MEANS DAVIS – Murder Without Weapon. Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, hardcover, 1934.

   Memorial Hospital may be a fine place to visit. It is not a good idea to be one of its patients. One doctor thinks hot coffee and bromos induce sobriety. Another doctor also believes black coffee will straighten out a drunk, but he in addition employs a stomach pump that he just happens to have in his pocket while attending a funeral.

   (The stomach pump is an odd instrument, consisting of a long tube with an oval bulb at one end. The patient, or victim, swallows the end with the bulb. Shortly thereafter, by gravity or faith or something, the stomach contents gush forth through the tube.)

   The hospital’s physician-in-chief describes an aunt’s obsessive interest in her nephew as an Oedipus complex. Another doctor, an expatriate German, says, gutturally of course:

   He is preaching to the converted while holding on to the converted’s thighs, but it’s a good example of how a mystery author craftily contrives to subtly. convey information amid a somewhat mixed metaphor. The converted, by the way, is a nurse; when “she whispered, her nose, which was too long, and her lips, which were too full, contorted sensuously.”

   The author may mean “sensually”; then again, he may not. He may also know what he’s talking about; I don’t. Noses contorting sensuously or sensually are beyond my comprehension.

   This same doctor, something of a ladies’ or at least a nurses’ man, observes the heroine and, wouldn’t you know, mutters:

   Not satisfied with these M.D.’s, the author introduces, should any reader have unwisely reached this point, Timberlake Pitts, a lawyer so oleaginous that Uriah Heep would be forced to view him askance.

   And there is the heroine’s brother, a seldom-do-well whose “charm lay in the rapidity with which the pockets under his eyes could relax into silver-gray shadows.”

   Remember, I just report; don’t expect me to explain.

   Max Higgins, whom many of you will recall from The Hospital Murders (1934), a book I really want to read after I recover from this one, is in Memorial Hospital with a kidney problem. The hospital authorities ask him to investigate. Since he cannot leave the hospital, he calls in his assistant.

   The reason I bought Murder Without Weapon was the chapter titled “Snod Smooty Starts Snooping.” Snod is something of a Saul Panzer, only more talented:

   Actually, it is only when Snod is around that the novel becomes semi-interesting. When asked what he’s been doing recently, he replies that he has been involved in prison work. Asked what he discovered, he says: “Usual thing. Perversion and pellagra. Result: Riots.'”

   When I once read a mystery that had a shark as the murder weapon — no, nothing so mundane as the shark eating the victim — I thought I could no longer be surprised by any murderous device. Means Davis did astonish me here with a unique, I would hazard, method of inducing death, or possibly insanity, though it would seem to work only with elderly ladies who have weak hearts and with young ladies who are neurasthenic.

   Luckily it’s a weapon bloody difficult to find and employ.

   Plot? With all of the above, you want a plot, too? There’s just no satisfying some readers. Well, an elderly lady dies in the hospital after screaming three times and saying, “Vi’s eyes.” And then the heroine sees eyes and screams for 15 minutes and is put away in the same hospital. And then another elderly lady dies in the hospital with a look of awful horror on her face, a look that any sensible reader had long before she got the idea.

Bibliographic Notes:   As Bill pointed out in his review, Max Higgins appeared in one other detective novel by Means Davis, that being The Hospital Murders, 1934, also published by Smith & Haas. He did not mention a third mystery by the author, that being The Chess Murders (Random House, 1937).

   A fact that Bill did not know, or he would have used a different pronoun in referring to the author, is that Means Davis was the pen name of Augusta Tucker Townsend, 1904-1999.

   An online obituary notice for Mrs. Townsend tells us more about her:

[UPDATE] 06-16-10.   I’ve found copies of all three books for sale online, and the first has already arrived. I’ve just added the cover image of The Hospital Murders; the others will be included as soon as they get here.

[UPDATE #2] 06-25-10.   As you see, I now have cover images for all three books. All three that I ordered arrived in due course, and all three had jackets, even though I did not pay more than $20 for any one of them, including shipping. That the jackets are somewhat the worse for wear is not worth mentioning.

LINDA. Made for cable-TV, USA Network, 08 October 1993. Virginia Madsen, Richard Thomas, Ted McGinley, Laura Harrington. Based on the novella by John D. MacDonald. Director: Nathaniel Gutman.

   A summer vacation at the beach becomes a deadly affair when the wife of one couple kills the wife of the another, and in the process neatly frames her own husband for the deed.

   It starts slowly, goes into a period of intense action, interrupted only by massive amounts of commercials, then settles down for the obvious but highly anticipated conclusion to develop.

   USA is making great strides in making yesterday’s B-movies today, but this one has several strikes against it:

   (1) After the first two stars named above, the acting is absolutely horrible.

   (2) The behavior of the police, the D.A.’s office, and the accused husband’s lawyer are all equally unbelievable.

   (3) After the tale is told, there are still somehow several minutes to fill, and believe me, there is nothing even Richard Thomas could do at that point that could get anyone as choked up about it as we’re supposed to.

   The one thing the movie did have going for it was that it was based on a story by John D. MacDonald, so I went up to my upstairs closet and dug out the book it came from. It’s the second half of a paperback entitled Border Town Girl (Popular Library #750, June 1956), which is where it first appeared.

   It’s only 70 pages long, and it took me less than an hour to read it. And I was right. The things I didn’t care for in the movie were things that weren’t in the book:

   No bad acting. No shipshod police work. No lousy cornball ending.

   It’s still a bit unchewable as a story, but JDM almost made me believe it. And if I hadn’t have seen the movie first, maybe I would have.

   [UPDATE] 06-13-10. There was an earlier TV movie based on the story “Linda,” one I did not know about when I wrote this review. It was on ABC, 03 November 1973, as the Suspense Movie of the Week. It starred Stella Stevens, Ed Nelson, John McIntire, and John Saxon, with Jack Smight as the director. On the basis of the actors alone, there’s a chance I might have enjoyed it more than I did the one on USA.

   I’ll have to see if I can track either one down, or hopefully both. I may have a VHS copy of the later one, but based on my comment about the commercials, there is a possibility that I watched it live. On the other hand, you still notice how many and how often, even when you’re fast-forwarding through them.

SHERLOCK HOLMES. Warner Brothers, 2009. Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr. John Watson), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade), Robert Maillet (Dredger), Geraldine James (Mrs. Hudson), Kelly Reilly (Mary Morstan). Based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director: Guy Ritchie.

   I go to the cinema very rarely as my tastes don’t really run to explosions and the special effects that all crime films seem to have nowadays, but, as a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, this is one I couldn’t miss.

   There has been a lot of discussion before this film was released about the suitability of, especially, Robert Downey Jr as Holmes, Guy Ritchie as director, and the depiction of Holmes as a scruffy waster who indulges in fistfights. Reviews here were mixed but I went with what I hoped was an open mind and I can now reveal that I thoroughly enjoyed the film in almost all respects.

   Sure Downey’s Holmes is out of sync with most other interpretations but it can be argued that most of them are at least as far from Doyle’s original as his is. He is physical, involved in fist fights both during the investigation and for pleasure, but then Holmes we are told by Watson “was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen” (“The Yellow Face”) though also that “he looked upon aimless bodily exercise as a waste of energy” (sic).

   However in The Sign of Four Holmes comes across McMurdo and introduces himself as “the amateur who fought three rounds with you… four years back,” so he did fight for reasons other that practicality.

   There are other nods towards the Doyle canon, for example when Holmes and Watson join in deductions from a watch that echo those made by Holmes about Watson’s brother’s watch (also in The Sign of Four), an event that will have occurred shortly before those of this film.

   There is also at least one nod towards the Basil Rathbone films as Downey twangs the violin at a jar of flies to control their flight patterns as Rathbone had done in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

   The humour, too, was very good, especially in the repartee between Holmes and Watson and both Downey as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson were excellent.

   The plot was a little outlandish with lots of large scales fights and special effects (as to be expected in a modem day film) and the scale of the villain’s ambitions (world domination) was rather extreme.

   Sets, especially those showing London landmarks were well done, but I was unable to understand that when Holmes was pursuing Irene Adler through cellars at the Houses of Parliament they should end up not only on the then under-construction Tower Bridge but on the upper level of it.

   Still, over all this was an enjoyable romp and I hope that the hinted at sequel with Professor Moriarty comes about.

JUDSON PHILIPS – The Laughter Trap. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1964. Paperback reprint: Pinnacle, 1973.

   Peter Styles, a writer for Newsview magazine, is returning to the Darlbrook Lodge, a ski resort in Vermont. The last time he was there he was trying to reconnect with his alcoholic father but the attempt failed.

   While driving his father back to New York City his car was forced from the mountain road by a black car with two passengers in hoods and dark glasses; the one in the passenger seat laughed maniacally as they passed by.

   Peter’s car was forced down a steep hill and he was thrown clear but his father was trapped inside the burning car. His father was killed and Peter lost his right leg below the knee. Now he has come back, hoping to find the people responsible.

   Due to overcrowding at the Lodge, Peter shares a room with Jim Tranter, a publicist for the Lodge who narrates most of the story. That night Peter meets a young woman named Jane Pritchard who actually gets him to dance for the first time since his accident.

   She is sharing a cabin with her friend Martha Towers. In the middle of the night, Peter wakes Jim up when he hears the same maniacal laughter that he heard a year ago. A quick search around the grounds reveals nothing, but the next morning Jane and Martha are found stabbed to death.

   Are the people who caused Peter’s accident the same ones who murdered the girls?

   This was a pretty good effort. Decent characterization with several twists until a surprising least-likely suspect turns up at the end.

Previously reviewed on this blog —

    A Murder Arranged (by Steve Lewis). A long discussion of Philips’ crime fiction follows in the comments.

EMYL JENKINS – The Big Steal. Algonquin Books, trade paperback, July 2009.

   The once growing cottage industry of mysteries with settings in the antiques world has shrunk considerably, but professional appraiser and antiques columnist Jenkins, in her second novel featuring (no surprise) appraiser Sterling Glass, should please any fan of mysteries who’s also a fan of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow.

   When Glass arrives at the Orange Country VA mansion where she’s agreed to do an appraisal of the considerable collection amassed by a deceased couple, she finds a curator who appears little inclined to facilitate her work and a board whose own interests seem contrary to Sterling’s appraisal.

   There’s relatively little action but a lot of talk that revolves around the authentication of antiques. Still, if you have any interest in collecting (and it doesn’t need to be antiques), you should enjoy the behind the scenes look at a highly competitive field.

   And Sterling Glass is a very appealing creation, with a variety of colorful characters adding spice to the mix.

Bibliographic Note:   Emyl Jenkins’ first mystery and Sterling Glass’s first appearance was Stealing with Style (Algonquin, 2005).

LORI ARMSTRONG – No Mercy. Pocket, hardcover, January 2010. Paperback reprint: November 2010.

Genre:   Suspense. Leading characters:   Mercy Gunderson, 1st in series. Setting:   South Dakota.

First Sentence: In the arid summer heat on prairie rangeland, a dead body doesn’t so much rot as it becomes petrified.

   Recovering from her wounds received in Iraq, Army sharpshooter Mercy Gunderson returns to the South Dakota ranch, left to her by her father. Her homecoming isn’t a restful one.

   Mercy’s sister and nephew have problems of their own, and she is being pressured to sell the ranch. The body of a young Indian boy is found on her property and his mother wants Mercy to find who killed him. Another death occurs and Mercy, feeling there is no one she can trust, sets out against escalating violence to find a killer.

   Reading a new-to-you author is a bit of a crapshoot; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sadly, this was one of the latter.

   First, there is a portent on page 22: “…I doubted my life could get more complicated or out of my control. Famous last words.” It’s a mystery! Of course things will get out of control. The foreshadowing is completely unnecessary. I might not have even minded so much had the author left off the last three words “Famous last words.”

   Next we have the characters. There is very little character development in the true sense. We receive pieces of background information on some of the characters, but none of them ever feel real to me.

   Mercy is supposed to be a highly trained sniper who was good at her job because she can disassociate her emotions from the task. We never see that. She, and many of the characters, vacillate between being tough to being completely pliant.

   She is the daughter of a former sheriff and spent over 20 years in the military, but I never had a feeling of a code of honor with her, particularly when she did something completely illegal.

   The plot was a case study in “fabula interruptus.” Whether with the scenes of suspense or sex, Armstrong takes you to the point where the circumstances become intense and then backs away. It feels as though she doesn’t know how to follow through and complete those scenes so she doesn’t; she fades to black and picks the story back up later. This isn’t a regency romance, after all.

   I will give credit where it is due. Armstrong does establish a very good sense of place and, while elements of the climax were rather trite and predictable, the story still had some good suspense to it. While I did identify one villain very early in the story, there was a twist and second villain I didn’t see coming at all.

   In all, the problem comes down to the author’s overall writing style and voice. To say the author’s voice was erratic would be an understatement. Armstong employs humorous sarcasm, which I enjoyed to a point, but much of the dialogue is overly strident, and her writing, overall, lacks nuance; there are no shades of gray.

   I doubt I shall read more by Ms. Armstrong.

Rating:   Poor.

      Lori Armstrong’s PI Julie Collins series —

1. Blood Ties (2005)

2. Hallowed Ground (2006)    [profiled here ]
3. Shallow Grave (2007)
4. Snow Blind (2008)

      The Mercy Gunderson series —

1. No Mercy (2010)
2. Mercy Kill (2011)

HENRY KANE – A Corpse for Christmas.   Dell #735, reprint paperback, no date given [1953]. Originally published in hardcover by J. B. Lippincott, 1951.

Also reprinted in paperback as Deadly Doll, Zenith ZB-19, 1959; and as Homicide at Yuletide, Signet D2877, 1966; and under its original title by Lancer in 1971.

   Seasons greetings! Private richard Peter Chambers gets mixed up with a dead man with a red beard and a false identity, a gorgeous lady PI, several more luscious women (some with husbands, some with not, it doesn’t seem to matter), a mobster, and a box of missing jools.

   The story is told with lots of short, snappy dialogue, sometimes a page or so at time, which is neat, but sometimes it is so short and snappy that it can also give you a headache if you’re not careful.

   Also [WARNING: Plot Alert] beware of the gimmick of the clocks that are stopped at the scene of the murder. Maybe it wasn’t old hat at the time, but I think it was.

COMMENT: Here’s a prime example of a PI novel that you can enjoy while at the same time realizing what kind of lowbrow, generic entertainment it really is. Kane should be commended for writing a completely adequate Fair Play Detective Story, however, with lots of clues for the reader to pick up on. And even though I knew the killer’s identity some time before Peter Chambers did, I was surprised to learn I hadn’t spotted them all!

[UPDATE] 06-12-10.   For some reason I seem to sound embarrassed to have been caught reading a low level paperback for its entertainment value only.

   If that was the case, and it certainly sounds as though I was, then I apologize and shame on me!

   I am glad to see, however, that I pointed out Kane’s ability to write a Fair Play puzzle story at the same time as he was doing a lowly PI novel, at least in his early days of his career.

   One of his best efforts in this regard was Too French and Too Deadly, an Avon paperback from 1955 and a Peter Chambers novel that was reprinted in its entirety in Hans Stefan Santesson’s The Locked Room Reader (Random House, 1968).

   Bill Crider, by the way, likes this book, too. You can read his review of it over on his blog.

   To be posted here shortly, reviews of Trinity in Violence (Avon, 1955) and The Midnight Man (Macmillan, 1965), the former with Peter Chambers, and the latter one of Kane’s trio of McGregor novels.

“Let’s Kill Timothy.” An episode of Peter Gunn (Season 1, Episode 17). First air date: 19 January 1959. Craig Stevens (Peter Gunn), Lola Albright (Edie Hart), Herschel Bernardi (Lieutenant Jacoby), Hope Emerson (Mother), Mel Leonard (Casper Wellington), Henry Corden (Vladimir Sokolawsky), Arthur Hanson (George Tate), Frank Richards (Tiny Walsh), Peter Brocco (Sam the drunk), David McMahon (Mike the desk sergeant). Story: Blake Edwards. Teleplay: Lewis Reed. Director: Blake Edwards.

   Timothy is a most unusual individual: modest, unassuming, reticent to a fault. He is also many things to many people.

   To Peter Gunn, Timothy is an unexpected baby sitting charge. To Lieutenant Jacoby, he’s a “thing” that indecorously invades his office.

   To Casper Wellington, Timothy is both a friend and the way to fabulous wealth, while to George Tate and Tiny Walsh he’s worth kidnapping and gutting like a fish.

   But through it all Timothy maintains his composure. He may be a little guy — three feet tall and three hundred pounds — but he can fend for himself. Of course, practically no one can ward off two burly brutes intent on kidnapping; when that happens, even his foreflippers are of no avail.

   You know, if things keep going the way they have been, Timothy could soon be up on a grand theft felony charge. You have to wonder if the California penal system is capable of providing enough fish for an upwardly mobile but healthy young seal ….

   The normally drop dead serious Peter Gunn series veers into comedy with this one, and the whole thing works beautifully as director-creator-writer Blake Edwards shows he can do funny stuff with the mystery genre. Maybe this was him warming up for Inspector Clouseau.

   The best scene is at the police station, first with a drunk being booked, and then in Jacoby’s office when Gunn leads Timothy in, who immediately makes himself at home by flopping down on the couch. Gunn and Jacoby have an entire conversation without Jacoby once referring to the seal until the very end, but even then he doesn’t state the obvious — a nice piece of underplaying by everybody concerned.

   When Gunn is trying to locate Casper Wellington, he goes to one of his snitches, “artist” Vladimir Sokolawsky (Henry Corden), who is as surreal as any of his “artwork.” Like Victor Buono, Corden (1920-2005) could always do over-the-top superbly, and in his one bizarre scene he nearly steals the show.

   Mother was played in 25 Peter Gunn episodes by a fine character actress, Hope Emerson (1897-1960). In this show, she gets to “sing” “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” — but the less said about that the better. (You’ve been warned.)

Note: According to the Internet Movie Database, this Peter Gunn episode was based on a Richard Diamond radio program, “Timothy the Seal” (5 February 1950).

Editorial Comments:   Click on the link provided to listen to the radio program that Mike mentions. The series, which starred Dick Powell as medium-boiled PI Richard Diamond, was on radio for several years. Many more episodes can be found here: http://www.archive.org/details/RichardDiamond2.

   The movie Gunn was reviewed here on this blog by Dan Stumpf about a month ago.

   ● LOIS & CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN. Feature-length premiere of the TV series. ABC-TV, 12 September 1993. Dean Cain (Clark), Teri Hatcher (Lois), with Michael Landes (Jimmy), Lane Smith (Perry White), John Shea (Lex Luthor), & Tracy Scroggins (“Cat” Grant). Based on the DC Comics superhero characters. Director: Robert Butler.

    “Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a guy up there in a costume, with a cape!”

    Or words to that effect.

    A retelling of Clark Kent’s first days at the Daily Planet, how he meets Lois Lane, star reporter, how he foils Lex Luthor’s attempt to sabotage a new space station, and why on Earth he needs a secret identity and a costume anyway.

    More entertaining than any of the big-budget movies, this much more reasonable facsimile of the long-running comic book is flawed by a certain lack of subtlety, but I still found it a lot of fun. (And it goes almost without saying that I would have preferred Margot Kidder, who must not have been available, there’s no kidding about that.)

COMMENT: Why is it that whenever I watch network television any more, no matter what I watch, that everybody on every show always seems younger than I am?

   ● 1994 BAKER STREET: SHERLOCK HOLMES RETURNS Made for TV, 1993 CBS, 12 September 1993. Anthony Higgins, Debrah Farentino, with Ken Pogue as James Moriarty Booth. Based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director & screenwriter: Kenneth Johnson.

    Not to be confused with The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a 1987 TV-movie with almost the same opening plot lines, except that (as I recall) the city then was Boston, and this time it’s San Francisco.

    When Holmes is popped out of the deep-freeze machine he’s been in for nearly 100 years, he suddenly has to confront all the changes that have taken place in the world, and when he tries to dazzle it with his amazing deductive abilities, the results are, sorry to say, not always on the mark.

    Lots of opportunity for little bits of comedy, in other words, as well as a hint of romance. Not as bad as perhaps I’m making it sound, but still not very good.

COMMENT: Personally, I think that every piece of fiction that has been written about Sherlock Holmes since Conan Doyle died has been fundamentally a bad idea, and they’ve all had to start building from there. With the probable exceptions of Anthony Boucher and John Dickson Carr, everybody else should have forgotten the idea.

[UPDATE] 06-10-10.   First of all, let me point out, in case you hadn’t noticed, that these two network movies were shown on the same evening, which I’m sure was a Sunday. Luckily we’d had our VCR for some time by then. What did people do without them? The good old days were often not so good.

    Secondly, note my stated preference for Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, rather than Teri Hatcher, but as the series went on, I believe the latter’s charms began to sway my preferences a tad.

    Both she and Dean Cain were complete unknowns when the series began, and it stayed on the air for four years. I think it lost a lost of momentum when Lois and Clark got married (long before they did in the comic book), but at the time, the ratings went sky-high.

   And by the way, those of you who have met me in person. Doesn’t Dean Cain look a lot like me? If I were as good-looking as Dean Cain?

    Although I should still have them on videocassette, I recently purchased the first season’s shows on DVD. I’ve not watched them yet, and perhaps I won’t for a while, for fear of being disappointed. I enjoyed the series then; maybe I won’t so much now. (Yes, I know. The boxed set shown is that of the second season.)

   As for the Sherlock Holmes movie, I don’t know why I was so hard on all of the books and movies based on Doyle’s characters, and believe it or not, I softened my phrasing in that comment above from the way I said it in 1993. They are what they are, some are better than others, and they’re all fun.

   The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which I mentioned being the same story as Sherlock Homes Returns, only earlier, was previously mentioned on this blog back here. It’s in Comment #2 following a review of The Missing Person, another movie with Margaret Colin in it.

GAVIN LYALL – Midnight Plus One. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1965. Charles Scribners Sons, US, hardcover, 1965. Paperback reprints include: Pan, UK, 1967; Dell, US, 1969; Orion, UK, 2005.

   It’s a cold wet April in Paris, and Lewis Cane is nursing a drink in a small cafe when he is suddenly thrust into his own violent past.

   Cane, Caneton was a gunman working with the Resistance. He has old friends and old enemies, but luckily this is a friend, Parisian lawyer Henry Merlin and one time Resistance paymaster. The two men haven’t seen each other since the war, but it is no simple meeting.

   Like Cane Merlin is involved in the scheme to get a man named Maganhard from a boat off the coast of Brittany to Lichenstein, where he is to accomplish a dicey bit of business. A simple job as Merlin describes it: “A client wishes to go from Brittany to Liechtenstein. Others wish him not to go. Shooting is possible. You wish to help him get there?”

   Maganhard has been framed on a rape charge to delay him getting to Lichenstein for his tricky bit of banking so both police and his enemies want to stop him. Cane will have to take him across country by car.

   Cane takes the job and learns he will not be alone, a young American gunman is going with him. Cane’s job is primarily as the driver and to back the American gunman; Harvey Lovell, the third best in Europe, an ex-agent of the American Secret Service.

   But Lovell comes with baggage Cane doesn’t need:

   Part of the fun of any Lyall novel is his considerable know how about guns and the business of guns. He neither romanticizes nor fantasizes about them, but presents them as tools in a deadly game.

   And in Lyall’s sure hand even inanimate objects can become characters:

   Maganhard is accompanied by his secretary Helen Jarmian, and Englishwoman, and she and Lovell are soon drawn to each other in the increasingly dangerous journey through the cold wet French spring.

   It soon becomes obvious why Lovell has that haunted look. He has a problem with drinking, a bad habit for anyone, but fatal for a gunman.

   Cane finds himself with a dipso gunman, a dubious client, a cranky car, and a woman on a job that would be difficult enough in any case. And the enemy has already shown its hand, murdering the driver that delivered the car.

   The journey is dangerous and tense, and soon enough explodes in violence. Violence that pushes Lovell back to the bottle at the worst time.

   But Lovell manages to prove himself an efficient killer even drunk. And worse, the game isn’t as simple as it might seem and as Caneton knew, even if Cane may have forgotten, nothing is ever clean and simple in this violent world, and men play both ends against the middle with the dead bodies collateral damage.

   Nor can Cane get around who he is — or was, and as the violent conclusion draws near he finds he can’t just walk away, because of who he once was and what that meant:

   The ending is dark and powerful. Lovell has learned he can kill and drink, and Helen Jarmian who loves him, loves him too much to see how deadly that will be for them both. It’s the sort of thing Caneton alone can resolve.

   It’s a stunning moment, no less to the characters than the reader:

   Somewhere between Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler, Lyall is one of the masters of the British thriller, combining the poetry of the Buchan school with the action of Alistair MacLean and the toughness of a Hammett.

   His books include classics of the form like The Most Dangerous Game, Shooting Script, The Venus Pistol and others, including the critically acclaimed Harry Maxim series.

   I’ll grant I’m not the least objective about this book or Lyall. He is simply one of my all time favorites, and Midnight Plus One the best of his many books. I was sixteen when I first read it, and I’m happy to say it holds up as well today as it did then.

   If you want to see the British thriller done as it should be by one of the best writers of that genre read this one. Read anything by Gavin Lyall. The man could not pen a bad book, and this one is his masterpiece.

Editorial Comments: According to Wikipedia, the film rights to Midnight Plus One were purchased by actor Steve McQueen not long before he died. If this is so, a great opportunity was lost — just my opinion, of course.

   For a lengthy overview of Gavin Lyall and his work, and an abundance of cover images, check out Steve Holland’s Bear Alley blog. (Two of the cover images found here came from there.)

   Steve’s essay, written in September of last year, ends by saying, “It’s sad to think that only one of Lyall’s novels (Midnight Plus One) is currently in print.” Has anything changed since then? I don’t believe so.