOLD and HER COUSIN JOHN and the entire Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters

THE SALZBURG CONNECTION by Helen MacInnes

BOY ON A DOLPHIN by David Divine

PLUNDER IN THE SUN, THE RED TASSEL by David Dodge

MURDER IN NEW GUINEA by John Vandercook

GRAIL by Ben Sapir

THE SECRET SCEPTRE and PRISONER OF THE PYRAMID by Francis Gerard

THE GYRTH CHALICE MYSTERY by Margery Allingham

GUARDIAN OF THE TREASURE (aka ISLAND OF TERROR) by Sapper

LIVE AND LET DIE by Ian Fleming

THE ROSE OF TIBET and THE MENNORAH MAN by Lionel Davidson

THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE by B. Traven

THE LAST PLACE GOD LEFT by Jack Higgins

THE EYE OF THE TIGER and THE DIAMOND HUNTERS by Wilbur Smith

TWIST OF SAND, RIVER OF DIAMONDS and GRUE OF ICE by Geoffrey Jenkins

BRIDGE OF SAND and BROTHERS OF SILENCE by Frank Gruber

FEAR IS THE KEY by Alistair MacLean

BLACK ORCHID by Nicholas Meyer and Barry Jay Kaplan

THE Q DOCUMENT by James Robert Duncan

THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE by Eugene Vale

PEKING MAN IS MISSING by Claire Tardashian

THE SAINT AND THE TEMPLAR TREASURE by Leslie Charteris

THE TOMB OF T’SIN by Edgar Wallace

THE GHOUL by Frank King

PRESTER JOHN by John Buchan

QUEST FOR THE SACRED SLIPPER by Sax Rohmer

THE WHITE SAVAGE by Edison Marshall

THE VENUS OF KOMPARA by John Masters

STONES OF ENCHANTMENT by Wyndham Martin (lost world novel featuring Anthony Trent)

THE SAPPHIRE by A.E.W. Mason

TREASURE FOR TREASURE by Justin Scott

TREASURE OF SAINTE-FOY by Macdonald Harris

TREASURE TRAIL by Roland Pertwee

Many of the Doc Savage novels as by Kenneth Robeson

GOLD BAIT by Walt J. Sheldon

MR. RAMOSI by Valentine Williams

GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT by James B. Hendryx

BURNING DAYLIGHT by Jack London

GOLD OF ST. MATTHEW by Duff Hart-Davis

GOLD OF TROY by Robert L. Fish

GOLDEN BUDDHA by Capt. A. O. Pollard

THE GOLDEN SPANIARD by Dennis Wheatley

A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD by John D. MacDonald

THE RAINBOW TRAIL by John Cunningham

MACKENNA’S GOLD by Will Henry

THE LAST TOMB by John Lange (Michael Crichton)

CONGO by Michael Crichton

APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH by Agatha Christie

THE TREASURE OF MATACUMBE by Robert Louis Taylor

TREASURE by Clive Cussler (and most of the Dirk Pitt novels)

THE MESSIAH STONE by Martin Caidin

THE MEDUSA STONE by Jack Du Bruhl

BLOOD ROYAL, BLIND CORNER, SHE FELL AMONG THIEVES, BERRY AND COMPANY by Dornford Yates (many of Yates novels involve some sort of treasure or loot)

THE PINK JUNGLE by Alan Williams

HIS BONES ARE CORAL and THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER by Victor Canning (both films, the former as SHARK by Sam Fuller with Burt Reynolds)

ANY OLD IRON by Anthony Burgess ( a modern family of British Jews are guardians of Excalibur)

APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH by Agatha Christie

THE GOLDEN HOARD by Philip Wylie (when the government called in gold a miser’s hoard becomes the focus of gangsters)

TREASURE OF MATACUMBE by Robert Louis Taylor

MARCHING SANDS and THE GARDEN OF EDEN by Harold Lamb (also some of his shorts from ADVENTURE about Khlit the Cossack deal with the lost treasures of Genghis Khan and the Hashishin)

THE MASK OF FU MANCHU and THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU by Sax Rohmer

THE SANDS OF KARAKORAM by James Ramsey Ullman

THE MYSTERY OF KHUFU’S TOMB, THE NINE UNKNOWN, THE DEVIL’S GUARD, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, THE IVORY TRAIL by Talbot Mundy

SPHINX by Robin Cook

THE GOLD OF MALABAR by Berkley Mather

THE NAUTICAL CHART by Arturo Perez-Reverte (a recent one, but worth reading)

THE ARROW OF GOLD by Joseph Conrad

IMPERIAL EXPRESS by James Bellah

TERENCE O’ROURKE GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER and THE POOL OF FLAME (both with Terence O’Rourke) by Louis Joseph Vance

THE SECRET OF SAREK, THE COUNTESS CAGLIOSTRO, 813, THE BLOND LADY, THE HOLLOW NEEDLE by Maurice LeBlanc (all Arsene Lupin and most dealing with his quest for the lost treasures of the Kings of France)

THE SPOTTED PANTHER by James Francis Dwyer

THE MATING OF THE BLADES (many titles) by Achmed Abdullah (NIck Romanov, a career Brit solider and the son of an Indian Princess and a Russian aristocrat, author of THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD and the screenplay for LIVES OF THE BENGAL LANCERS)

THE BLUE EYED MANDARIN by Stephen Becker

GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS by Steve Frazee (western)

THE DEEP by Peter Benchley

WHITE WITCH OF THE SOUTH SEAS and ISLAND WHERE TIME STOOD STILL by Dennis Wheatley

JOURNEY TO ORASSIA by Alan Caillou

ZADOK’S TREASURE by Margot Arnold (Toby Glendower mystery)

THE FAMILY TOMB by Michael Gilbert

THE RIDDLE OF SAMPSON by Andrew Garve

THE CUP OF GOLD, THE ETRUSCAN TOMB, THE GREEK AFFAIR by Frank Gruber

THE DANCING MAN by P.M. Hubbard (one of the great thriller writers on any theme)

FIGUREHEAD by Bill Knox (a lost gold ship and a deadly feud on a Scottish island plus a possible monster — one of the Webb Carrick Fisheries Protection Service novel — yes, the Fish Police — also check out his Talos Cord series and as Noah Webster, his Jonathan Gaunt books)

THE CROWN OF COLUMBUS by Louise Edrich and Michael Dorris (good example of the literary version of the treasure hunt)

TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY by Edgar Rice Burroughs (search for the ‘Mother of Diamonds’ also known as THE RED STAR OF TARZAN and basis for the serial THE NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN serialized on radio)

SEA GOLD by Ian Slater

OUT OF THE DEPTHS by Leonard Holton (Father Bredder on holiday goes scuba diving for treasure and murder)

RIPTIDE and ICE LIMIT by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs (okay, they are well into the later period but both outstanding)

THAI GOLD by Jason Shoonover ( not the greatest writer in the world, but interesting because the author is a treasure hunter and relic hunter in real life)

Many of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy books touch on treasure hunts

TEMPLE TOWER by Sapper aka H.C. McNeile (Bulldog Drummond hunts a treasure and battles a master criminal,Le Bossu, the Hunchback, in France)

THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco

THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Reverte-Perez

THE TAKERS by Jerry Ahern (UFO’s, lost Atlantis, the Antarctic — everything but the kitchen sink)

ICEBOUND by Rick Spenser (paperback original series but better written than usual, the VIKING CIPHER series)

THE ABOLITION OF DEATH by James Anderson

MYSTIC WARRIOR by Ryder Jorgenson [NOTE: See Comment #3 for the correction to this entry.]

THE POLLENBERG INHERITANCE by Evelyn Anthony

GRAVE DOUBT by Ivor Baker

THE TEMPLE TREE by David Beatty (gold-carrying plane crashes on a sacred Asian temple)

THE BUCKINGHAM PALACE CONNECTION by Ted Willis

SOLOMON’S QUEST by H. Bedford-Jones writing as Alan Hawkwood. A classic pulp adventure by the King of the Pulps one of the long running John Solomon series about cherubic Cockney businessman and adventurer Solomon — in this one he races to prevent evidence from being produced that could set the Mid-East aflame — namely that Mohammed converted to Christianity… Needless to say not politically correct. Also JOHN SOLOMON SUPER CARGO and many others.

BLACK CORAL by Nancy Ferguson

DAUGHTER OF THE HAWK by C. S. Forester. Englishwoman’s father leads a South American revolution.

THE WIND CHILL FACTOR, THE GLENDOWER LEGACY, ASSASSINI by Thomas Gifford

THE HOLLOW SEA, CLEFT OF STARS by Geoffrey Jenkins

A TASTE FOR DEATH by Peter O’Donnell. Modesty and Willie battle criminals looking for ancient treasure and using slave labor to do it.

THE LABYRINTH MAKERS by Anthony Price

TERROR KEEP by Edgar Wallace — Mr. J.G. Reeder finds love and treasure.

THE DIAMONDS OF LORETA by Ivor Drummond (Sandro, Colly, and Lady Jenny adventure)

LEE HARRIS – The Good Friday Murder. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1992. TV movie: Hallmark Channel, 2004, as Murder Without Conviction (with Megan Ward as Christine Bennett & Morgan Weisser as Det. Jack Brooks).

   When I went to Google to look up Lee Harris’ real name, Syrell Rogovin Leahy, I came upon a website for a public library somewhere where three of her novels (non-criminous) were listed, in a category of books called Tearjerkers: A Book of Ruth, Circle of Love, and Love Affair. (Following next were Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley. That’s pretty good company.)

   These books all came before The Good Friday Murder, which was the author’s first mystery. Unless I’ve lost count, there are now 14 in the series, with one or two coming out every year through 2002, when The Happy Birthday Murder appeared.

   [UPDATE:   The Cinco de Mayo Murder is the 17th and presumable the last. It came out in 2006.]

   But if at all possible, if you think you’d like to try one, start with this first one, which as chance would have it, is what I did. It’s a good one, and with no effort on your part, I’d be happy to tell you more.

   I knew from reading the back covers that Christine Bennett was once a nun, but under what circumstances she left the convent and became involved in mystery cases, I did not know. The answers are to be found in this book, which is why you should perhaps start with this one.

   Part of the charm of this early book in the series, at least, is that Kix (to her friends) is not used to talking to strangers, and yet she manages very well; she is unused to things like bridge tolls and the high price of parking in Manhattan, yet she ends up driving back and forth several times into the city from a small town an hour or so up the Hudson.

   She is also definitely not used to being physically attracted to good-looking men, of which Sergeant Jack Brooks is one, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be allowed to be there with them as each of them learns who the other is.

   And yes, there is a murder to be solved, one that occurred on a Good Friday forty years earlier. A pair of twin boys, 29 years old, but savants unable to care for themselves — yet capable of doing miraculous feats of memory and mental computations — were blamed at the time, but they were never convicted of killing their mother.

   Separated ever since, Robert and James Talley were institutionalized, fell into severe depression, and generally wasted their lives. Until, that is, Christine is able to reunite them, clear their names and make them whole again, with misty eyes all around.

   As a detective, Christine Bennett is a gifted amateur, working out the facts by doing a lot of footwork and being a good judge of character. The final melodramatic scene of kidnap and rescue didn’t seem quite to fit the high caliber of what came before, but there’s nothing in this that would make me dissuade you in any way from reading this book.

   Which I did in one evening. Very enjoyable.

[UPDATE #2] I had not seen the movie when I wrote this review, but I do remember watching it later on. I may be wrong about this, but the film followed the book quite well. It’s too bad it didn’t turn into a series.

   Of course that statement is based only on my memory of it. I found it on DVD on Amazon for three dollars, so I ordered it. Perhaps I’ll report back on it here on this blog one of these days.

   As much as I enjoyed the book, I have not, alas, read any of the others in the series. I suppose it the series falls into the “cozy” category, but if what I said in the review is true, it’s one in which the characters are serious about they’re doing, and the mystery isn’t bad, either.

REGINALD HILL – Exit Lines. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1984. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1985. Reprint editions include: Signet, pb, 1986.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading characters:  Dalziel & Pascoe; 8th in series. Setting:   England.

First Sentence:   On a cold and storm-racked November night, while Peter and Ellie Pascoe were still celebrating with wine and wassail the first birthday which their daughter Rose had greeted with huge indifference, three old men, who felt far from indifferent, died.

    The local population has been decreased by the death of three elderly gentlemen in one night; one died of exposure on a playing field, one having been attacked in his bath, and one after being struck by a car possibly driven by Andy Dalziel.

    It is always such fun to read a book by Hill. There is a great central cast of characters. In DS Andy Dalziel, Hill has created a highly offensive character and made him very likable. He is type the person you’d most want to avoid, yet there is innocence to his uncouthness and a heart beneath the girth.

   DI Peter Pascoe is the perfect counterpart with his university education and proper manner. He has come to be known as the murder specialist.

   Supported by their team, including the naive Constable Hector, Hill combines good police procedure and a touch of humor. When it comes to the victims, Hill is serious and presents the challenges and vulnerability of the aging with great respect and care.

   There are essentially five threads to Exit Lines: the three deaths, trying to figure out what Dalziel is doing, and Ellie Pascoe’s concern for her own aging father. I appreciated the realism of having the police investigate more than one case at a time and was stunned by the way they came together in the end.

   Hill is a wonderful writer, and Dalziel and Pascoe are a great combination, one I enjoy more with each book.

Rating:   Very Good.

CAROLYN WELLS – The Furthest Fury. J. B. Lippincott, US/UK, hardcover, 1924.

   After over a half-dozen attempts I have finally found a Carolyn Wells mystery I like. It’s called The Furthest Fury. Character drawing is adequate to good, Wells’ “transcendant detective” (as he is called here) Fleming Stone is present for about half the book — actually detecting — and the solution is acceptably fair to the reader.

   David Stanhope’s visit with friends in the Connecticut hill country village of New Midian soon plunges him into mystery as two comparatively recent citizens of the village, a man, Nevin Lawrence, and his widowed sister, are murdered in their own house, both shot to death.

   Potential suspects include the hotheaded son of Stanhope’s wealthy friends, who was running for country club president against Nevin Lawrence on a “wet” platform; the son’s girlfriend, a mere daughter of the local dressmaker; the peppery maid, who inherits under the wills; the local spinster music teacher, a gossip and busybody of the first order; the strange, white-faced man Stanhope noticed on the train to New Midian; and possibly even the landlord and landlady and various summer residents of the local genteel boarding house, “Gray Porches.”

   Along with the far-too-bumbling local police, Stanhope investigates the brutal crimes; but he finally is compelled to call on Fleming Stone, who answers all questions after some genuine detection. Stone leaves his theory of the crime in a sealed envelope early on during the course of his investigations — and he was dead-on accurate, of course!

   The atmosphere of the once-peaceful little New England village is fine — it’s a convincing sort of American Mayhem Parva. Additionally, there’s some well-portrayed generational conflict between a father and son, an appealing (not cloying) lower-class damsel, a fine “character” of a maid, and a memorable gossipy spinster. The solution is quite interesting, and the reader may well deduce it.

   All in all, The Furthest Fury is a fine book, well worth reprinting. The silliness omnipresent in so many of Wells’ post-1920 books is not present, nor is the book stilted and dated in the Victorian manner like many of her earlier mysteries. And, best of all, the tale is fully fair play, the first such, actually, that I have read by Ms. Wells. Well worth reading!