SHARYN McCRUMB – Lovely in Her Bones. Avon, paperback original, 1985; Ballantine, pb, 1990.

   As Bill Crider said on a panel in Omaha [Mayhem in the Midlands], it is hard nowadays to find an American mystery that is not a “Regional.” However, Sharyn McCrumb, who was on his panel, writes mysteries about Appalachia that seem more authentically regional than most.

   Her second mystery, Lovely in Her Bones, is about a “dig” on the Virginia-Tennessee border, designed to prove tribal status for the Cullowhees, an isolated group who claim they’re Native Americans. Elizabeth MacPherson is along to solve the inevitable murder, though she’s just beginning to get interested in forensic anthropology.

   Right now, she’s more interested In Milo Gordon, one of the group’s leaders. There are also computer sabotage and violent lover’s quarrels. As Elizabeth says, “Exhuming bodies is getting to be the dullest part of the project.”

   I like McCrumb’s sense of humor and some of the characters she creates, e.g., the obnoxious Victor, who “hijacks a conversation,” and the hilariously inept Deputy Coltsfoot. I just wish the balance in her books, and in so many other mysteries, hadn’t tipped so far away from the mystery plot, clues and fair play resolution.

MICHAEL JECKS – The Sticklepath Strangler. Headline, UK, hardcover, December 2001; reprint softcover, 2002. Distributed by Trafalgar Square in the US.

Genre:   Historical mystery. Series character:   Sir Baldwin de Furnshill/Simon Puttock, 12th in series. Setting:   England, Middle Ages: 1322.

First Sentence:   They were out there.

   It started with the death of young girls, and the accusation of cannibalism, the murder of an innocent man and his curse on the village. Now a young girl’s skull has been found and Sir Baldwin de Fernshill, Keeper of the King’s Peace, Bailiff Simon Puttock and Coroner Roger de Gidleigh travel to the village of Sticklepath, a place of death and secrets. The death toll keeps rising.

   Jecks is so good at not only establishing a sense of time and place, but creating an atmosphere. The depth and extent of his research is always evident. He clearly expresses the hardship and cruelty of life from disease, nature, as well as the abuses by those in power and the extent to which the desperate can be driven. In spite of the power of the Catholic Church over people lives, this is still a time of superstition and fear of witches and spirits.

   Jecks’ Author’s Notes at the beginning of the book are informative and interesting. Having a Cast of Characters is such an asset and I’m glad Jecks included it. Even without it, the characters are distinctive and memorable, particularly the two protagonists, Baldwin and Simon.

   They are friends but, due to their backgrounds and experiences, very different in outlook and attitude. Baldwin is an ex-Templar knight and whose experiences have resulted in his being more accepting and open-minded.

   This book is filled with characters, quite a few are very unpleasant, yet I never identified the killer. This brings me to the plot. In some ways, I found it so depressing, it was hard to get through. If anything I felt Jecks was so caught up in bringing the period to life, he lost the tautness of the story.

   The positive side is that there were no portents or obvious clues one could pick up so I certainly never saw the end coming. Justice was served, but I wasn’t completely happy with the way in which it was done — but that may be just me. As an author of historical mysteries, Jecks ranks among the best for accuracy. It will be interesting to see how the series progresses.

Rating: Good.

Editorial Comment: There are now 20 books in the series. Rather than post a list here, I’ll send you instead to the Fantastic Fiction website, where as usual they also include a dazzling display of most if not all the covers.

ALLAN VAUGHAN ELSTON – Deadline at Durango. Dell 643, reprint paperback, 1952. Hardcover edition: J. B. Lippincott, 1950.

   A newcomer to the West bases his fortune in the cattle business on some semi-legal activities he carries out during his first days there, but as time goes on, he finally learns that he has to come to peace with himself.

   There’s lots of action, too, after a slow beginning, but guilt is what’s the underlying motivator here. (The girl from the East has a large part to play as well.) Well above average.

PHILIP KETCHUM – Gun Code. Signet 1686, paperback original, July 1959. Reprinted several times.

   Now that he’s grown up, a young cowboy returns to his home town with fire in his eye, ready to avenge his father’s death. Once there, however, he discovers that maybe, just maybe, all the facts he thinks he has are wrong.

   The author was a long-time pulp writer, and he did a few mysteries too, but file this one under T for Tepid. It’s all been done before, and far better.

MARVIN H. ALBERT – Renegade Posse. Gold Medal 826, paperback original, November 1958. Film: Bullet for a Badman, 1963, with Audie Murphy, Darren McGavin & Ruta Lee.

   What would prevent a posse, hot on the trail of a bank robber, from killing the man, splitting the loot among themselves, and claiming the money was never found? Answer: Not much.

   Mix in a deadly personal rivalry between the bandit and the only decent man in the posse, a band of bloodthirsty Kiowas, and you have an action-packed thriller from start to finish. Not much depth in the characters or the story, but there is sure a lot of shooting going on.

NELSON NYE – The Kid from Lincoln County. Ace Double F-184, paperback original, 1963.

   Westerns told in first person are a rarity, I’ve discovered, and I’m not sure why it should be so. This one’s told by a 17-year-old boy living on his own who comes to the rip-roaring town of Post Oak no longer willing to be pushed around by anyone.

   The result is a confused mish-mash of Western cliches and B-movie characterization, surprisingly so, because Nye has won the Spur Award at least once, and is a co-founder of the Western Writers of America.

NELSON NYE – Death Valley Slim. Ace Double F-184, paperback original, 1963.

   The story of a prospector who (apparently) strikes it rich, then tries to figure out how to keep the crooks in town from getting their hands on it.

   I don’t know. Pieces of the plot line keep seeming to occur out of thin air. The story that Nye tells, the story that he thinks he is telling, and the story I think he’s telling are often three different things. He’s got the lingo, no question about that. Maybe it’s me that doesn’t have the savvy.

[UPDATE] 05-06-10. Of these five, I think it’s clear that I enjoyed Deadline at Durango the most. I’m puzzled by my comments on the Nelson Nye books. I wonder if some of the problems I noted may be due to the editing that was needed to cram the two books into one back-to-back Ace Double.

ALISTAIR REYNOLDS – Century Rain. Ace, hardcover, June 2005; reprint paperback, May 2006. First published in the UK: Victor Gollancz, hardcover/softcover, 2004.

   The world Floyd and Custine live in seems to be Paris in the mid-nineteen fifties, but something is wrong, though they — and no one in their world knows it. They don’t know either that all that is about to change and Floyd, an expatriate American private detective/jazz musician is about to become a key figure in what happens.

   So is Verity Auger, an archeologist who specializes in excavating the ruins of Earth in the wake of the apocalyptic Nanocaust. A wormhole has been discovered, and at the end of it like Alice’s wonderland a surviving Earth preserved as if in amber — Floyd’s world, and somewhere on that alternate Earth is a device capable of destroying both realities — and a madman who plans to do just that.

   Over the last twenty years there has been a revolution is the hoary old science fiction genre of space opera in both the United States and in England.

   While popular, the American version tends to be militaristic and modeled on C. S. Forester’s Hornblower saga or Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey and Maturin books, whereas the British revival is something else, with writers such as mainstream novelist Iain M. Banks, thriller writer Paul McAuley, and astrophysicist Alistair Reynolds taking the form places E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith and his Skylark and Lensman saga never imagined.

   Century Rain is a good example of the new space opera, a sweeping adventure novel dealing with vast ideas and concepts and at the same time a meditation in noir recreating a version of 20th Century Paris out of Simenon out of Raymond Chandler, with a human and moral private eye at the center of the action of both worlds and solving mysteries both personal and profound.

   Eventually Floyd and Auger will meet and team to save both their worlds, and part in a bittersweet moment.

   The ending as Floyd makes a painful decision about his own life and his own world is a Chandleresque moment of perfect pitch on Reynolds’ part.

   A world killer, some nasty monsters, galaxy spanning concepts of space and time, a heroine who is a cross between Indiana Jones and Flash Gordon, a noirish private eye with the soul of a jazz musician, a quest, an alternate Noirish Paris circa the 1950’s that would fit with one of Leo Malet’s Nestor Burma novels, hard science, alien artifacts, augmented humans, real humor, a touching love story, a sacrifice, an adventure, spy thriller, mystery … And yet the book is an homogeneous whole, as simple and perfect as any book you are likely to read, written with the casual elegance of a natural.

   And it all ends on a perfect note embracing both noirish despair and at the same time the hopeful optimism of the most boisterous space opera. This one is what they mean by a tour de force, a perfect blend of several genres that shouldn’t blend at all, but do here with real skill and to great effect.

NGAIO MARSH – Grave Mistake. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1978. Little Brown & Co., US, hc, 1978. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft.

   Published by Ngaio Marsh when she was 83, Grave Mistake certainly is a better effort than Agatha Christie’s Postern of Fate (1973), published when Christie was that same age. But it’s still a distinctly minor work by this talented author.

   Grave Mistake is one of those British village mysteries that cozy-loving Americans particularly seem to enjoy reading. Several other Marsh village mysteries, most notably Overture to Death (1938), Scales of Justice (1955) and Death of a Fool (Off with His Head in the UK, 1956), are among her most popular tales. Grave Mistake is a weaker tale than those, but should still offer some enjoyment to cozy fans.

   The village in Grave Mistake is Upper Quintern, one of those rural locales in classical English mystery that always seems about twenty years out of date (for example, Overture to Death feels like it should be taking place in 1918 at best and Scales of Justice and Death of a Fool in the 1930s).

   Though presumably Grave Mistake takes place around 1977, it seems that the village is composed solely of wealthy, mostly jobless, women and the people who serve them. Oh, and that Greek multi-millionaire who bought up one of the local mansions and about whom no one is quite sure whether he’s quite quite. The servants are more independent here than in many of the pre-WW2 tales and competition for their services is fierce. The gardener even expects to be called “Mister” — imagine!

   Marsh novels usually have a pair of winning young lovers, it seems, and we have such a pair here. Marsh provides one short scene of the couple in which she not too convincingly tries to convey the language of people born around 1960 (lamentably, the word “groovy” is uttered), but mostly her focal point is Verity Preston, a fifty-something, unmarried, intelligent, charming, sensitive playwright. If you think this might be Marsh herself, more or less, you may be on to something.

   Eventually one of the local society ladies is smothered to death in the fashionable sanitarium she has checked herself into for a “rest” (shades of P. D. James’ recent novel, The Private Patient, and the doctor who owns this clinic is straight out of Marsh’s own Death and the Dancing Footman, from nearly forty years earlier) and soon enough Superintendent Alleyn shows up with Inspector Fox to restore order in the village.

   Alleyn still calls his subordinate “Br’er Fox” and, even more egregious, “Foxkin”; but I suppose Fox had put up with this for 44 years and was surely nearing retirement, so he was able to restrain himself from finally snapping and throttling “Handsome Alleyn” on the spot. For their part, the posh members of the local gentry still comment on how Alleyn is so much more a gentleman than they would have expected, his being a policeman and all.

   As the above may suggest, there’s plenty in Grave Mistake that would have been guaranteed to have set Raymond Chandler’s remaining teeth on edge, had be survived until 1978 and sat down to read this tale. There’s an Aunty Boo. The lovely young well-born girl is named Prunella. She calls Verity, who is her Godmother, Godma V (as in, “Godma V, it’s a stinker”). The ladies love to use the word “lolly” (“Daddy was a wizard with the lolly” actually gets said here). But, then, Marsh wasn’t writing for Chandler, was she?

   My favorite character by far was the stepson of the murder victim. Nicknamed by all the gentry ladies “Charmless Claude,” he’s a feckless character, a sponging waster and loser in his late thirties (a slacker as we would say today) who is tremendous fun to read about as his ineffectual plotting comes to naught. The charming people, by contrast, I found a bit tiresome.

   The mystery itself is a disappointment. It’s extremely straightforward and lacking in complexity and ingenuity, though it is fairly presented.

   But I suspect many did not mind this when Grave Mistake appeared in 1978, two years after Agatha Christie had been been lost to the mystery-loving world. I imagine, rather, that most enjoyed simply immersing themselves in the cozy comforts of a classical form English mystery.

PETER O’DONNELL – Pieces of Modesty. Pan, UK, paperback, 1972. Mysterious Press, US, hc, 1987; Tor, US, pb, 1990.

   Modesty Blaise first appeared as a comic-strip character in 1962, and the first novelization of her exploits was published in 1965. She is often thought of as a female James Bond, but her wildly entertaining adventures certainly entitle her to stand alone as a fascinating fictional character.

    A good way to make Modesty’s acquaintance is to read the stories collected in Pieces of Modesty, each of which reveals something of her background and philosophy.

    At the age of eighteen, Modesty commanded the Network, the most successful crime organization outside the United States. After dismantling the Network, she occasionally found herself working for the intelligence section of the British Foreign Office, as she does in “The Gigglewrecker,” in which a very reluctant defector is transferred from East to West Berlin.

    A better story is “I Had a Date with Lady Janet,” narrated in the first person by Modesty’s formidable associate Willie Garvin, who comes to Modesty’s rescue when she is held captive by an old enemy ensconced in a Scottish castle.

    “A Better Day to Die” and “Salamander Four” might be read as companion pieces. In the former, Modesty finds herself captured by guerrillas, along with the other passengers on a bus. One of the passengers, a minister who believes strongly in nonviolence, sees the results of brutality and is changed by them.

    In “Salamander Four,” a sculptor given to non-involvement finds himself involved against his will when Modesty helps a wounded man, but the ending is is predictable. “The Soo Girl Charity” features Modesty and Willie in a robbery for charity and has an amusing twist at the end.

    For colorful writing and nonstop action, the books about Modesty Blaise are hard to beat, especially such titles as Modesty Blaise (1965), Sabre-Tooth (1966), I, Lucifer (1967), and two titles published for the first time in the United States in 1984: The Silver Mistress (1973) and The Xanadu Talisman (1981).

         ———
   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.

PETER O’DONNELL, R. I. P. (1920-2010). He was in ill health — he had had Parkinson’s disease for several years — so the reporting of Peter O’Donnell’s death on Monday, May 3rd, at the age of 90, was not surprising news, but it was still difficult to accept.

   It is remarkable (or perhaps not) that the opening paragraph of his obituary in The Times begins with a description of Modesty Blaise’s most famous tactic in distracting the enemy, the so-called “Nailer,” described here on one of the earliest posts on this blog, as well as much more (as they say) about both Modesty and her creator.

   And for even more on Peter O’Donnell and his career, including a complete bibliography, check out Steve Holland’s recent post on his Bear Alley blog.

M. R. HALL – The Coroner. Pan Macmillan, UK, hardcover/softcover, 2009.

Genre:   Licensed investigator. Series character:   Jenny Cooper, 1st in series. Setting:   England/Wales.

First Sentence:   The first dead body Jenny ever saw was her grandfather’s.

   Jenny Cooper spent 15 years practicing child-care law, but a serialized cheating, emotionally abusive husband and subsequent divorce, plus a missing year from her own childhood, has resulted in an emotional breakdown and severe panic attacks.

   She’s beginning to put her life back together and has been appointed local coroner in the Severn Vale District Corner, inheriting the office, and its rather resentful clerk, from recently deceased Harry Marshall.

   Two of the cases she also inherits are those of a young boy and a teen prostitute, both dead of apparent suicide, both of who spent time in a youth penal facility, and who knew each other when younger. Jenny begins to suspect Harry of negligence, at best, and possibly a cover-up for murder.

   I have often read about coroners, but never really understood their role, responsibilities and the extent of their authority. How nice to finally find an author who not only focuses on that role, as pertains to the UK, but makes it really interesting. I was particularly struck by the protagonist’s observation that “After just four days as coroner she was already the earthly representative of fifty traumatically departed souls.”

   The scenes at the inquest were as well done as any trial scene I’ve read. I am so impressed with Hall’s writing. There are three major threads to this story: Jenny’s emotional issues, her dealing with a possible new relationship, and the case on which she is working. Hall weaves these three threads evenly and perfectly, and in such a way that you see the character gain strength and develop as the story progresses.

   I like seeing a male author write realistic female characters, and Jenny is an interesting character. In spite of her issues, you know there is strength there and she will survive. It is also nice to see a male author write a male character who isn’t the knight on a white charger. Jenny’s neighbor, Steve, may be her new relationship, but he has growing of his own to do.

   All the characters were real, whether likable or not, and for some, you felt their angst. I was particularly struck by the father of a dead girl, “We blame the teachers, the police, the politicians, every last God-dammed one of those self-righteous bastards who spend their lives telling other people what’s best for them but can’t tell right from wrong.” How heart-felt and timely a statement is that?

   There were some minor weaknesses. As can happen, because Hall lives in the area in which the book is set, the sense of place was not as strong as I, a “foreign” reader, would have liked. It was necessary for me to resort to the internet in order to find out where the book is set and what the area looks like.

   There were also a couple of rather large coincidences and predictable threads, but it was still a very good, engrossing read that kept me up until 2 a.m. to finish the book. Hall’s next book, The Disappeared is already on my shelf, to be joined by his third book, The Rapture due out Fall 2010.

Rating: Very Good.

JACK WILLIAMSON – The Legion of Time. Pyramid X-1586, reprint paperback, March 1967. Hardcover edition: Fantasy Press, 1952 (limited to 4604 copies).

   Actually two short novels published together as one book: “The Legion of Time” and “After World’s End”, each originally appearing in the pulp magazines in 1938.

   Both are slam-bang space opera at its finest, with groups of gallant men banding together to fight for the survival of (1) a far-future civilization, and (2) the human race itself. Names like Rogo Nug, Kel Aran, Verel Erin and Zerek Oom prevail.

   The first is the better story, but I soon found myself caught up in the second one as well — obviously a distant forerunner of Star Wars.

COMMENT: Of the four names above, one is that of a starship’s captain, two are members of his crew, and the fourth is that of the girl he seeking, perhaps the last other survivor of the human race. Can you tell which is which?

JOHN BRUNNER – Into the Slave Nebula. Lancer 73-797, paperback; 1st printing, this edition, 1968. Revised from the novel Slavers of Space, Ace Double D-421, pb original, 1960 (bound with Dr. Futurity, by Philip K. Dick).

   The young scion of a wealthy family on Earth stumbles across the murder of a “Citizen of the Galaxy,” and faced with a boring future otherwise, decides to investigate, not realizing how deep into space the conspiracy lies.

   Unfortunately, anybody who reads the title before opening the book knows exactly what’s going on. And even so, it’s only an adventure novel, poorly told. I’d suggest another revision, if I thought it would do any good.

COMMENT: This is the first time I have ever used the word “scion” in a sentence. Do you know what? It feels just fine.

E. HOFFMAN PRICE – Operation Longlife. Ballantine/Del Rey, paperback original, January 1983.

   The story of an 186-year-old scientist named Avery Jarvis “Doc” Brandon. This was written by an 84-year-old pulp writer, and — with all due respect — it reads like it.

AVRAM DAVIDSON – Masters of the Maze. Pyramid R-1208, paperback original; July 1965.

   It sounds like space opera — the monstrous Chultex swarming across the galaxy to ravage Earth! — but as usual, Davidson’s flair for dense literary science fiction is beyond me. I’ve been able to read Davidson’s short stories, on occasion, but never one of his novels. In his case, and given his reputation, I’m perfectly willing to say it’s me.

[UPDATE] 05-04-10. Back in the late 1950s through the 1960s, I used to gobble up space opera SF novels as if they were snacks just out of the pack. By the early 90s, as you can see, it was getting more and more difficult for the same old fare to satisfy me. For the most part now, I don’t read much SF, although I try every once in a while, and when I do, guess what? It’s almost always space opera. No new tricks for me, or at least not very often.

FRANK TALLIS – Vienna Blood. Random House, US, trade paperback, January 2008. Originally published by Century Books, UK, hardcover, May 2006 (shown).

   Volume Two of the Liebermann Papers, a series that began with A Death in Vienna [reviewed here ], continues the saga of the ongoing collaboration between Freudian psychologist Dr. Max Liebermann and his friend, Detective Oskar Rheinhardt in investigations that can profit from the insights afforded by the new, and not generally accepted, theories of Sigmund Freud.

   In a chilly Vienna winter, a killer is apparently randomly selecting victims, with no discernable pattern, except that many of them are prostitutes, and the savagery of the murders, accompanied by brutal mutilations, appears to have some similarities with the crimes of the infamous Jack the Ripper.

   However, Liebermann begins to see patterns that link the murders with a notorious secret society, an apparent harbinger of the Nazi party, and take him and Rheinhardt in directions that could compromise the detective’s career.

   Vienna, at the turn of the century, was a major cultural center, rich in new directions in music, art, and literature, but also with a strongly conservative social and political milieu, a potentially explosive mix that Tallis negotiates with remarkable skill. An impressive series that’s close to the top of my list of current favorites.

Editorial Comment:   If you follow the link in the first paragraph above, you’ll also see a list of the first four books in the series, all that have been published in the US so far. A fifth has been published in the UK (or soon will be), and there’s a sixth on the schedule for 2011.

THE SHE-CREATURE. American International, 1956. Chester Morris, Marla English, Tom Conway, Cathy Downs, Lance Fuller, Frank Jenks, Kenneth MacDonald. Director: Edward L. Cahn.

   Speaking of Cheap Thrills, The She-Creature was on recently, a film I’ve been looking for over the last several years and one I found pleasantly not-disappointing.

   This was produced by Alex Gordon, a movie-maker and film buff who also turned out a few memorable B-Westerns in the 60s, films that utilized the talents of some stalwart old western stars without the tired fustiness of the A.C. Lyles efforts over at Paramount. Gordon’s Sci-Fi films are less memorable than his Westerns, but still worth a look.

   This was probably his best Horror Film, a fast-moving, unsubtle, mildly erotic tale of Mind Control and Reincarnation, with Marla English in the unwilling thrall of Chester Morris as a Carnival Hypnotist who can regress her back to some vaguely prehistoric sea-monster state, with scales, claws, stringy hair and massive headlights.

   In this condition, she walks out of the Sea and kills people, then vanishes into the mist while Morris thrills audiences in his tawdry show with predictions of more “Monster Murders.”

   Tom Conway comes on about then, as a wealthy publisher who gets wealthier by promoting Morris, and whose swelling ego heads all concerned to a predictable ending.

   Yeah, it’s not much, but what there is has some marginal virtues, including Paul Blaisdell’s impressive She-Creature makeup and a remarkably vigorous performance by Chester Morris, whose career by this time was at its obvious nadir.

   Somehow, he’s perfect for the part, with his sagging features and cheap hair dye, looking poignantly just like the sleazy showman he plays.

   And to his credit, he acts his heart out here, ignoring the cardboard sets (which also look poignantly like Carnival Cheapery) and giving his obsessive part a quiet intensity that never lets up but never goes over the top, either.

   Incidentally, Marla English, parts of the She-Creature outfit, and all of Tom Conway (playing a White Witch Doctor with what looks like a porcupine on his head) returned the very next year in Voodoo Woman, another Alex Gordon effort that makes She Creature look sumptuous by comparison.