GORDON MATHIESON – The Color of Ice. SinoAmerican Books, softcover, November 2009.

   The yellow peril is alive and well and living in modern thriller fiction.

   True, the racial element is considerably toned down, and many titles, like this one, feature an inter-racial love affair and a heroic Asian character, but still something of the air of Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, and Doctor No linger in the margins.

   To be fair they would almost have to. I don’t think any author could ever be politically correct enough to erase them.

   President Bowa, the new American President and his Chinese American Secretary of State can’t ignore the threat or the offer for a joint effort with the MSS and the Chinese government, but they don’t trust the PRC or MSS leader General Peng, so Bowa chooses Mandarin speaking microbiologist Carrie Bock to be his “mole” in the research project.

   Bowa and Bock are old friends (he calls her Carbo, she calls him Barbo — no kidding — but I tried not to hold that against them or the writer).

   So far so good, and to some extent that sums the book up. As far as it goes it is pretty good, but too often it reads like a detailed outline for a movie more than an actual novel. That isn’t to say it is poorly written, it isn’t. Many a best selling thriller writer writes less interesting prose than Mathieson.

   Carrie joins the team under the beautiful ‘ice woman’ Lan Ying, meets and falls for scientist Dr. James Chen, and learns that during WW II the US looked into a biological weapon targeted at the Japanese and that this is the basis for the Pakistani weapon and the hoped for vaccine to prevent them from targeting individual races.

   Carrie falls for Chen (indeed the two of them hardly bother to shake hands before tumbling into bed — even James Bond has to work harder at it) and feels a bit of guilt about working behind his back, then begins to smell a couple of rats — Lan and Peng.

   So, what’s the problem?

   It’s one that I’m finding increasingly with modern thriller writers. They understand the form, the basics of character, plot, and the development of the two, but they seem somehow tentative about it all. They seem almost frightened to put their heroes through the wringer.

   What is missing from too many thrillers these days are the thrills.

   Frank Gruber once wrote about the formula he used for most of his fiction. It was an elaborate one and had several numerically listed points, but at the end he gave a simpler version of it for would-be writers: the hero gets into trouble in line one of page one and increasingly as the book progresses he gets deeper and deeper in trouble to the point that it seems impossible for him to survive, much less win out, then as close to the last line of the last page as is possible he turns the tables and wins out decisively at the last possible moment.

   It’s still a pretty good formula for a thriller, but few seem to remember it these days.

   Carrie Bock is so far ahead of Peng and Lan that there isn’t a lot of suspense as to what is going to happen to her. You know going in that the hero or heroine is going to win, but the trick of these is to make you (and them) sweat getting there — the only sweating in this one is implied, and mostly between the sheets — and not only between Carrie and Jim Chen — not the covers of the book.

   This isn’t a knock, but it is meant as encouragement. Mathieson has all the elements at this fingertips, but he hasn’t learned how to orchestrate them for the most effect. He seems to like his heroes a little too well, and feel a bit too kindly toward his villains. (They meet their fate off stage, and while it is a terrible fate, it would have been better shown with full nasty effect than simply told to us second hand –at least half of a good thriller is the catalyst of emotional release at the climax when he villain meets a visceral and, hopefully, well deserved end — even Claudius in Hamlet dies on stage.)

   Who wants to read a tidy thriller?

   I enjoyed this, but because I enjoyed seeing a new writer with some skills testing the water. I hope for the next book he takes the plunge. Faint heart never won fair publisher’s advance.

   This is just on the edge of being what I suspect he wants. It just needs that little twist of the knife to not merely get you to turn the page, but to compel you to turn the page.

   Fu Manchu would have made it much worse on Sir Denis Nayland Smith (this one could use a super-heated rat cage and desperate rodent looking to escape through someone’s skin), and Doctor No came close to feeding James Bond to a giant killer octopus — never underestimate the importance of sheer melodrama in a thriller. Even cheap thrills are still thrills.

   Good taste and subtlety aren’t always virtues, even Graham Greene and Eric Ambler knew when to get their hands dirty. And that’s what is missing here. That sense that anyone might get their hands dirty, break a sweat (even during sex), or that the fate of the free world or the protagonists is ever in doubt.

   There is an old rule in thriller writing: every third chapter should end in a cliffhanger and every fifth chapter should be a reversal of fortune for the hero. He also fails the standard “false climax, anti-climax, true climax” structure that is key for a thriller, but by then it hardly matters.

   Everything is there, it’s just all too “nice,” too clean, too zipped up and sanitized for our protection. Maybe I’m just too jaded, but I can’t help but think a thriller ought to be just a little pulpy and unwholesome. I’d much rather a thriller had loose ends than pink neatly tied bows.

   You can’t write a cozy thriller.

   Why would you try?

   This comes so close, it almost qualifies as a thriller just for that, but I can’t really recommend it on the basis that I was in suspense seeing if the author was going to generate any suspense or thrills.

   And it wouldn’t hurt if he were a bit more gruesome abut the horrors of his bio-agent too. I never thought I would be complaining about the lack of grue and gore in any book, but damn it, if you plan to scare me with one of these someone’s face ought to at least melt.

   And one last thing. This is about the third book I’ve read this month that is structured like a television episode or film, and not like a novel. I love movies too, I’ve even written screenplays, but they are not the same form — which is why the book is so often so much different than the film.

   I don’t know anything about Gordon Mathieson (great name for a thriller writer though), but I am going to suggest he go to fewer films and perhaps read a few more thrillers — and not just the great ones or current ones. There is much today’s writers could learn from writers like John Creasey who kept readers turning pages from 1932 on for over six hundred books.    [FOOTNOTE]

   A good thriller is more than the sum of its parts, it is also a visceral experience for the reader and the writer. You ought to reach the end both with a sense of satisfaction, and a feeling you had just had something of an adventure yourself. It’s called escapism, not somnambulism. The nap should come after you finish the book, not during.

[FOOTNOTE]   In one of the Baron novels, Deaf Dumb and Blonde, there is a scene in John Mannering (the Baron)’s home where a villain has a gun at his back, and the front doorbell rings.

   It’s a policeman, and as Mannering is compelled down the stairs, gun at his back, Creasey wrings a good four pages (a bit over a thousand words I’d estimate) of nerve wracking prose out of the time it takes to walk down a stairway as the Baron weighs his options, what action he will take, and the consequences to himself and others.

   You can’t do that in a movie, not in quite the same way, and every writer who even thinks about generating suspense and thrills ought to learn from that. Cinematic isn’t always a compliment. If it was, none of the Harry Potter books would be over a hundred pages long.

CHARLAINE HARRIS – Dead to the World. Ace Books, hardcover, May 2004; paperback: May 2005.

   Not the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series, but the first I’ve read. The premise of the series, on which the TV show True Blood is based, is that affordable synthetic blood has been developed, and vampires have taken the opportunity to “come out” and integrate into larger society, since they can now survive without presenting a threat to humans.

   The premise of the book is that Sookie’s brother has gone missing, and his disappearance seems be related to the efforts of a powerful gang of shapeshifter witches to take over businesses owned by vampires. Sookie tries to unravel all this using her ability to read minds and her connections to the vampire community.

   By the way, werewolves are real, too.

   I enjoyed reading the book, I appreciated the spectacular human-vampire sex scene, I was happy to sample the series, but I probably won’t read any more. Apparently my suspension of disbelief is not quite willing enough.

Editorial Comments:   L. J. Roberts reviewed Dead in the Family, the 10th in the series, here on this blog earlier this month. (Dead to the World is the fourth.)

   I don’t suppose that Tina’s review will change anyone’s mind, as expressed in the comments that followed L.J.’s, but at least I now have a better idea of what the books are about. And, no, now that my curiosity is satisfied, between the two reviews, I don’t think I’ll read any of them myself.

   Incidentally, there is an “in” joke in Tina’s last line. The name of her zine in DAPA-Em, from which she has given me permission to reprint her reviews, is called The Willing Suspension of Disbelief, currently up to issue #34 (July 2010).

SWINGIN’ ON A RAINBOW. Republic, 1945. Jane Frazee, Brad Taylor (Stanley Brown), Harry Langdon, Minna Gombell, Amelita Ward,Tim Ryan, Paul Harvey, Holmes Herbert, Bert Roach. Director: William Beaudine. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   When radio star and songwriter Jimmy Rhodes Richard Davies) slips out of town without completing the songs for a program that could save a struggling radio station from bankruptcy, the desperate station manager (Paul Harvey) hires an aspiring song writer Lynn Ford (Jane Frazee) to complete the songs, believing her to be Rhodes’ partner.

   Before this is all sorted out, Frazee’s attractive acting and singing, abetted by some artful comic ploys by Harry Langdon, made this a pleasant lead-in to the weekend’s screenings.

   The sixteen speaking parts listed in the credits end with “Drunk,” played by Bert Roach, who, in the late silent and early sound period, played leading and supporting comic roles, a dependable and amusing actor.

   And returning to Harry Langdon, a comedian for whom I never really cared, he was, for a time, a major silent player. He brings to the role of Chester Willouby, assistant to the station manager, an unassuming charm that surprised me and made me wonder if I shouldn’t revisit some of his silent film successes.

Editorial Comment:   Harry Langdon died on 22 December 1944 at the still young age of 60. Swingin’ on a Rainbow was the last movie in which he was to appear.

TARZAN AND THE HUNTRESS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1947. Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, Johnny Sheffield, Patricia Morison, Barton MacLane, John Warburton, Charles Trowbridge. Based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Director: Kurt Neumann.

   Based on the pages of TV Guide that I torn out and slipped inside the case, I taped this movie from a local station in September 1991, VHS of course. (I don’t know if DVDs were around then or not, but certainly not do-it-yourself recordable ones.) It’s been stored in the basement ever since, and it still plays fine.

   Unfortunately the local station (WTXX in Waterbury) played this late at night and spiced it up every so often with colorful ads for adult services such as 1-900-HOTPINK. Those were the days, my friend.

   Johnny Weissmuller made only one more Tarzan movie, Tarzan and the Mermaids, before he morphed into Jungle Jim, but Brenda Joyce (who followed Maureen O’Sullivan) appeared twice more as Jane, appearing in Tarzan’s Magic Fountain with Lex Barker before calling it quits on her movie-making career. And Johnny Sheffield, growing up before the viewers’ eyes, became Bomba, the Jungle Boy soon after this one, in 1949.

   As “Boy,” though, he may have been getting taller and filling out more, but in Huntress he wasn’t smart enough to realize that trading two lion cubs to some hunters on safari for a flashlight was an altogether too bone-headed of a stunt for him to stay out of Tarzan’s doghouse for very long,

   Of course the members of that same safari, picking up specimens for zoos in the US after the war, aren’t smart nor wise enough to realize that even though they’re not killing animals, crossing Tarzan’s wishes isn’t the smartest thing to do, especially on Tarzan’s home turf.

   The “huntress” in this movie is Tanya Rawlins, played by Patricia Morison, a beautiful brunette who’s nominally in charge of the expedition, but she’s too petite to overrule villain Barton MacLane, who plays her guide. In doing his job far too enthusiastically, for example, he finds it necessary to bump off the local native leader who stands in their way.

   The movie’s 72 minutes long, but it feels longer, even though there’s only about 30 minutes of actual plot to go with it – which probably goes a long way in explaining why it does feel as long as it does. There’s lots of stock animal footage, lots of neat shots of Tarzan swinging from vine to vine, one scene of synchronized swimming, and far too much monkey business. Way too much. I think Cheetah (the chimpanzee) has more screen time in this movie than any of the other actors.

JOHN G. ROWE – The Roped Square. Mellifont Sports Series #36, UK, paperback original, no date stated [1941].

   Not my usual type of reading fare, but the book’s in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, so when a copy came to hand, and being suspicious of its origin as part of a “sports” series, I thought I’d check it out, browsing my way through, and see exactly how “criminous” it actually was.

   And before I knew it, nearly an hour had gone by, and I was well over half way through (128 pages of small print). Jim Ballard, a strapping young lad, is indeed a boxer, as you may have guessed from the title, or he would be, if his mother didn’t frown so upon his desire to become one.

   A small bout, though, in which he is not only the winner but also the recipient of the ten pounds of prize money, softens her opposition a bit. But the notoriety also arouses the interest of a certain criminal element, and Jim’s father is set upon by thieves, one of which, a man with a scar, promises to tell Jim something about his past if Jim were to let him go.

   It turns out that Jim’s parents are not his real ones, they reluctantly tell him. He was abandoned on their doorstep when he was tiny, and thus Jim’s world is turned upside down. In between further boxing matches he is kidnapped into an opium den (see the cover image), dropped off a barge into a river to drown, and is discovered to be the son of a local lord.

   Which between you and I, the latter’s story should not be believed for a minute. This reads like a Horatio Alger story to me, with new revelations and narrow escapes coming more and more quickly as the tale goes on. It’s all very interesting, although Jim, while quite the boxer, is far more naive than a young man of his years should be.

   Interesting until, that is, he is shanghaied and he finds himself in irons on a ship sailing for who knows where, which is one scrape too many. The author’s only out (if you don’t mind my revealing this to you) is to have half of the crew mutiny (it wasn’t too clear which half, nor why), and all of a sudden Jim is home, the villain revealed, and Jim is champion of the world.

   The last time I was seriously online was Friday, which was when Hurricane Earl had us in New England squarely in his sights and was barreling up the coast toward us. Most of the projections were correct, though, and the storm missed us … by that much.

   We scurried around outside the house though, picking up and storing in the garage the table and chairs on the deck and anything else strong winds might pick up and dash down the street, or through a window, just in case. Sometime preparations in advance work, and it did this time. All we got was 15 minutes of rain and no wind to speak of.

   Just a little excitement to start the beginning of September and the end of summer. Wish I could say that postings on this blog are going to become a little less erratic, but I don’t think I can. Bear with me. I didn’t mean to go quiet all weekend, but that’s the way it turned out. It wasn’t planned; it just happened.

   I also am hoping to get caught up on email sometime soon. If you haven’t heard from me in a while, and you were expecting to, I apologize. Your only consolation might be that you’re not alone. I’ll try to do better.

   Looking back, I didn’t do a lot of reading in August, and that frustrates me, but everything I’ve read has been reported on here. Not reviewed have been six or so movies, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen them for me to report on them with any feeling that I could do them justice. You’ll have to wait until I watch them again, which I may.

   What follows are some announcements of sorts, some of this and more of that, as the heading says. Some might deserve posts of their own, but in order to cover them all quickly, I’ll combine them into this one long post.

    ● First of all, I’d like to to remind you that Dan Stumpf’s book ’Nada, as by Daniel Boyd, which I previewed here last July has now been published. You can buy it from Amazon and other online sources, and if I may once again, I strongly recommend that you do.

   I’ve just posted a version of my review of the book on Amazon, but I see that both Bill Crider and George Kelley have beaten me to it. (All three of us have given it five stars.)

    ● Ken Johnson has asked me to mention that he’s revised and expanded his checklist of the digest-sized paperbacks that were published mostly in the 1940s. I’m happy to do so, and in fact what I will do is publish his note to me in full:

    “I want to let people know that The Digest Index, my online reference to digest-size paperbacks, which was originally posted two and a half years ago, has now been substantially revised and reposted. It is hosted by Bruce Black on his Bookscans website and can be accessed here: http://bookscans.com/Publishers/digestindex/digestindex.htm

    “Among the revisions are the addition of 11 new imprints, the addition of series information into both author indexes (to books and contents), and the addition of artist identifications into the publisher index. Because I still lack a lot of cover artist data, I did not attempt a full artist index but instead supplied a summary of which imprints each artist was mentioned under and plugged in scanned samples of their signatures. This is in addition to tightening up the original data with more identification of abridgments and retitles, as well as additional personal data for a number of authors.

    “I’ve put a lot of effort into this Index, but it still has a lot of holes in it. Additions and corrections are always welcome. Actually, feedback of any kind is welcome; I get the sense sometimes that hardly anyone has seen it.”

   To which I reply, while I don’t go there every day, I do find the need to refer to it at least once a week. A large percentage of these books were either mysteries and westerns, making the information for me very useful. It’s a remarkable piece of work. Check it out!

    ● Finally, a comment left by the anonymous PB210 following my review of a Hugh North novel by Van Wyck Mason needs some additional exposure, I thought:

    “I tried to compare the Hugh North novels to other long running secret agent novel series by one author:

    “So far based on what I have written above, De Villiers has the overall record, while Van Wyck Mason has the record in the English language. Others more knowledgeable may have thought of a longer series by one author.

    “Anyone have any information about Herbert New?”

   I’ve not had a chance to check any of PB210’s data, nor do I know the Herbert New to whom he refers in his last question, but comments and suggestions of other authors are most certainly welcome.

JONATHAN GASH – Firefly Gadroon. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Penguin, 1985. UK editions include: Collins, hardcover, 1982; Arrow, paperback, 1986. Reprinted many times.

   Jonathan Gash is back with another Lovejoy adventure. Lovejoy is a rogue who would rob his blind grandmother in order to get an antique he wanted. Lovejoy puts antiques above everything else in life.

   This obsession is both Lovejoy’s most endearing quality and his greatest flaw. All of Lovejoy’s adventures revolve around antiques the way all Dick Francis books revolve around horse racing.

   In Firefly Gadroon Lovejoy gets involved in a case involving international smugglers of antiques and a mystery of where a fortune in antiques is hidden with the only clue being an antique firefly box.

   Along with the usual action in a Lovejoy thriller, Gash manages to add interesting aspects of antiques to the convoluted plot. This is one of the better books in the Lovejoy series and has just been released in paperback by Penguin. Recommended.

NOTE: For George’s current reviews (mysteries, SF, music, movies and more) visit his own blog at http://georgekelley.org/. It’s worth the trip.

CHARLAINE HARRIS – Dead in the Family. Ace Books, hardcover, May 2010. Reprint paperback: March 2011.

Genre:   Paranormal suspense. Leading character:  Sookie Stackhouse; 10th in series. Setting:   Louisiana.

First Sentence: “I feel bad that I’m leaving you like this,” Amelia said.

   The Fae War is over and Sookie is recovering from her injuries. In spite of the door to the Fae World being closed, it seems not all the faeries have left. Her cousin, Claude, has decided to move in with her, she suspects her great-uncle Dermot may still be around and, perhaps, one other.

   Sookie’s vampire lover, Eric, is also still recovering. Although he is pleased when his “maker” appears, Sookie isn’t happy particularly with the vampire child of Russian nobility who is with him.

   As if that’s not enough, Sookie tries to help a human child who shares her telepathic abilities, is asked to act as Shaman for the Weres, and everyone is concerned about a government bill which would require all Weres and Shifters to register as such.

    It is interesting that, while many people didn’t like this book, I felt it was one of the better books in the series. The consistent thread was families, all types of families, and the relationships within them. For that reason, I felt there was more depth to this book than some.

   At the same time, it is not easy to take vampires, wares, faeries and humans and make the paranormal seem normal, realistic and logical. Harris does it with style, aplomb and humour. The book deals more with characters and less with edge-of-the-seat action. Most of the gang is here but there is just enough detail provided about each character for new readers.

   Harris makes you believe in these characters. More than that, she makes you cheer for the “good” characters and when Sookie says she wants one of the “bad” characters to die; so, too, do you.

   Harris’s descriptions provide such a strong sense of place that when she talks about Sookie sitting on the front porch, you can smell the coffee and hear the birds. Unfortunately, that also works for the less-than-pleasant descriptions as well so it is not a book for the easily queasy. To me, it’s that contrast that makes it work. This wasn’t as much of a graphic action or sex plot as some, although certainly enough to satisfy.

   This was a more introspective book for Sookie with the emotions conveyed being tangible. It also felt a transition book for Ms. Harris — the series growing up, if you will, and relationships developing.

   I know Ms. Harris has planned out where the series is going. There is no question but that I shall be going along with her.

Rating:   Very Good.

MADAME X. MGM, 1937. Gladys George, Warren William, John Beal, Reginald Owen, Henry Daniell, Phillip Reed, Jonathan Hale, George Zucco. Based on a play by Alexandre Bisson. Director: Sam Wood.

   I don’t know which Lana Turner movie I was thinking of when I started to watch this one, but it obviously wasn’t Madame X (1966), which equally obviously I have never seen. What I was expecting to see was a murder mystery, but while there was a murder, and Jacqueline Fleuriot, a wayward wife played to perfection by Gladys George, is suspected of the crime, there is little or no effort onscreen to solve the crime.

   POSSIBLE PLOT ALERT: Some of what follows will tell you more than I knew when I started to watch this film, and to tell you the truth, more than I personally wanted to know, so take the next few paragraphs off, if you feel the same way.

   The shooting death of Mme Fleuriot’s lover by another rival is instead the first step in an nightmarish series of events in her life, leading her ever downward into poverty (pawning first her jewelry, then her clothes) and prostitution (all but assuredly, but the film of course never quite says so).

   It seems that while Mme Fleuriot was having her fling — out of boredom rather than real desire — her son unexpectedly fell seriously ill, and her husband (Warren William), a highly respected and influential attorney, throws her out of his house and his life.

   When the husband relents, it is too late, and his wife cannot be found. This was Gladys George’s only starring role, and I do not pretend to understand why.

   She plays the world weary Mme Fleuriot perfectly — and more and more weary at each step of the way, on her downward path of self-inflicted destruction. Frowzy and embittered, and yet innately likable throughout the movie, she is no stranger to either men or the bottle – semi-adept in warding off the first but not the latter.

   The final blow comes when a cheap con-man named Lerocle (Henry Daniell) comes to her rescue – a man to whom she inadvertently reveals her real identity, initialing a series of events that leads to a courtroom scene in which she is on trial for murder, an accusation for which she cannot defend herself, else it will ruin her reason for being accused in the first place.

   The histrionics run high in these final scenes, all but the calm and mostly controlled performance by Gladys George, who was relegated to small and bit parts for the rest of her career, and unfairly so. Warren William also allows his character’s stony facade to crumble in the end, to good effect. If this is pure soap opera, then so be it. It’s also highly effective, and I enjoyed the movie immensely.

COMMENTS: This version of the movie is easily available on DVD. Warner Archives has, for example, released on a double bill with the 1929 version. For a clip on YouTube of the tavern scene shown above, go here.

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INVISIBLE INVADERS. United Artists, 1959. John Agar, Jean Byron, Philip Tonge, Robert Hutton, John Carradine. Director: Edward L. Cahn.

   As bad as second-rate sci-fi movies are today, in 1959 they were even worse. Even so, while this one is as ineptly written as they come, the solid earnestness of the cast makes it bearable to watch. It also doesn’t manage to turn you off with an excess of stomach-wrenching special effects, as opposed to what just about every other space-invasion monster-movie supplies us with, whether we wish so or not.

   Maybe that’s because the invaders from the moon, the self-proclaimed “masters of the universe”, are invisible. What is not really explained very well is why (1) they have been content to stay on the moon until now, and (2) why they need to possess the bodies of corpses while they’re on Earth.

   Add number (3): while they are in possession of the bodies of corpses, why must they walk in such a vacant-eyed, lurching fashion, and speak with the cavernous voice of John Carradine, the first dead man whose body they took over?

   And, well, while I’m at it, how about question (4): why do they bother “warning” Earth in the first place? If they’re so anxious to take over the place, now that mankind is on the verge of space travel and reaching the stars ourselves, why not just come in and wipe us out, without our even knowing?

   Put the answers to these questions down to the fact that there are certain things that Mankind is doomed to never know. (Nor, I am inclined to believe, are we meant to.)

[UPDATE] 09-02-10. I don’t remember this one at all. It’s available on DVD from Midnight Movies double-billed with another SF film called Journey to the Seventh Planet, which maybe I ought to buy, unless you can talk me out of it. (Some reviewers on IMDB call Invisible Invaders a minor classic, but I’d rather hear from people I trust.)