ALAN BRADLEY – The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. Delacorte Press, hardcover, March 2010. Trade paperback: Bantam, December 2010.

Genre:   Traditional mystery. Leading character:   Flavia de Luce, 2nd in series. Setting:   England, 1950s.

First Sentence:   I was lying dead in the churchyard.

    Ten-year-old Flavia de Luce is ignored by her father, and continually set upon by her sisters. To compensate, she has her grandfather’s old laboratory, where she indulges her love of chemistry and skill with poisons, her bicycle, Gladys, and her skill at solving puzzles.

   In The Weed That Strings Flavia befriends a beloved BBC puppeteer, Rupert Porson, and his “assistant,” who are stranded with a broken-down fan. When Rupert is electrocuted during a performance of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Flavia knows it was no accident and finds that Rupert’s claims of not knowing anyone in the area were less than truthful.

   Flavia de Luce has quickly become one of my favorite characters. At ten years old, she is still a young girl, albeit a brilliant one, with no friends, a father who ignores all his children, and two sisters who continually abuse her, both physically and emotionally.

   I was very pleased by a wonderful scene with Flavia’s Aunt Felicity. Flavia has the logic and observation skill of Sherlock Holmes and thinks of everything in terms of their chemical composition.

   Flavia is not the only wonderful character, however. Bradley has a gift for creating an ensemble of quirky, yet believable, characters. I particularly enjoy Dogger, the shell-shocked ex-WWII soldier with pre-cognitive abilities; Dieter, the German who became a prisoner of war after being shot down due to the Brontës; and Inspector Hewitt, who takes Flavia seriously and realizes it is through her knowledge and access to people in the town that allowed the case to be solved.

   The story is a wonderful blend of science, music, art and literature, and is set at a very interesting time. World War II has ended, yet there are still issues of the aftermath. While television is coming into being, radio is still the prevalent household entertainment.

   It is the 1950s, yet the family feels more Victorian than modern. The story builds more slowly than the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and employs less humor, although it is still there.

   There is quite a long set-up to the murder, but it still has great impact when it happens. It reminds me a bit of Agatha Christie who liked to introduce all the characters in order to provide plenty of suspects prior to the murder.

   And, as often with Christie, I certainly did not identify the villain prior to it being revealed. This is not a “young adult” mystery, but a very good mystery whose protagonist happens to be a young adult. I am looking forward to Flavia’s next case.

Rating:   Very Good Plus.

The Flavia de Luce Series:

      The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)
      The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010)
      Seeds of Antiquity
      A Red Herring Without Mustard
      Death in Camera
      The Nasty Light of Day

Note:   Not all of these have publication dates; it is likely that most have not even been written yet.   Source: The Flavia de Luce website.

THE LOOKOUT. Miramax, 2007. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Sergio Di Zio. Screenwriter & director: Scott Frank.

   Here’s a crime film that I doubt ever played anywhere in Connecticut, and if it did, it passed through with no notice at all.

   It’s flawed, perhaps even fatally, but the performances done to perfection all the way through, some of which I’ll remember for a long time, and I recommend the movie highly. Two thumbs up, using both hands.

   Now that I have the preliminaries out of the way, what’s it about? Even as the movie begins, very very slowly in paving its own deliberate way, the title’s there in your mind, and all odds are that as you’re watching, you’ll know, like me, exactly what’s going to happen, eventually.

   What this is, is the story of Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from beginning to end. A star hockey player in high school, his world is turned upside down when a terrific automobile accident kills the couple in back seat, forces the amputation of his girl friend’s leg – she was sitting in the passenger seat beside him – he was driving, and it was his fault – and he’s trying to put something that resembles a life back together again.

   Gordon-Levitt is a marvelous young actor. He could have played his character’s obviously diminished mental capabilities too broadly, so that we can’t possibly help but take notice, but what he does, he does subtly, and he does it right. Just a bit of clumsiness now, a touch of awkwardness then, and in between, stopping ever once in while to take out his notebook to be sure he knows what he should be doing next.

   (One flaw here is the unanswered question as to how Chris Pratt would ever be allowed to drive a car, but he does; otherwise there’d be no way for him to get to the bank where he works as the overnight janitor. He hopes to work his way up to a teller.)

   I used the word Bank just a second ago. As soon as you the viewer see this, and you think of the movie’s title, you say to yourself, I know where this movie’s going. And you’d be right.

   Two more good performances. First by Matthew Goode, as the scummy but utterly convincing fellow who convinces Chris that robbing the bank would be a good idea, and secondly by Isla Fisher, the girl who helps in the convincing part by seducing Chris – there’s no better word for it – into taking on the role they have planned for him – that being, of course, the double-barreled task of letting Goode’s gang in and acting as Lookout once they do.

   (Another flaw is that once she’s played her part, Isla Fisher’s character has no place to go, and she flat out disappears from the rest of the movie.)

   The bank robbery does not go well (do they ever?) and we’ll leave it at that, although there is still a long portion of the movie yet to go. Those who have been waiting for the action to start — well, their patience is at last rewarded.

   At which point in these comments I see I have not mentioned Jeff Daniels, and I should have. He plays Chris’s roommate Lewis in the apartment they share.

   They make a good twosome, as Lewis is blind, but outwardly cheerful about it. (Inwardly we are not so sure.) It is not easy playing someone who’s blind, but Daniels, brusque and slightly overpowering in the role, is nonetheless charming and perhaps not as carefree as he lets on.

   Pfui. When I sat down and started writing this review, I intended to keep it short. And here am I telling you the whole story. But I’ve gone back over what I’ve written, and I don’t see anything I’d care to cut. Sorry.

   (One final flaw. This movie, carefully paced, ends more happily than it has any right to be. I’ll stop here. If you see the movie, or if you have seen it, you’ll know what I’m saying. Not that I have anything against happy endings, but if I’d been in charge, I’d have made some changes, if you know what I mean.)

HENRY KANE – Trinity in Violence. Avon 618, paperback original, 1955; reprinted as Avon T-264. Signet G2551, pb, October 1964.

   Here we have three novelettes featuring Henry Kane’s long-running New York detective Peter Chambers. The Chambers stories tend to be pretty routine private-eye capers, but Kane’s handling of this stock material is quite unusual. The characters deliver their lines in a peculiarly arch fashion, which veteran PI fans are equally likely to find either refreshingly novel or plain silly.

   Also, in the midst of typical guns-and-gangsters melees, Chambers is wont to toss off sly asides to the readers, saying, in effect, “How about this for a typical private-eye cliche?” The Chambers books can provide enjoyable light entertainment if the reader finds Kane’s quirky, playful approach palatable.

   Best of these tales is “Skip a Beat,” with one of those once-popular story ideas you don’t see anymore: A famous newspaper columnist is about to announce that a leading citizen is actually a closet Commie, but he gets knocked off before he can spill it; Chambers cleans it up.

   Slapdash plotting comes to the fore in “Slaughter on Sunday,” in which a prominent hood hires Chambers to extricate him from a murder frame; it involves a sort of locked-room problem (a transparent one, at best), a gimmick for faking paraffin-test results, and several gaping plot holes.

   “Far Cry” finds Kane’s durable “private richard” romancing a hood’s mistress and breaking up a hot-car exporting racket.

   Some of the better Chambers novels include A Halo for Nobody (1947); Until You Are Dead (1951); Too French and Too Deadly (1955; another locked room opus, better than the one above, but no challenge to John Dickson Carr) and Death of a Flack (1961).

   Chambers’ female counterpart, Marla Trent, appears in Private Eyeful (1960),and the two collaborate in Kisses of Death (1962). Avoid at all costs the dreadful X-rated Peter Chambers novels published by Lancer in the early 1970s!

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

      Previously reviewed on this blog:

The Midnight Man (by Bill Pronzini, 1001 Midnights)
A Corpse for Christmas (by Steve Lewis)
Laughter in the Alehouse (by Al Hubin)
Until You Are Dead (by Steve Lewis)

HENRY KANE – The Midnight Man. The Macmillan Co. (A Cock Robin Mystery), hardcover, 1965. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, September 1966. Paperback reprint: Raven House #9, 1981.

   Henry Kane is best known as the creator of Peter Chambers, a tough but urbane New York “private richard” whose adventures were quite popular in the late Forties and throughout the Fifties.

   (Some of the early Chambers short stories appeared in the sophisticated men’s magazine Esquire, which once devoted an editorial to Kane, calling him an “author, bon vivant, stoic, student, tramp, lawyer, philosopher … the lad who works off a hangover conceived in a Hoboken dive by swooshing down large orders of Eggs Benedict at the Waldorf on the morning after … the man who can use polysyllables on Third Avenue and certain ancient monosyllables on Park Avenue.”)

   Kane wrote dozens of novels and scores of stories featuring the exploits of Peter Chambers; and yet, ironically enough, his most memorable private eye is not Chambers but a 250-pound ex-cop named McGregor. In fact, his three best mystery novels are those in which McGregor is featured — The Midnight Man, Conceal and Disguise (1966), and Laughter in the Alehouse (1968).

   Like Chambers, McGregor is urbane, literate, and a connoisseur of beautiful women, gourmet food, and vintage booze. Unlike Chambers, he is prone to pithy literary quotes instead of suave wisecracks, and prefers to use wits and guile in place of guns and fists to solve his cases.

   He is not a career PI with an office and a secretary; he is a newly retired New York City police inspector, “pushing fifty, ramrod-straight and robustly handsome,” known around headquarters as “the Old Man,” who dabbles at private investigation (he has a license, of course) just to keep a hand in.

   He is more likable than Chambers, has more depth and sensitivity, and his three cases are less frivolous and more tightly plotted than any of the Chambers stories.

   In The Midnight Man, McGregor has undertaken the job of closing down an illegal after-hours enterprise at a fashionable Upper East Side nightclub. The case begins as a simple one — the club’s neighbors don’t like the idea of drunks carousing in the wee hours — but it soon turns complicated: The after-hours operation is being run by a major New York mob figure named Frank Dinelli, whom McGregor would love to put in the slammer.

   When the late-night doorman, whom McGregor has bribed and who was instrumental in a successful raid on the club, is shot to death practically in McGregor’s presence (he arrives just in time to grapple with the killer), the case becomes personal.

   Working with his pal, Detective Lieutenant Kevin Cohen, he follows leads that take him to the studio of millionaire photographer George Preston, to the offices of Park Avenue dermatologist Robert Jackson, and to a fancy loan-sharking operation that Dinelli is sponsoring.

   They also take him to a second murder, this one featuring an ingenious method of execution, which McGregor solves through the same combination of deduction and guile with which he wraps up the rest of the case.

   Kane has a fine ear for dialogue; there is some witty repartee here, especially between McGregor and a variety of New York cabdrivers. Of course, cops don’t really talk the way McGregor and Cohen do, but that’s a minor flaw.

   As the jacket blurb says, “If high crime in high society is your cup of tea, you’ll especially relish this fast, crisp, upper-echelon saga of mayhem in Manhattan.” And from Anthony Boucher: “Kane has, as usual, a pretty sense of story-shape and a nice way with clues. There is a cleverly gimmicked murder, a lot of colorful night life, and much fun (and good food) for all.”

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

   Call this post “Cataloging My Collection.”

   I have no idea if anyone is interested or not, but here goes anyway. Part of what I do in my spare time is go through boxes of paperbacks I have in dead storage, catalog the books I find inside, and rebox them and put them away, in places where theoretically I can find them again easily. I’m still working on the latter part of that.

   I’ve been doing this since the Fall of 1968. I know this exactly since that was the first semester I was not in school, either as a student or as a teacher. It was also the year the Detroit Tigers were in the World Series (I’m talking baseball here) and I remember typing up books individually on 3×5 index cards sitting with an electric typewriter before the television set.

   Once I started my first full-time teaching job here in Connecticut, I gave that up, but I made sure I brought all the books — and the 3×5 index cards — with me when we moved. I don’t know what year it was that we got our Apple IIe (with around 64K of memory), but when we did, I transferred all of the info on the cards into computer files, and started adding the books I’d accumulated in the meantime.

   These files now exist only as a notebook filled to its two-inch capacity with printouts from a dot matrix printer. I’m sure it would be impossible to read the floppy disks now, if I still had them, but I have the data. (I also gradually discarded the 3×5 index cards, in case you were wondering.)

   When we started using PC’s, I didn’t transfer any of the old data, but I continued on, but essentially starting over, adding more and more books to a new computer file of data. I’ve always used word-processing programs, rather than database ones, and luckily I began with WordPerfect, which I still use, and so far I’ve had no problem with losing data to formats no longer readable.

   In any case, here’s a small segment of the PC-based data. If you see any missing books or authors, either I don’t have them — or I do, and the data’s in my notebook with the dot matrix printouts. (A third possibility, of course — and for new books, an extremely high one — is that I have it and haven’t Gotten To It yet.)

   The box numbers are included, along with an indication of the condition. (I didn’t do this originally.) There are also some notes about the authors themselves and cover artists, too, but I haven’t done this consistently over the years.

GENEVIEVE HOLDEN –
   Something’s Happened to Kate (Ace G-558; c.1958) M305 vg-g
LARRY HOLDEN –
   Dead Wrong (Pyramid G306; c.1957; Pyr edn, 1957) M152 vg+
   Hide-Out (Eton 132; c.1953) M239 fair-poor
WILLIAM HOLDER –
   The Case of the Dead Divorcee (Signet 1539; c.1958; 1st pr., June 1958) M22 fine
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING –
   The Blank Wall (Pocket 662; c.1947; 1st PB Pr., Jan 1950) M28 good
   The Blank Wall (Ace Double G-512; c.1947) M158 g-vg
   The Girl Who Had to Die (Ace Double G-512; c.1940) M158 g-vg
   Kill Joy (Ace Double G-534; c.1942) M37 vg-g
   Net of Cobwebs (Ace Double G-530; c.1945) M94 vg+
   Speak of the Devil (Ace Double G-534; c.1941) M37 vg-g
   The Unfinished Crime (Ace Double G-530; c.1935,1963) M94 vg+
   Who’s Afraid (Bonded Mystery #14) M179 fair
   Who’s Afraid (Ace Double G-524; c.1940) M89 vg-g
   Widow’s Mite (Ace Double G-524; c.1952-53) M89 vg-g
ISABELLE HOLLAND –
   Counterpoint (Fawcett Crest 24423; c.1980; 1st FC pr., July 1981) M294 n.fine
   The deMaury Papers (Fawcett Crest 23606; c.1977; 1st FC pr.) M323 good
   Flight of the Archangel (Fawcett Crest 20977; c.1985; 1st Ball edn, Dec 1986) M304 n.fine
   A Lover Scorned (Fawcett Crest 21369; c.1986; 1st Ball edn, Nov 1987) M303 fine
REBECCA HOLLAND –
   Danger on Cue (Raven House #18 [60018]; c.1980; 1st pr., June 1980; pub Dec 1980) M280 n.fine
       Note: This is one of two books by this author in CFIV under this pen name.
JIM HOLLIS –
   The Case of the Bludgeoned Teacher (Avon 725; c.c.1955; orig pub as Teach You a Lesson) M19 g-vg
   Teach You a Lesson (see The Case of the Bludgeoned Teacher)
J. HUNTER HOLLY –
   The Assassination Affair (Ace G-636; c.1967; TV tie-in: The Man from UNCLE #10) M189
      Note: Of the two “UNCLE” books written by the author, the other seems to been published only as a British hardcover. She is perhaps known better for her work as an SF-Fantasy writer. (Both of her other two entries in CFIV are SFnal in nature.)
HUGH HOLMAN –
   Another Man’s Poison (Signet 718; c.1947; 1st Signet pr., Apr 1949) M98 vg-fine
   Slay the Murderer (Signet 684; c.1948; 1st Signet pr., Sept 1948) M322 g-vg
TIMOTHY HOLME [UK] –
   The Devil and the Dolce Vita (Futura 3712; c.1982; Futura edn pub 1988) MB286 fair-good
   A Funeral of Gondolas (Futura 3078; c.1981; Futura edn pub 1986) MB286 good
H. H. HOLMES –
   Nine Times Nine (Penguin 553; c.1940; 1st Peng edn, Jan 1945) M47 fair
H. H. HOLMES –
    See also ANTHONY BOUCHER.
HAZEL HOLT –
   Mrs. Malory and a Death in the Family (Signet 21989; c.2006; 1st pr., Nov 2006) M220
   Mrs. Malory and the Only Good Lawyer (Signet 19264; c.1997; 1st Signet pr, Dec 1998) M288
HENRY HOLT [UK] –
   Calling All Cars (Collins Crime Club #12; 7th CC pr., Sept 1936) MB277 poor
ROBERT LAWRENCE HOLT –
   Good Friday (Signet 15703; c.1987; 1st Signet pr., Sept 1988) M143 vg-fine
      Note: The author has only one other entry in CFIV.
SAMUEL HOLT –
   I Know a Trick Worth Two of That (Tor 50463; c.1986; 1st Tor ppbk pr., Mar 1988) M290 vg+
   What I Tell You Three Times Is False (Tor 50465; c.1987; 1st Tor ppbk pr., June 1988) M139 fine
      Note: “Samuel Holt” is a pseudonym of Donald E. Westlake. In all he wrote four books listed in CFIV under this name.
VICTORIA HOLT –
   The Black Opal (Fawcett Crest 22271; c.1993; 1st Ball edn, Jan 1994) RS11 vg
   Bride of Pendorric (Crest t885; c.1963) RS3 vg-g
   The Curse of the Kings (Fawcett Crest Q2215; c.1973; FC edn, Aug 1974) RS10 vg-g
   The King of the Castle (Fawcett Crest T1162; c.1967; 1st FC pr., Aug 1968) RS14 vg+
   Kirkland Revels (Crest M1385; c.1962; 7th FC pr., Mar 1970) RS9 vg-fine
   The Legend of the Seventh Virgin (Fawcett Crest 2-3281; c.1964-65) RS9 vg+
   Lord of the Far Island (Fawcett Crest 2-2874; c.1975; 1st FC pr.) RS10 vg-fine
   The Mask of the Enchantress (Fawcett Crest 2-4418; c.1980; 1st FC pr., Sept 1981) RS2 vg
   Menfreya in the Morning (Crest t1020; c.1966; 1st FC pr., May 1967) RS2 vg-g
   Mistress of Mellyn (Crest t1132; c.1960) RS15 vg+
   The Shadow of the Lynx (Fawcett Crest P1720; c.1971; FC edn, July 1972) RS4 vg+
HUGH HOLTON –
   The Devil’s Shadow (Forge 57042; c.2001; 1st Forge ppbk edn, June 2002) M217
   Windy City (Forge 56714; c.1995; 1st Tor ppbk edn, Apr 1996) M111 vg+

   Uploaded late last week was Part 37 of the Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. In terms of size, it is the longest installment yet, consisting of 84 pages in manuscript form or (for computer buffs) approximately 177K online.

   And of course you’re certainly welcome to stop by and look around. Much of the data consists of the usual: corrections to previous data, added birth and death dates — too many of the latter in recent months, alas — identities behind pen names discovered, settings and series characters added. Even though the closing date of the Bibliography remains fixed at the year 2000, there is no end to the information that keeps coming in.

   The most welcome of the new data is an increased emphasis on biographical information provided for a large number obscure, mostly forgotten writers. Not overwhelmingly so, just enough to remind readers that authors had other parts to their lives as well.

   Here’s an example, beginning with the previous entry for

ÄIDÉ, (Charles) HAMILTON (1826-1906); Born in Paris.

      The Cliff Mystery (Arrowsmith, 1888, hc)
      Morals and Mysteries (Smith, Elder, 1872, hc)
      *-Poet and Peer (Hurst, 1880, hc) Harper, 1880.

          to which has been appended

AIDE, (CHARLES) HAMILTON. Add: moved to England in 1830; educated at Greenwich and University of Bonn, then served in British army until 1857; traveled widely, then lived (and died) in London; multilingual; composed music, painted and wrote poetry and fiction.

   Not all of the authors covered are as obscure, perhaps, as Mr Aide; he was close to the top, alphabetically speaking, that’s all!

      Adapted from an email from David Vineyard:

   Just a heads up for hardboiled fans. BBC7 is currently reading Dashiell Hammett’s Nightmare Town and beginning Sunday will air a full length (90 minute) dramatization of The Big Sleep (Ed Bishop of UFO as Marlowe).

   A dramatic series of Father Brown with Andrew Jack is winding down and there are dramatizations of Poirot and Lord Peter (Ian Carmichael) on going. There is also a scheduled dramatization of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday coming up.

   They recently completed two Dick Francis thrillers and a reading of Edmund Crispin’s Frequent Hearses. They are also concluding The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and about to start Casebook.

   You can still catch the Hammett reading from the beginning for the next three days.

Editorial Comment:   I used “Old Time Radio” as the category to put this post in, rather than create a new one, even though it’s not really correct. After checking out everything that’s available to listen on the BBC7 site, all I can do is wish that days were ten times longer, or if not that, perhaps I needn’t get seven or eight hours of sleep every night?

THE SEVENTH VICTIM. RKO Radio Pictures, 1943. Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter, Evelyn Brent, Hugh Beaumont. Producer: Val Lewton. Director: Mark Robson.

   A naive young woman in a private girls’ school heads for New York to see if she can find her missing sister. Once there, she discovers that her sister has become involved with a cult of rather tame devil-worshipers. The movie itself is moody, atmospheric, and — not very interesting.

   Maybe it’s the lack of a proper budget, but I found myself nodding off, more often than not. In its own way, though, the ending is worth waiting for. This movie has more sting in its tail than any other of its type I’ve seen for a while — a solid, telling blow in the never-ending battle of good against evil.

[UPDATE] 06-14-10.   This movie has a rating of well above average on IMDB, 6.9 stars out of 10. I’m willing to concede that I may be mistaken in my opinion of this movie. To that end, so that I might watch it again, I have recently purchased a box set of nine Val Lewton movies, and this is the first one I’ll take out of the pack.

   In the meantime, let me ask this question. The movie’s discussed on a number of noir-oriented blogs and websites. Is it noir, or it did come along too early to be a true noir? If it is noir — and I understand this full well — it was only accidental. Who knew what noir was in 1943?

   The nine movies, by the way:

      Cat People
      The Curse of the Cat People
      I Walked with a Zombie
      The Body Snatcher
      Isle of the Dead
      Bedlam
      The Leopard Man
      The Ghost Ship
      The Seventh Victim
      Shadows in the Dark

STEVE FISHER – I Wake Up Screaming. Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprints: Handi-Book #27, 1944. Popular Library #129, no date stated [1947-48]. Bestseller Mystery B204, digest-sized, 1957. Bantam Books A2145, 1960. Black Lizard, 1988. Vintage, 1991.

    ● Film: 20th Century-Fox, 1941. Working title: Hot Spot. Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar, William Gargan, Alan Mowbray. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone.

    ● Film: 20th Century-Fox, 1953, as Vicki. Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, Elliott Reid, Richard Boone. Director: Harry Horner.

   Steve Fisher’s 1941 novel I Wake Up Screaming is undoubtedly the greatest title ever written in the English language. The novel itself ain’t bad, either, with a clever puzzle wrapped in a pleasingly corrosive portrait of the Hollywood Studio system in the 1940s.

   Fisher’s take on studio politics and personalities is as fascinating as the mystery itself, centered around a newly-arrived writer at a major studio and the murder of a would-be starlet poised to hit the big time.

   For mystery fans, Screaming also features a verbal portrait of Cornell Woolrich: “Ed Cornell” a frail, consumptive cop who haunts the story like some wispy wraith — or a damn pest — and solves the case in a very unexpected fashion.

   The dying detective makes a fine counterpoint to the hustling denizens of the rest of the book, strangely menacing, yet oddly poignant, and for author Steve Fisher, who finished out his career writing bad western movies, it’s a surprising achievement.

   When Fox filmed this the same year, they moved the locale from Hollywood to Broadway, changed the hack to a flack, and cast big, beefy Laird Cregar — who looks about as wispy as a charging bull — as the detective.

   Aside from that, though, the film sticks pretty close to the book, fleshed out with some fine players. Betty Grable and Carole Landis are merely adequate, and this early in his career, Victor Mature’s tough guy act seems faintly effeminate, but Alan Mowbray is delightful as a hammy thespian, and Laird Cregar … well, it’s not the character as Fisher wrote it, but his Ed Cornell is a hulking, haunting presence that lingers in the mind.

   Screaming duly came up for a remake in 1953, as Vicki, and Fox cut the budget back to the bone, with skimpy sets, sparse extras, and a general air of penurious haste.

   Harry Horner, who created the sets on ambitious films like The Heiress and The Hustler got the directorial reins here and did a competent if unmemorable job; the film has a blunt look, forceful at times, but mostly rather bland, with a cast less charming than Screaming‘s but more interesting:

   Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters are better actresses in the same roles as Grable and Landis, but Horner doesn’t realize their potential. Elliott Reid wears the Victor Mature part like a wet raincoat, and Alex D’Arcy pretty much just stands there showing off his veneer as the hammy actor, with none of the charm Alan Mowbray showed us.

   As the detective, Richard Boone looks a bit more like Woolrich, and he manages to project a hint of the twisted, obsessive character, but again, Horner doesn’t exploit his potential. What we get is a film that shows some promise but never keeps it.

   An interesting side-light: Both Vicki and Fiend Who Walked the West (reviewed here ) feature off-beat turns by actors who later became major Hollywood producers: Aaron Spelling turns up in Vicki, and his name is probably familiar to anyone who watched TV in the 1970s. Robert Evans, who got the Richard Widmark role in Fiend, later produced films like Chinatown and Urban Cowboy.

   As actors, they’re not really very good, but strangely watchable.

Note:   I Wake Up Screaming, the novel, was previously reviewed on this blog by Marv Lachman. Look for it here.

LEROY LAD PANEK – An Introduction to the Detective Story. Popular Press, Bowling Green University, hardcover/trade paperback, 1987.

   If LeRoy Lad Panek’s An Introduction to the Detective Story seems like a textbook for a college course on the mystery, veteran readers should not be put off. Panek, a former Edgar winner, is more knowledgeable than anyone has a right to be, especially regarding the mystery before Poe.

   Yet, the book is equally strong for its frequent wit, proving that writing about the mystery can be fun. Insights and historical perspective leap off every page.

   Panek devotes considerable space to the usually neglected turn-of-the-twentieth-century writers, after pointing out that “Doyle’s first 24 Sherlock Holmes stories created such a demand they turned people into detective-story writers overnight.”

   Though giving full credit to Doyle and his creation in as good a one-chapter summary as I can recall, he points out Doyle’s weaknesses as a novelist — but also his strengths as a short-story writer.

   Both the Golden Age and the rise of the hardboiled mystery are well handled. Regarding the former, Panek is persuasive how the classic puzzles were a double reaction on the part of writers and readers to the mindless thriller as well as avant garde mainstream fiction, with its de-emphasis on story.

   Private eyes like Race Williams and the Continental Op are correctly pointed out as contemporaries of Doyle, thus reminding us that hardboiled fiction, after more than sixty years, is just as traditional a form of the genre as the classic puzzles.

   Considering the amount of information Panek dispenses, he makes relatively few factual errors. The Detective Book Club is misnamed the “Detective Story Club.” Mary Roberts Rinehart is said to have died in 1926, though she lived on for more than thirty years longer.

   Christie’s And Then There Were None is dated 1930, not 1939. Dennis Wheatley’s “File” books did contain narratives, though through letters, telegrams, and police reports, rather than the usual story-telling devices.

   I also would quarrel with Panek’s loose use of psychological terminology. He refers to “psychotic” heroines of Gothic novels when they were only nervous, usually due to their mysterious employers and those single lights which kept shining in windows.

   Vidocq is called a “paranoiac” when even Panek’s description shows him to be merely self-promoting. A reference to “pathological insanity” is surely redundant, since I doubt if any doctors have seen cases of insanity without mental pathology.

   Panek’s book may be the best history of the entire field written to date. If ever a book deserved a second printing, It is An Introduction to the Detective Story. That would afford an opportunity to clear up some of the errors and would mean it had reached the substantial audience it deserves.

Editorial Comment:   This is the third in a series of reviews in which Marv covered reference works published in 1987, books about the field of mystery and crime fiction. Preceding this one was Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books, by H. R. F. Keating. You can find it here.