On her blog, author Jane Haddam takes issue with my review of her book Cheating at Solitaire here on this one. She’s certainly right to take issue. Overall I didn’t find the book particularly rewarding, and I tried to explain why.

   I did end the review on a positive note by suggesting that “…values are the key to Cheating at Solitaire — hometown values, small town values, I don’t believe it matters either way. Maybe they’re even universal values and and maybe this is why readers keep coming back for more.”

   Earlier on, though, I expressed my displeasure with the lack of actual detection that went on in what I assumed to be a book about a detective, ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, the leading character in most if not all of the author’s books. I had to conclude that solving a mystery, the undoing of a puzzle plot, was not one of the reasons readers keep coming back for more of his adventures.

   Nor does Jane Haddam deny it. Quoting here and there from her comments, and you can go read them in full to fill in any blanks I’ve omitted, she says:

   So there we are, miles apart. Miles. (But you might also want to read my second paragraph above again.)

   Copied from the TCM website, the following news:

      TCM Ready to Shine Brightly with Eighth Edition of SUMMER UNDER THE STARS —

   The dog days of summer are the best time of the year for movie fans as they turn on the air conditioning and park themselves on the couch for the latest edition of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) ultimate movie star showcase: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS. Now in its eighth year, the August festival dedicates each of its 31 days to one of Hollywood’s most enduring actors and actresses. Assembled from the network’s library of more than 5,000 films, this one-of-a-kind festival is an opportunity for viewers to enjoy a varied selection from each star’s body of work, uncut and commercial free.

   Fourteen of the month’s actors and actresses featured in this year’s SUMMER UNDER THE STARS are first-timers to the festival. The memorable performers include five Oscar® winners: Julie Christie (Aug. 2), Ethel Barrymore (Aug. 4), Margaret O’Brien (Aug. 8), Warren Beatty (Aug. 9) and John Mills (Aug. 22). Other stars getting their first showcases include Woody Strode (Aug. 5), Kathryn Grayson (Aug. 10), Gene Tierney (Aug. 14), Robert Stack (Aug. 17), Ann Sheridan (Aug. 18), Walter Pidgeon (Aug. 19), John Gilbert (Aug. 24), Lee Remick (Aug. 26) and Thelma Todd (Aug. 30).

   This year’s SUMMER UNDER THE STARS also features 52 films making their first appearances on TCM during the festival, including I Was Monty’s Double (1958), starring John Mills and M.E. Clifton-James, who really was General Montgomery’s double during World War II; Richard Lester’s decade-defining film Petulia (1968), with Julie Christie and George C. Scott; the film adaptation of Joe Orton’s frantic play Loot (1970) and the concert-piano drama The Competition (1980), both starring Lee Remick; Richard Rush’s incisive black comedy The Stunt Man (1980), with Peter O’Toole in a brilliant performance; an extensive collection of early comedies featuring Thelma Todd; and the Hope-and-Crosby-style comedy Ishtar (1987), with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.

          >>>

   Thanks and a tip of the hat for this advance notice to Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., whose Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is one of the blogs I take a look at every day, and if you love old movies and old TV shows, as well as Old Time Radio, then you should too.

   You can see the entire August schedule for yourself, but Ivan goes through each of the 31 days of the month and points out the highlights of each from his point of view. (Follow the link above.) Often his is the same as mine, but what he has to say depends on which of the movies he already has on tape or DVD, and which he doesn’t, and I have a feeling that his collection is bigger than mine. Either way, there’s a lot to be looking forward to!

J. D. ROBB (aka NORA ROBERTS) – Fantasy in Death. Putnam, hardcover, February 2010. Reprint paperback: Berkley, July 2010.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character:   Det. Eve Dallas, 37th in series. Setting:   New York City–Future/2060.

First Sentence:   While swords of lightning slashed and stabbed murderously across the scarred shield of sky, Bart Minnock whistled his way home for the last time.

   U-Play is a fast-rising gaming company with a quartet of co-owners. One of them takes the disk home for a game in development, and literally loses his head over it. Lt. Eve Dallas is faced with a locked-room mystery where she and her team have to find out not only who did it, but how it was done.

    Reading J. D. Robb has always been one of my guilty pleasures. I enjoy her voice and her humor. Only Robb can write a conversation about private parts that is neither silly, salacious or scatological, but is laugh-out-loud funny.

   She has such a wonderful ear for dialogue and banter. I appreciate her references to books, literature, television and movies, including a delightful homage to “The Godfather.”

   She also does a very good creating life in 2060; the not-too-distant future. It’s a tricky balance of making it seem possible but not fantastical. “It’s always fiction until science catches up.”

   The focus of this book is relationships; friends, partners, lovers. It is nice watching Eve develop emotionally with each book and the sexual relationship with Roark, while still there, be less prominent. The usual supporting relationships were all there in a more cameo role than in the past, but they contributed to the theme.

   Where the book fell apart a bit, for me, was the plot. It started off really well as a locked-room mystery. There were viable suspects and some good red herrings. However, because of the type of crime, it didn’t quite make sense that Eve was the one who came up with the solution; the logic, perhaps, but not the technicality.

   The final climatic scene seemed abrupt and over the top. I did enjoy the book, do still enjoy the series and know I’ll continue reading it, but would like to see Robb/Roberts change it up a bit.

Rating: Good.

Editorial Comment:   Can there already really be 37 in this series? The first one was Naked in Death, which came out in 1995 as a paperback original from Berkley. That’s well over two books a year ever since.

   But when I went to look the series up online, I found that while the Fantastic Fiction website agrees that Fantasy in Death is #37 in the series, it appears that a few of the 37 were only long novelettes that appeared in collections with other authors. Looking further on the same page, though, I see that some of these have been published individually as novellas under the J. D. Robb byline, so I’m assuming the number is at least semi-legitimate and to let it stand.

FOYLE’S WAR. ITV (UK), PBS (US). Episode One: The German Woman. 27 October 2002 (UK date). Michael Kitchen (Det. Supt. Christopher Foyle), Honeysuckle Weeks (Samantha Stewart), Anthony Howell (Sgt. Paul Milner), Edward Fox, Robert Hardy, David Horovitch, Joanna Kanska, Dominic Mafham, Julian Ovenden, Rosamund Pike, Elizabeth Bell, James McAvoy. Series creator: Anthony Horowitz.

   Eight years after it aired, I finally watched the first episode of the Foyle’s Way series, “The German Woman.” I see what the fuss has been about now.

   Beautifully filmed, splendidly cast and intelligently written, this debut episode in the series has a lot about it to like. As the Detective Superintendent, Michael Kitchen has amazing gravitas and droll charm. His character is Always Right on the weighty moral issues this and other episodes of the series address, and you just wish he were in charge of the whole darn, messed-up world.

   Kitchen seems too splendid an actor for one not to have seen him before — I do remember him from Enchanted April but not from Out of Africa (of course this film is from 25 years ago!) and I can’t recall seeing him anything else. Any road, he’ll be remembered in posterity for this series, I have no doubt, just like David Suchet will be for Poirot.

   As his spunky driver “Sam,” Honeysuckle Weeks is an amazingly appealing presence who gives the series an acceptable bit of Girl Power! She looks so young here too, in this episode from eight years ago.

   Foyle’s son, Andrew, is played by Julian Ovenden, who had a role in the Poirot film After the Funeral. He makes less of an impression here, but I understand that the character developed more over the course of the series (he did not appear in the latest season).

   Anthony Howell, the very serious son from Wives and Daughters, the 1999 film of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, plays the very serious Sergeant Paul Milner, the wounded war hero (he lost part of a leg) who goes to work for Foyle in the police force. He’s always a strong and substantial presence.

   The supporting cast is an embarrassment of riches, with David Horovitch (Inspector Slack from the Joan Hickson “Marple” series and Isaac from Ivanhoe) as a victimized German internee, Robert Hardy as a foolish aristocrat (he played this role before — very well — in Middlemarch), Rosmaund Pike (seen most recently in the Oscar-nominated film An Education) as his snide and bratty daughter and James McAvoy — now a major film star — in the small but memorably played role of the lovelorn druggist’s assistant.

   This excellent cast stars in a film that addresses the morality of Britain’s alien internment policy during World War Two. Just as the United States instituted an unjust internment policy in regard to the Japanese residents in the country, so did Britain in regard to Germans and Italians. In some cases, even German Jewish refuges were rounded up — a rather obviously nonsensical policy.

   The unjustness of all this is touched on by “The German Woman,” and most happily, it’s done within the framework of a classical, Golden Age style British mystery. The German wife of a local bigwig aristocrat is herself left untouched and resentment against her stirs in the local community after a German bomb is dropped on a pub, killing a young woman.

   When the German woman is killed in a particularly nasty way while out riding, it’s thought a local seeking revenge on Germans may be responsible, but other paths of suspicion appear as well, some leading within the confines her own family….

   You might, as I did, suspect a certain party very quickly, but motive still provides an interesting question. The only quibble I would have is that the murderer, when confronted by Foyle, quite improbably confesses; but this is a script convenience I can pass over with so many other excellences. This is British mystery film making at its highest level.

Editorial Comment:   Truth in Advertising. Although I do not remember it, it is possible that the first photo of the three stars together came from this first episode, but almost assuredly the second one did not.

FLAWLESS. Magnolia Pictures, 2007. Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson, Nathaniel Parker. Director: Michael Radford.

   Any movie with this title ought to be good – better than good, in fact, maybe even perfect – but all I can tell you is that this movie is only better than good. It’s a story that takes place in England and inside the headquarters of the world’s largest diamond exchange.

   It’s also the story of a female executive (Demi Moore) who keeps getting passed over for promotions when in fact it is her suggestions the firm is often acting upon, and a janitor (Michael Caine) who has not only a plan but a motive (his wife’s death) to steal a handful of diamonds – they’ll never miss them, he tells her. All he needs is the combination, he says, and she’s the only one who can get it for him.

   Janitors, it turns out, are never noticed, even when they’re in the same room where confidences are being made, and they’re also privy to all kinds of information carelessly tossed into the trash. She’s being terminated, he tells her, or at least her job is. Sure enough, he’s right. And she’s in.

   There is a twist that I didn’t see coming that comes along next, and telling you even that is more than I think I should, but every other review you read is going to tell you this or more, and by the time you read the next post on this blog, probably tomorrow, you’ll have forgotten anyway.

   Any movie with Michael Caine in it is going to be good, if only for the scenes he’s in, and Demi Moore, looking noticeably older than she did in G. I. Jane, say (1997), is a much better actor than I think she’s given credit for.

   She always has this innate sense of vulnerability about her performances, even those in which she’s as strong a character as she is in G. I. Jane, which makes all her roles all the more interesting, even in films that (I admit) are not all that strong to begin with.

   Getting back to Michael Caine, though, he’s definitely the man with a plan – he’s been waiting for his chance at revenge for a considerable length of time, so obviously he’s had plenty of time to work out the details. Only his strong British accent – Cockney? I’m no expert – can possibly flaw his performance here, and then in terms of American ears only.

   I’m ambivalent about the framing device for this movie, but surprisingly enough – I hate prologues – it’s the ending which I found to be the weaker bookend, possibly a little too preachy to some minds?

   Well, perhaps. Not enough to mar the show, though, which is turn moderately clever and suspenseful, and which I plan to watch again for all of the little things I’m sure I missed — or maybe even to nitpick the flaws a little more thoroughly. The first time, though, I mostly sat back and enjoyed the top-notch performances of this movie’s top two stars.

VICTORIA LAURIE – Doom with a View: A Psychic Eye Mystery. Obsidian, paperback original, September 2009.

   Psychic Abigail (“Abby”) Cooper and her pal PI Candice Fusco join an FBI team headed by sceptic Brice Harrison in an investigation of a search for some missing college students. Not unexpectedly, Harrison proves to be difficult to work with, even in the face of progress resulting from Abby’s psychic gifts.

   Some surprising, and initially not entirely welcome, changes occur in Abby’s life as a result of this new direction in her career, but the light touch of this romantic mystery series continues to entertain the reader open to the unconventional techniques of the amateur sleuth.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

     Two by Victoria Laurie: What’s a Ghoul Got to Do? and A Vision of Murder (by Walter Albert)
     Crime Seen (by Steve Lewis)

DAVID DODGE – To Catch a Thief. Random House, hardcover, 1952. Reprint paperback: Dell #658, 1953. Film: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber. Screenplay: John Michael Hayes. Cinematography: Robert Burks. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

       *Spoiler Warning*    (As if anyone reading this doesn’t know the ending.)

   For whatever reason, American writers in general haven’t fared as well as the British when it comes to international adventurers and jewel thieves (though one of the greatest of them all was Louis Joseph Vance’s Michael Lanyard, the Lone Wolf, and American Jack Boyle gave us Boston Blackie), so it is only fitting that one who did was the cosmopolitan David Dodge, who knew the Riviera like the back of his hand.

   Dodge was well known for his tales of CPA slash detective Whit Whitney and South of the Border private eye Al Colby when he wrote this, but I don’t think most readers were ready for an American who did the whole Riviera scene as suavely as any Brit.

   He also had a good ear and feel for rogues, slightly bent heroes who might have to think a bit before doing the right thing.

   Somehow he managed to present them flaws and all as real human beings and not sociopathic thugs or emotionless robots. You tended to identify with and root for a Dodge hero without feeling guilty about it.

   I won’t go into a lot of plot detail. Almost everyone reading this has likely seen the Alfred Hitchcock film (and if you haven’t, stop now, find it, and see it — it’s one of the best pictures of its kind ever made and unfairly overlooked by some because it does what it does so effortlessly) and knows the basic story. John Robie, an expatriate American living on the Riviera was once the infamous pre-war jewel thief known as Le Chat, the Cat to the world press.

   Captured and sentenced just before the war Robie and his fellow crooks — many friends from his career as a circus aerialist (*) — are freed from prison by a bomb and join the Resistance to fight the Nazi occupation using their criminal skills. As a result, after the war they receive full pardons. Robie salted away his profits, bought a villa, and retired to grow his roses — even though some of his friends urged him to resurrect the Cat.

   But someone has done just that, and the police are sure Robie is up to his old tricks. He escapes the police, contacts a Lloyds insurance investigator, and armed with a list of the most valuable targets begins to hunt the new Cat.

   Meanwhile he finds himself falling for a headstrong American woman whose mother is on the list of the most likely victims and facing the enmity of his old friends — some of whom resent the renewed police pressure the Cat has brought on them, some of them who may be working with the new Cat.

   What I want to concentrate on here are the few differences between the novel and the film. They aren’t as many as usual, but never the less make for an interesting contrast of novel into film.

   The novel opens as does the film with John Robie (Cary Grant) eluding the police via an escape plan left over from his days as the Cat. He goes underground and contacts some of his old ‘friends,’ including the sexually precocious daughter of one of them who has long had a crush on him.

   As in the film he is captured, but the police reluctantly have to let him go. Having met the Lloyds insurance man, he contacts him and convinces him to take a chance on Robie’s innocence and join in the hunt for the new Cat. Posing as an American businessman he checks into the Hotel Midi and sets out to get close to American heiress Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly), who doesn’t wear jewelry, and her mother (Jessie Royce Landis)who clearly does.

   Complicating things in the book is his desire to avoid hurting his honest friend Paul, who has trusted him. The character doesn’t appear in the film.

   Other than some small differences the book is very close to the film until the end, when there is quite a bit of variation. As in the film Robie sets a trap for the Cat and a man is killed, but Robie knows that the man, the father of Danielle (Brigitte Auber), cannot be the Cat because he was crippled during the war. And so he has to go to the rooftops in order to corner the real Cat.

   But the police aren’t interested in his theory and if he is caught on a roof at a robbery it could mean a lifetime in prison or death. Still, he convinces Francie to help him (in the book Paige, the insurance man has already paid off and given up) trap the new Cat.

   In the book — Robie’s honest friend Paul has fallen in love with Danielle, and Robie has to not only capture the Cat, but when he does, he has to return the jewels and save the new Cat from paying for her crimes all while avoiding the suspicious policeman Lepic (a good example of Dodge at play since slang for a French policeman is Le Flic).

   What makes the novel worth the effort even if you have seen the film a million times (and I’m probably going on a million and one) is Dodge’s rare skills as a writer. There is nothing showy about it, but he is one of the best suspense novelists of his era, writing clean intelligent prose that reads more like the cool British thrillers of Victor Canning or Max Murray than the hard boiled American voice — though Dodge managed to stay well within that mode at the same time in a virtually unique combination of voice and style.

   What holds you as you turn the pages of To Catch A Thief is not only the charm of the characters and the skill of the plotting, but the writing which is deceptively simple:

   Later:

   And still later on the rooftop of a villa waiting for the Cat:

   Dodge wrote a number of good stand alone thrillers after To Catch a Thief (Angel’s Ransom, The Lights of Skaro, and Carambola) and they are well worth reading, including his final novel, The Last Match recently published by Hard Case for the first time. His books are sophisticated, well written, and stylish in execution and design, the international adventure thriller done to a T.

   A friend of mine who was a mining engineer in Western Australia and other places that were the back of the beyond said whenever he could he traveled with a Dodge book in his few belongings. That’s about as good a tribute as any thriller writer can ask for, and one Dodge fully deserves.

(*)   In case you ever wondered just how perfectly Cary Grant was cast as John Robie, in his youth Grant had been a circus gymnast.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

    Shear the Black Sheep   (by Steve Lewis).

VICTOR CANNING –

   These two novels from Victor Canning span the course of his long career. The first, Panthers’ Moon (1948), was his second thriller after returning to writing following WW II, while The Fingers of Saturn (1973) came from his most diverse, prolific, and successful era.

   Canning was the third man in the top three thriller writers of his period. If you grant that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene stand alone, then the top three of the period were Hammond Innes, Geoffrey Household, and Victor Canning. They had spectacular sales, uniformly rave reviews, and Hollywood came calling frequently. Canning is unjustly neglected today.

   Canning began writing largely humorous novels in the late thirties, took some time off after the war and came back with The Chasm, a thriller. His second thriller is Panthers’ Moon, which is a classic of its kind, a perfect mix of essential elements.

   The typical Canning hero is a professional, a country man, and a sportsman, but within that type he manages quite a bit of variation from innocents abroad to professional assassins.

   Roger Quain is an engineer asked to help an old friend who owns a circus transport a pair of leopards, a male and a female, who were kept as pets by a wealthy Italian nobleman.

   Quain respects the animal and recognizes the hatred in the beast’s eyes. Back at his hotel Quain is approached by Catherine Talbot, a British Agent, who tells him she has important information she must get out and cannot because she is being watched. The information is in the form of microfilm. Quain agrees to get it out and hides the microfilm in the collar of the male leopard.

   Then the Simplon-Orient Express, on which Quain is transporting the two cats, is wrecked in the Alps and the cats are on the loose. Quain has to recover the animals and the microfilm, and just who he can or can’t trust is a question. Denson, the American journalist who interviewed him before he left Italy, the seductive Carlotta, Valecchi the fat man, Copelnancer the professional hunter, and what of Parradou the policeman?

   And as you might expect Quain himself will become the hunted and the hunter beneath the Alpine Panthers’ moon:

   This one was filmed as Spy Hunt, with Howard Duff and Marta Toren, Walter Slezak as Valecchi, and Robert Douglas as Copelnancer. It’s a solid little film, a minor A production, a little set bound, but making the most of the elements of the cinematic novel.

   The Finger of Saturn from two decades later is a darker book. Canning had become disenchanted with the games played by the Security Services and portrayed them as ruthless and vicious. He himself had divorced his wife and become involved with another woman, prompting the most productive period of his career. It was in this period he wrote what may be his masterpiece, The Rainbird Pattern, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as The Family Plot.

   The Finger of Saturn is the middle finger, and when it is shorter than the other two fingers surrounding it old wives’ tales imply something sinister. And as we all know not all old wives tales are wrong …

   Robert Rolt used to be something in the Foreign Office, as his father an ambassador had been. Now he takes care of the family estates, Rolthead, a gentleman farmer and land owner. Up to two years earlier he was ecstatically happy with his wife Sarah, but then she went missing.

   Now someone from the Foreign Office shows up with film that shows a woman who looks suspiciously like Sarah. When Rolt goes to visit her he discovers she is Sarah, and has no memories of her past, he convinces her to come home.

   But when they go to visit her mother in Italy they are nearly killed. An accident — or something more sinister. And now a man named Garwood, Deputy Director Statistical Projects of the Ministry of Defense has approached Rolt. Sarah’s family is tied closely to a mysterious group, International Industrial Systems Limited, I.I.S.L. and they would like to know just how closely. All he really knows about his mother in law is that she has made some eccentric donations …

   Soon enough it becomes obvious what Garwood and company want from Rolt. They want him to destroy I.I.S.L.’s secret headquarters at Caradon Abbey in Cornwall, where only he, with Sarah’s contacts, can penetrate their sinister secrets and those of the woman he loves more than anything in the world.

   I won’t give away what Rolt finds, but suffice it to say it is unique among Canning’s novels and he brings it off beautifully as only a true master could.

   To have produced one of these books in a career would be accomplishment enough. To produce two of them a bit over twenty years apart is remarkable.

   That this same career included such books as Castle Minerva, The House of Seven Flies, The Golden Salamander, Birdcage, Queen’s Pawn, The Great Affair, The Limbo Line, Firebird, and Bird of Prey, as well as his best selling Arthurian novels and his works the basis for films such as The Golden Salamander, The House of the Seven Hawks, The Venetian Bird, Masquerade, Shark, and The Family Plot is a sign of his qualities as a writer (his film and television credits are too numerous to produce here).

   Hopefully his work will be rediscovered and reprinted. He’s too good to be forgotten, and writers with his ability too rare to remain unread by future generations. These two are fine examples of his best, but there are many more equal or superior to them.

   Almost any of his thrillers are worth reading for lovers of international intrigue, suspense, action, and adventure. He even ventured into humor in The Great Affair, and to some extent his popular private eye series about Rex Carver, a Brit eye with a six foot tall secretary and a penchant for international intrigue.

   Canning was a Silver Dagger winner and named a Grand Master by the British Crime Writers Association. Grand Master was never a more deserved title. Lovers of the British thriller would be wise to learn his name and read as many of his books as they can find. No one did it better.

       Previously on this blog —

SCORPIO ROOMS: VICTOR CANNING ON TV, by Tise Vahimagi.

VICTOR CANNING – A Fall from Grace (A 1001 Midnights Review by John Lutz).

VICTOR CANNING – The Limbo Line. (Reviewed by David Vineyard).

MASQUERADE (1965). Based on the novel Castle Minerva by Victor Canning. (A movie review by David Vineyard.)

RAIDERS OF THE SEVEN SEAS. United Artists, 1953. John Payne, Donna Reed, Gerald Mohr, Lon Chaney, Anthony Caruso, Henry Brandon, Skip Torgerson. Director & co-screenwriter: Sidney Salkow.

   John Payne, probably better known for the westerns and noirish crime he did, takes a break from either and shows up in this film taking place in and around the Caribbean in color as a privateer called Barbarossa, or “Red Beard.”

   I mention that the film is in color for two reasons. First of all, to show off John Payne’s red close-cropped chin adornment, and secondly, to demonstrate how striking a beauty the young dark-haired Donna Reed was. Although she was in her share of them, black and white films (and TV work) simply did not do her justice.

   As the daughter of a Spanish governor, she is kidnapped by Barbarossa early on in this film, or at least her character Alida is. And of course if you think it follows that the two of them get along, it only means that you have not seen many movies of this same type, whether they are pirate films, westerns, or even straight drama — in eras, it should go without saying, where kidnapping was ever an acceptable first step in winning a lady’s hand.

   As it happens, Alida is also engaged to marry Captain Jose Salcedo (Gerald Mohr), but since her future husband was chosen for her in advance, his hold on her is tenuous. And once he shows his true colors, then as if by magic — movie magic, that is — well, you know, and you could have written this too.

   Gerald Mohr, he of the sleepy eyes and perpetual lopsided sneer, is horribly miscast as a Spanish officer, just as a warning, in case you are a fan of his, as am I.

   Mohr was far more suited for westerns and film noir than even John Payne was. With a voice very similar to Philip Marlowe’s on the radio, he would also have been pitch perfect as a sleazy but effective private eye type of character, although I am not sure if he ever played one on the screen.

   As for Donna Reed, she won an Oscar for her very next film, From Here to Eternity, then starred in a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis film, followed by a couple of westerns. Given the uneven nature of the films she was in, I wonder how well she’d be remembered today if she hadn’t landed her own series on TV, The Donna Reed Show, a very domestic situation comedy that lasted for eight years, 1958 to 1966, followed by a short stint as Eleanor Ewing on Dallas in the mid-1980s.

   In any case, there is some entertainment value to this film, but in all honesty, it’s all done pretty much by the numbers.

   Luckily they did film it in color — even though I couldn’t come up with any scenes from the movie to prove it — otherwise even that last paragraph might be stretching the truth a little too much.

“I’ll Be Judge — I’ll Be Jury.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 21). First air date: 15 February 1963. Peter Graves, Albert Salmi, Ed Nelson, Sarah Marshall, Rodolfo Hoyos. Teleplay: Lukas Heller, based on the novel by Elizabeth Hely (Scribner, 1959). Director: James Sheldon.

   Mark Needham (Peter Graves) is in Mexico with his wife Laura (Eileen O’Neill) when tragedy strikes. They get temporarily separated while on a picnic, and Laura is murdered. Much later, when Mark goes to the local authorities about finding her killer, Inspector Ortiz (Rodolfo Hoyos) not only indicates that he’s certain he knows who the killer is but also enlists Mark’s help in trying to get the murderer to tip his hand.

   The prime suspect, Theodore Bond (Albert Salmi), lives and works in the same village, and Mark endeavors to ingratiate himself with Bond in a game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, even a mouse that’s been backed into a corner can be very dangerous indeed ….

   The two leads act very differently from their usual screen personas: Peter Graves, normally a level-headed responsible type, crosses over into barely contained rage at times, while Albert Salmi, whose villains were usually over the top, underplays his character as a craven coward barely able to maintain his pretense at being respectable.

   Halfway through the story, the plot resets itself, with Ed Nelson and Sarah Marshall assuming greater prominence.

   Peter Graves (1926-2010) had an extensive career in Hollywood, sometimes in crime dramas: Stalag 17 (1953), Black Tuesday (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), The Naked Street (1955), 23 episodes of the TV series Court Martial (1965-66), 143 installments of Mission: Impossible (1967-73), The Underground Man (1974, as Lew Archer), Number One with a Bullet (1987), and 35 additional episodes of the new Mission: Impossible redux (1988-90).

   Albert Salmi (1928-90) spent most of his career on television, with occasional forays into films: The Ambushers (1967), Night Games, the pilot plus 45 episodes of Petrocelli (1974-76), one Ellery Queen (1976), Love and Bullets (1979), and one of the best Murder, She Wrote segments, “Murder Takes the Bus” (1985).

You can see this episode on Hulu here.

Editorial Comments:   Author Elizabeth Hely has four books including in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, three of them featuring Commissaire Antoine Cirret as detective, including I’ll Be Judge — I’ll Be Jury, the original title of which was Dominant Third in England.

   Besides changing the detective’s name, the Hitchcock TV version also moved the locale from France to Mexico. Other changes to the story may also have been made, but these are the more obvious ones.

   One of Hely’s other novels was made into a TV movie, The Smugglers, based on Package Deal (Robert Hale, UK, 1965). In it Donnelly Rhodes plays Antoine Cirret, while Shirley Booth is an American tourist in Europe who unwisely agrees to transport a religious statue from one country to another.