“Dear Uncle George.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 30). First air date: 10 May 1963. Gene Barry, John Larkin, Patricia Donahue, Dabney Coleman, Robert Sampson, Lou Jacobi. Teleplay: James Bridges. Story and teleplay: Richard Levinson and William Link. Director: Joseph M. Newman.

   John Chambers (Gene Barry) writes an advice column for a local newspaper under the name Uncle George; of late, however, he has become disenchanted with his boss, Simon Aldritch (John Larkin), especially regarding Simon’s editorial decisions.

   One day Chambers gets a letter, which he dismisses at first. Someone has been observing the goings on in an apartment complex across the way; the note says that it’s fairly obvious a married woman is seeing a man who is not her husband.

   A hint here and a hint there and it’s not long before Chambers connects the dots: The unfaithful woman is his own wife, Louise (Patricia Donahue), and the man she’s seeing can only be his friend Tom Esterow (Dabney Coleman), an artist.

   Chambers sees red, and like many a cuckolded husband in a 17th century revenge tragedy he impulsively and violently lashes out. There remains only one problem, however: In his own mind he has killed the “right” person, so justice demands the other malefactor should suffer as well.

   Coolly and carefully he plants clues that will send the police after the other lover. Imagine Chambers’ surprise, though, when he discovers he’s framed the wrong person….

   Once again Levinson & Link score big with a marvelously involved plot and even some character development in John Chambers (Barry), who is more complex than merely being the murderer; because, you see, despite being a killer, he nevertheless tries to do the right thing — with ironic results.

   Since this an L & L prodduct, one may be forgiven for detecting one or two similarities between this story and Prescription: Murder (1968), the first Columbo film, in which Gene Barry also murders his wife; but in the latter production his cold and calculating premeditation contrasts with his crime of passion in “Dear Uncle George.”

   Moreover, Lt. Wolfson (Lou Jacobi), the investigating officer, differs from Peter Falk’s character in being too willing to trust in prima facie evidence.

   Gene Barry (1919-2009) died late last year. Some screen credits: The Atomic City (1952, his film debut), The War of the Worlds (1953, pursuing Martian vandals), Naked Alibi (1954), The Houston Story (1956), Hong Kong Confidential (1958), Thunder Road (1958), Istanbul Express (1968, TVM), Subterfuge (1968), a Perry Mason movie (1987, TVM); and the TV series Bat Masterson (1958-61), Burke’s Law (1963-66, 1994-95), The Name of the Game (1968-71), and The Adventurer (1972-73).

   You can view “Dear Uncle George” on Hulu here.

CHRISTOPHER BUSH – Dead Man’s Music. Howard Baker, UK, hardcover reprint, 1970. First Edition: Wm. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1931. US hardcover: Doubleday Doran/Crime Club, 1932.

   An odd request to Durangos, Limited, sends Ludovic Travers, newly appointed director, to Steyvenning, Sussex. Claude Rook is looking for a man of “implicitly honourable confidence” who knows china and music and is quick-witted.

   When Travers more or less satisfies Rook’s requirements, Rook gives him a musical manuscript with unclear instructions what to do with it. As might have been guessed, Rook turns up dead, maybe having been tortured and maybe having committed suicide. One of the several odd things about his death is that someone shaved him shortly after he died

   Who was Rook? Why did he give the musical manuscript to Travers? What did the manuscript mean, particularly since it is not the piece Rook played for Travers?

   Not one of Travers’ better cases, more a thriller than a detective novel. A library patron — I deplore this tendency but must give the lady or gentleman credit for perceptivity– has scribbled on the cover, “Not good.”

   Not bad, either, but certainly a surprisingly weak selection to reprint, considering all the first-class novels that Bush has produced.

Bibliographic Data: If my count is correct, Dead Man’s Music is the 5th of 63 mysteries in which Ludovic Travers was the sleuth of record.

   The first appeared in 1926, the last in 1968. Christopher Bush also wrote another dozen or so detective novels as by Michael Home in which Travers did not appear.

   It isn’t clear in Bill’s review, perhaps, but Travers himself was a licensed (and therefore private) investigator, so unless I’m wrong about this, it’s strange that he’s not included in Kevin Burton Smith’s list of PIs on his Thrilling Detective website.

   Three more of Bush’s mysteries are reviewed by Mike Grost on his Classic Crime and Detection website, where he suggests that alibis and stage trickery are often significant factors in his work.

IRIS JOHANSEN – Deadlock. St. Martin’s, hardcover, April 2009; reprint paperback: October 2009.

   There’s always at least one title in every bag of books I tote home from my local mystery bookshop that I can’t account for.

   I drew a blank on this book until I read the back cover blurb that described the protagonist Emily Hudson as a “renowned archaeologist who travels the world to save priceless artifacts from theft or destruction.”

   That was the hook that snared me.

   I can report that I found the novel a quick read, leaving only the memory of a brief few moments of pleasure. This must be the ultimate example of escape reading, which slips away as soon as you’ve finished.

GEORGE HARMON COXE – One Hour to Kill.   Paperback reprint: Pyramid R-1186, May 1965. Hardcover edition: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.

   On the cover of the paperback that I have, it states that this was the author’s 50th mystery, so while I didn’t check that particular figure, I did go to look his record up in Hubin’s Crime Fiction III [the current edition at the time I wrote this review].

   It takes a few years to write that many novels, and this one was written when the author was in his early 60s. Coxe went on to write another dozen or so more, averaging a book a year up until he was in his mid-70s. Earlier on he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines of the 1930s, moved over to the slicks, and on the side, in his spare time, he did loads of work for radio, TV and the movies.

   Very well known, and (one surmises) almost forgotten today. My own surmise depends on the other half of what I do when I’m not reading mysteries, and that’s selling them, and I’m sorry to say that George Harmon Coxe is not a big seller. Not a poor seller, I hasten to add, but well below average, and not proportional to his output as an author.

   When I was a member of the Dollar Mystery Guild in the mid-to-late 50s, I devoured his books, but mostly the ones with either of the two Boston newspaper photographers, Flashgun Casey or Kent Murdock.

   I couldn’t tell you why for sure, but I think the lure of a couple of guys who knew their way around a tough metropolitan area offered a considerable amount of appeal to a young boy growing up in upstate Michigan.

   I didn’t care for his other mysteries very much, though, the ones taking place primarily in the islands of the Caribbean, of which this is a prime example, and in Trinidad, to be precise. Too foreign, to me, I think, at the time.

   In any case, to get on with the story, in One Hour to Kill Dave Wallace is having marital problems. He has a new love in his life, but he also has a wife who’s just reneged on a divorce and has come down to move back in. (She also one of the most unpleasant women I come across in quite a bit of reading, if I may offer a brief aside.)

   When she’s murdered, as it quite evident she will be within the first two pages of meeting her, Wallace knows he’s the obvious first person the police will suspect, and he decides he has to keep two jumps ahead of them to clear himself, concealing evidence, picking up clues, and generally muddying up the trail.

   All pretty much the wrong decisions to make — the native policemen are not dummies — but then again, if he didn’t, we probably wouldn’t have a story.

   And as it turns out, it’s through his efforts that the crime is solved — a fair-play story of detection — so fair, in fact, that when the truth is revealed, you can see where Coxe practically gave the game completely away, if you were paying attention, and as usual, my mind was elsewhere at the time.

   Some of the ways that Wallace uncovers information are so patently artificial, however, that it’s — and here comes my excuse — it’s difficult to concentrate on what really matters.

   Here’s a bit of what I mean. On page 94 Wallace is talking to someone who says, “There was one other thing, now that I think of it.” This is someone who is on Wallace’s side and not only was there one more thing, but he eventually ends up confiding in him that (a) he was eavesdropping on the dead woman before she died, (b) overheard the tail end of a crucial telephone conversation, (c) saw another car drive up, and (d) wrote down the license number. No less.

   Coxe is a very precise writer in most ways, with well-constructed backgrounds for all of the characters, and lots of descriptions of homes, offices and (to be expected) taverns, restaurants and other watering holes on the island.

   But while the timing of events surrounding the murder is really quite cleverly done — see the title of the book — Coxe’s tale also seems to have become outdated in a way he didn’t quite foresee. The final clue, in fact, the one that points to the killer, is therefore one I can’t tell you very much about, but here’s a hint.

   Maybe, just maybe, back in the era when you had to step on starters to get cars going, maybe a crucial switch that killer had to make could have been done, and no one would have thought anything about it.

   Today it seems as outmoded as (say) reading books on paper may be someday soon.

[UPDATE] 08-14-10.   The revision comes in the last paragraph of this review, in which I used an updated example.

Previously on this blog:

Uninvited Guest (reviewed by Steve Lewis)
Old Time Radio: Crime Photographer [09 Nov 1950] “Woman of Mystery”
Murder for Two (reviewed by Steve Lewis)
Film: Here’s Flash Casey (reviewed by Steve Lewis)
GEORGE HARMON COXE in the Movies and on TV (by Tise Vahimagi)
Fashioned for Murder (reviewed by Steve Lewis)
Focus on Murder (reviewed by Steve Lewis)

[UH-OH DEPARTMENT.]   I’ve just discovered that this is the second time I’ve posted this review — the first time was on Wednesday 6 Aug 2008, to be precise. Well, that was over two years ago. You can’t expect me to remember anything longer than that, can you?

   I might have deleted this post after I found this out, but after doing all of the work it took to come up with all of George Harmon Coxe’s previous appearances on this blog, I wasn’t about to throw it all away.

   But if you’d like a refund on this rerun, the line forms at the exit door, over there in the rear on the right.

MIGNON G. EBERHART – The Glass Slipper. Doubleday Doran & Co., hardcover, 1938. Paperback reprints include: Century #35, 1945 (digest-sized); Popular Library 60-2182, 1965.

   Poor Rue Hatterick. Sure, Rue was the night nurse for beautiful, rich Crystal Hatterick, wife of the brilliant Chicago surgeon Brule Hatterick. Sure, a few months after Crystal’s sudden death Rue married Brule.

   Sure, someone is now writing letters to the police telling them Crystal was poisoned. Sure, Crystal’s former day nurse, who seems to know something about Crystal’s death, suddenly expires while having tea with Rue. Sure, Rue has a bag of potentially lethal medicine in her closet, left over from her nursing days.

   Are those any reasons for the nasty police to suspect sweet and innocent Rue of MURDER?!!

   With the publication of her ninth mystery novel, Fair Warning (1936), Mignon Eberhart hit upon a lucrative mystery recipe that was to last her for over fifty years, with only minor variations.

   Take a young, pretty, nervous, motherless and fatherless girl, plunge her into a triangular love relationship with two men (one usually a husband or husband-to-be), and add a motherly older woman (an aunt or such like), a beautiful, more sophisticated, snotty-bitch female rival, an opulent yet rather shadowy and creepy mansion, a half-dozen or servants, some frightening policemen and a murder or two and you have a delightful, if a bit predictable, souffle a la Mignon.

   By The Glass Slipper, Eberhart’s third mystery novel after Fair Warning, the taste indeed has become familiar, but the dish still goes down lightly and smoothly. It’s an enjoyable enough read, with a teasing bit of the bizarre that is something out of Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr (the murder victims all have hands that have turned green).

   But there’s really no way for the reader fairly to deduce the criminal (though s/he may guess it on GA mystery aesthetic principles), unlike with some of Eberhart’s earlier books. So only a B for this one.

      Previously reviewed on this blog:

Woman on the Roof (by Steve Lewis)
Film: The Patient in Room 18 (by Steve Lewis)

THE MAGIC CARPET. Columbia Pictures, 1951. Lucille Ball, John Agar, Patricia Medina, Raymond Burr, Gregory Gaye, George Tobias, Rick Vallin. Directed by Lew Landers.

    Lucille Ball had to be gnashing at the bit in this low budget Arabian Nights fare with John Agar’s flat Midwestern monotone marking him as the most unlikely Arabian swashbuckler since Oklahoma cowboy Dale Robertson and Paul Henreid.

   Ball’s career had begun as a chorus girl at MGM (if you look quickly you can spot her wearing little but long blonde hair in an early Eddie Cantor outing Roman Scandals), with a long but steady climb up to stardom marked by mostly minor films with a few good roles in major fare like Stage Door (with Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers), a brief period of popularity in films like Du Barry Was A Lady, The Big Street, and Easy To Wed (in the Jean Harlow role from Libeled Lady), and even credit for discovering one of MGM’s greatest stars — Van Johnson.

   Even after leaving MGM for RKO she enjoyed some success, and just one year before this had scored well with Bob Hope in Fancy Pants, a technicolor remake of Ruggles of Redgap.

   But in 1951 she was limited to doing films like Magic Carpet with leads like John Agar — a long fall from the likes of William Holden, Gene Kelly, and co-starring with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (Without Love) and films like The Dark Corner, Lured, Miss Grant Takes Richmond, and Sorrowful Jones.

   Luckily for her she had options. My Favorite Husband, her long running hit radio series with Richard Denning was being considered for television, and she and Cuban band leader husband Desi Arnaz had plans for that medium …

   The Magic Carpet is Arabian Nights by rote. The Caliph is over thrown by evil Ali (Gabriel Gaye) and his henchman Boreg al Buzzar (Raymond Burr), who murder the Caliph and his wife, but not before she places their infant son on the magic carpet of the title, which carries him to safety and the sanctuary of a local physician, her uncle.

   The true Caliph grows up to be Dr. Ramoth (John Agar), who is also the bandit leader, the Scarlet Falcon, bane of the Caliph Ali and his Grand Vizer Boreg and their corrupt reign.

   In something of a twist, Lucille Ball is not the heroine of the film. That doubtful honor goes to Patricia Medina, who was virtually a staple in this sort of thing — and has here one of the worst dance numbers in the history of Arabian Nights nonsense. Lucy is Princess Narah, the evil Ali’s willful and sexually predatory sister, while Medina is Lida, the sister of Razi (George Tobias — and you have to wonder at the genetics that produced those progeny), the Scarlet Falcon’s right hand man.

   Meanwhile Dr. Ramoth inveigles his way into the royal palace as court physician where he is a great hit with Narah and the Harem, and when his uncle is murdered by suspicious Boreg learns of his own royal birth and the magic carpet, excuse for some terrible special effects and mediocre mat paintings.

   I’d like to say Lucy does her best as the semi evil Narah, but frankly both she and Medina play their respective roles like a pair of feuding strippers with Lucy’s attempts to seduce poor wooden Agar almost as funny as some of her routines on I Love Lucy, if not intentionally.

   Substitute a G-string and pasties for their Arabian finery and move the plot backstage at a burlesque theater and you’d never notice the difference. If this film was any flatter, it wouldn’t even be in two dimensions.

   These things depend on the good will of the audience and the ability of the actors to make us want to believe in the silly but colorful goings on. In the hands of a Cornell Wilde, Jon Hall, or Jeff Chandler and a leading lady like Maria Montez, Maureen O’Hara, Rhonda Fleming, or even the unlikely Virginia Mayo the whole nonsensical thing can be great fun. Here no one seems even willing to try. It doesn’t even rise to the level of cynical exploitation.

   Lucille Ball didn’t make another film until The Long Long Trailer in 1953, an attempt to cash in on the success of I Love Lucy. She did a few films in later years, notably with Bob Hope and Henry Fonda, and bowing out from film finally with the hideous film version of the Broadway musical Mame.

   Her legendary television career and the success of Desilu studios more than made up for it, but you have to think she would have preferred to go out of her big screen career on a better note.

   I’m usually forgiving of these, and even will admit to a taste for the better ones, but this has worse production values than an episode of I Dream of Jeanie, and performances that would have to be upgraded to reach the level of a burlesque comedy routine.

   Still, Raymond Burr at his heaviest and wielding a scimitar is a sight you don’t often see (“This time Doctor, you must tend to a man and not on the ladies of the Harem!”), and the fact that Lucy was pregnant might somewhat mitigate her flat performance — this script would have been enough to give anyone morning sickness:

   Ramoth regains his throne, Lucy and the evil Ali get their comeuppance, and Ramoth and Lida get a final clench on the magic carpet:

   Ah, well, it could be worse. Though I’m not exactly sure how.

Editorial Comment: The whole movie appears to be available on YouTube. This link will take you to some excerpts, so that you may get an overall impression of the film, should you care to continue.

SHALAKO. Cinerama Releasing Corporation, 1968. Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Peter Van Eyck, Honor Blackman, Woody Strode, Alexander Knox, Valerie French, Donald Barry. Based on the novel by Louis L’Amour. Director: Edward Dmytryk.

   An all-star cast. Make that an international all-star cast. To little or no avail, alas. Not that any western isn’t worth watching, if filmed in color and with a large enough budget, as this one very definitely is, and even on occasions when not.

   The movie takes place in the 1880s, supposedly in New Mexico but actually in studio lots in England and on location in Spain. (The vegetation is therefore generally wrong, but the mountain and rough terrain vistas are very fine.)

   The basic premise of the film is simple. An aristocratic hunting expedition from Europe, complete with fine silver, champagne (unchilled), butlers and other assorted servants, wanders into Apache land, and it’s up to an Army scout names Shalako (Sean Connery) to warn them off, and when that fails, to get them to safety before they all die.

   The warning fails, naturally enough. The blame here goes to the nominal leader of the group, Baron Hallstatt (Peter Van Eyck), who has enough arrogance and stubbornness to hold off any number of Indians, if that were all it took, and it isn’t.

   I imagine this movie, when they were putting together the cast, was designed primarily for the pairing of Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot (Countess Irina Lazaar) as the two leading characters, but they seldom have much screen time together and when they are together, it’s not particularly a match made in heaven.

   I think more sparks would have been kindled if Honor Blackman (who plays Lady Julia Daggett) had played Miss Bardot’s part instead, but she does all right in her role as a woman frustrated by her dry stick of a husband (Jack Hawkins) and who rides off with the the villainous Bosky Fulton (Stephen Boyd) instead. A bad choice, as it turns out, but she didn’t listen to me, either.

   We do get to see Miss Bardot in a skinny dipping scene, but all in all, it’s a totally gratuitous one, since even though Shalako gets an admiring view, the plot doesn’t seem to depend very much upon it.

JONATHAN GANT – Never Say No to a Killer. Ace Double D-157, paperback original, 1956.

   Someone on this blog recommended Never Say No to a Killer by Jonathan Gant, so when I found a copy cheap, I picked it up. And I’m glad I did.

   This one owes a lot to Horace McCoy’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, starting with a prison break, and hurtling the violent, amoral protagonist into near-control of illicit activities in a big city until he’s tripped up by…

   Well, that would be telling too much, and while Never Say No speeds across the same ground as Kiss Tomorrow, it lacks the depth and vocabulary of Horace McCoy’s classic.

   What it does offer is fast, slick writing and a pace that never falters. Worth checking out for fans of hard-boiled crime willing to waste a few hours enjoyably.

Editorial Comments: The “someone” who brought this book up earlier was Bill Crider, in of his columns on Gold Medal writers which he originally did for the print version of Mystery*File. The writer he discussed, though, was Clifton Adams, Jonathan Gant being a pen name he sometimes used. You can read the entire piece here on the blog.

   The other half of this particular Ace Double paperback was Stab in the Dark, by Louis Trimble. Nothing by Trimble under his own name has been reviewed here on the blog, but I did one of Bring Back Her Body, which he wrote as by Stuart Brock. You can find it way back here.

C. J. BOX – Nowhere to Run. Putnam, hardcover, April 2010. Paperback reprint: Berkley, April 2011.

Genre:   Licensed investigator. Leading character:  Joe Pickett; 10th in series. Setting:   Wyoming.

First Sentence:   Three hours after he’d broken camp, repacked, and pushed his horses higher into the mountain range, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett paused on the lip of a wide hollow basin and dug in his saddlebag for his notebook.

   Game Warden Joe Pickett is making the last pass before going home through the territory he has been covering for the past year. He’s following up on reports of vandalism and other hunter’s game butchered out. He doesn’t expect to run into twin brothers who resent being asked to follow the rules and nearly cost Joe his life.

   He also doesn’t expect the only reason he escapes is a woman who may have been an Olympic contender but disappeared. His determination to enforce the law and to possibly rescue the woman sends Joe, with his friend Nate, back into the mountains and an old-West showdown.

   Box writes books that are entertaining, exciting and occasionally touching. He also writes book that make you think about the bigger issues and does it in such a way that doesn’t preach or become didactic, but makes you weigh both sides of the question and make your own choice. That is a real talent.

   The character of Joe Pickett is one of an average man; very human, married, loves his family, loyal to his friends. He learns he is not invincible, but believes in his job even it’s dangerous and, perhaps, not smart… “It’s my job. I do my job.”

   Even his wife, Marybeth, acknowledges his job is who he is… “You do what you do because you’re hardwired for it. You get yourself into situations because you have a certain set of standards…”

   That relationship and those principles give Joe the structure that defines him. The interaction between Joe and the other characters is believable, and occasionally humorous.

   In this book, Box has given Joe two very challenging enemies; both in terms of surviving against them, but opposition of views on issues that are very timely. One thing, of which I am becoming very tired, is the overuse by authors of the ignorant, obstructive, jealous superior official. Yes, I know it all-too-often exists, but it has become rather cliché.

   The pacing is wonderful; it fluctuates between tension and rest. Box’s descriptions demonstrate his knowledge and love of Wyoming, and shares that with us by taking us along and letting us see what Joe sees, both in terms of its beauty and potential danger.

   The dialogue has a natural flow and refreshingly little profanity. This is a very good story. I became so involved, it was a one-sitting read for me and I am now anxious for the next book.

Rating:   Very Good.

        The Joe Pickett series —

1. Open Season (2001)

2. Savage Run (2002)
3. Winterkill (2003)
4. Trophy Hunt (2004)
5. Out of Range (2005)
6. In Plain Sight (2006)

7. Free Fire (2007)
8. Blood Trail (2008)

9. Below Zero (2009)
10. Nowhere to Run (2010)

Since late last week we’ve been packing up Jon’s apartment for his forthcoming move to the DC area (Bethesda, MD, to be exact). He’s the recent law school graduate, as you may recall.

It’s taken up way too much time already, it’s been hot, and I’m going to stop fooling myself that I can come home and start blogging until it’s done. The movers are coming Wednesday and he leaves on Thursday. By Friday things may be back to normal.

But don’t expect to see anything new here until then, except maybe comments from me on recent posts. Sorry about that, but I’ll be back when I can!

— Steve