LYLE BRANDT – Justice Gun. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, August 2003.

   Lyle Brandt is another in a long line of pseudonyms for Michael Newton, author of over 170 novels, including many of the men’s adventure “Executioner” series, as by Don Pendleton. This is a western, though, and once you start reading it, it’s one you won’t put down right away.

   The first 60 pages are intense. Gunman Matt Price is found by a migrating black family after being left for dead; is nursed back to a semblance of health; and then becomes the savior in turn when the small wagon is accosted by a gang of redneck outlaws taking exception to the color of the Carver family’s skin.

   Refuge is found in the town of New Harmony, founded on the principles of equality for all. The doctor, who has her work cut out for her in saving Price’s skin again, is indeed a woman, which makes for two largely unlikely happenings (historically speaking) in one short amount of time.

   New Harmony is, as it turns out, under attack, and Matt Price may or may not be their protector and their champion. Unevenly told — the middle section sags somewhat — and rather linear in terms of plot, but the story’s ending has all the gunsmoke and action you could ever hope for.

Bibliographic Data Justice Gun is the second in a series of western paperbacks labeled “The Gun Series.” Matt Price, I believe, is the leading character in all of them.

    The Gun (2002)

    Justice Gun (2003)
    Vengeance Gun (2004)

    Rebel Gun (2005)
    Bounty Gun (2006)

   Also by Newton as by Lyle Brandt are the books in his “Lawman” series, the lawman referred to being US Deputy Marshal Slade:

    The Lawman (2007)

    Slade’s Law (2008)
    Helltown (2008)

    Massacre Trail (2009)
    Hanging Judge (2009)
    Manhunt (2010)

“The Black Curtain.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 9). First air date: 15 November 1962. Richard Basehart, Lola Albright, Harold J. Stone, Gail Kobe, James Farentino, Lee Philips, Celia Lovsky. Teleplay: Joel Murcott. Based on the novel The Black Curtain (1941) by Cornell Woolrich. Director: Sydney Pollack.

   During the course of getting mugged by some street punks, Phillip Townsend (Richard Basehart) gets conked on the noggin; when he comes to, he has an entirely different identity. What he’s forgotten is his criminal past, which soon catches up with him when a man tries to kill him in the park ….

   You can hardly go wrong with a Cornell Woolrich story; just about everything he wrote had cinematic potential. This particular narrative had already been dramatized on radio and even filmed as Street of Chance (1942) with Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor, except a building had to fall on the protagonist to induce his personality change.

   Richard Basehart made quite a splash with his psycho cop killer in He Walked by Night (1948). He also appeared in Tension (1949), Fourteen Hours (1951), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), The Intimate Stranger (1956), Portrait in Black (1960), The Paradine Case (1962, live TV), The Satan Bug (1965), 110 episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68), and The Great Bank Hoax (1978).

   Lola Albright appeared in The Good Humor Man (1950), The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), five appearances on Burke’s Law, one episode each of McMillan & Wife and Columbo, and 81 episodes of Peter Gunn (1958-61) as Pete’s girlfriend Edie.

Hulu:   http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi836239385/

THE STRANGLER. Allied Artists, 1964. Victor Buono, David McLean, Diane Sayer, Davey Davison, Baynes Barron, Ellen Corby, Jeanne Bates. Screenplay: Bill S. Ballinger. Director: Burt Topper.

   Very much in the Zugsmith mold, but in fact directed by one Burt Topper, The Strangler is a wonderfully perverse and to-the-point bit of sickness put out when no one was looking.

   Victor Buono stars delightfully as an emotionally-constipated mama’s boy who gets off (and I mean that literally; the close-ups of his face leave no doubt about the sexual nature of his acts) strangling nurses and leaving broken dolls at the scene of his crimes.

   Nasty stuff, done with pleasing simplicity and not a bit of wasted time by a mostly-undistinguished director who seems here to have risen to the occasion. Credit must be shared with Bill S. Ballinger’s no-nonsense script, and art direction by Eugene Lourie, no less, but it’s primarily Victor Buono’s compelling performance that carries this thing off.

   Fauning over an arcade girl, fretting about his sick mama, or just flitting prissily amid the mid-60s decor of sterile hallways and plastic furniture, he commands our full attention, disgust and even a bit of sympathy, in a bit of great acting where no one looks to find it.

DOROTHY GILMAN – Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station. Doubleday, hardcover, 1983. Paperback reprint: Fawcett Crest, 1984.

   CIA operative Mrs. Pollifax is off to China to rescue an incarcerated Chinese who knows all the whereabouts of the Chinese defenses on its Russian border. She is with a small group of tourists, one of whom she knows to be a fellow operative.

   When the op is revealed, she’s amazed, but they work well together. There is danger and suspense; there is also a lot of China sightseeing, and there are encounters with individual Chinese people.

   Being Mrs. P., things happen that no other tourist in China should expect. We all know that Mrs. P. and friends will get home safely, but it’s exciting reading all the same.

   Gilman just about always gives us a good read, and this one definitely is.

Editorial Comments:   A bit of good news is that Dorothy Gilman has been announced as the recipient of this year’s Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

   With a career as long as hers, and with her long list of fine crime and mystery fiction to serve as credentials, the honor and the congratulations that go with it are certainly more than due!

   Dorothy Gilman’s first book, Enchanted Caravan (not a mystery), was published in 1949. Since then she’s written three dozen or so other novels, including 14 in the Mrs. Pollifax series, the most recent being Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (2000).

   The first book in the series, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, was filmed (United Artists, 1970) as Mrs. Pollifax — Spy, starring the perfectly cast Rosalind Russell. It was filmed a second time as a made-for-TV movie in 1999, this time having the same title as the book. This second outing starred Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Pollifax, perhaps an obvious choice as one of the “coziest” spies in the business.

   Dorothy Gilman’s other series character, Madame Karitska, has appeared in two novels, separated by what may be a record number of years: The Clairvoyant Countess (1975) and Kaleidoscope (2002).

L. M. JACKSON – The Mesmerist’s Apprentice. Arrow Books, UK, paperback reprint, May 2009. Hardcover edition: William Heinemann, UK, May, 2008. No US edition.

   This is the second in a series featuring Sarah Tanner, an enterprising Victorian businesswoman and amateur sleuth, first introduced in A Most Dangerous Woman (2007).

   Mrs. Tanner (as she is known in the London neighborhood where she runs Sarah Tanner’s New Dining and Coffee House) has reopened her establishment after a disastrous fire the preceding year.

   She’s attractive, soft-spoken, and not well known in Saffron Hill, where her aloofness (which is taken for an air of mystery by the gossips) makes her the object of some suspicion.

   When a gang of thieving boys begins to target Sarah’s shop and the near-by butcher’s, she begins a discreet inquiry that convinces her that something more significant than random thieving is involved.

   In the midst of this trouble, a letter arrives from her former lover, now married, asking for her help. She hesitates but eventually meets with him and learns that he is concerned that his mother is being victimized by a nurse who is taking care of her husband in the wake of a disabling stroke that has left him unresponsive.

   When Sarah reluctantly agrees to look into the matter and determine what the nurse’s motives may be, she soon discovers a network of crimes that involves the thieving band whose forays have turned more violent and a mesmerist under whose influence the nurse appears to be working.

   Sarah Tanner is a resourceful investigator who moves easily among the various strata of London society, from the most humble to the aristocratic circle to which her former lover belongs. Her affair with her former lover Arthur DeSalie is revived, but if the investigation may resolve some difficulties, Sarah’s estrangement from her past, momentarily resolved, may not be so easily settled.

   Jackson (who also writes under the name Lee Jackson) has written other books set in Victorian London, a setting in which he and his characters seem perfectly at home. Sarah Tanner is a worthy addition to the roster of female sleuths and the novel’s conclusion suggests that she will return to deal with both old and new concerns.

Bibliographic Data:   In spite of Walter’s closing comment, there appears so far to have been only the two books in the Sarah Tanner series. As by Lee Jackson, the author has written four earlier historical mysteries:

    • London Dust (2003)

The Inspector Decimus Webb, 1870s London series —

    • A Metropolitan Murder (2004)
    • The Welfare of the Dead (2005)

    • The Last Pleasure Garden (2006)

   None of the above has had a US edition, and it is a mystery as to why that should be. Books of similar themes and settings have been gobbled up eagerly on this side of the Atlantic.

   Also by Lee Jackson is The Diary of a Murderer, another Victorian murder mystery novel, but it’s available only online and on Kindle.

J. P. HAILEY – The Anonymous Client. Tor, paperback reprint; 1st printing, August 1993. Hardcover edition: Donald I. Fine, 1989.

   In the real world, the pseudonymous J. P. Hailey is known as Parnell Hall, as you may have already known on your own. Over the course of his writing career Hall has come up with three rather distinct series characters, two under his own name and one as by Hailey.

   First by a year was Stanley Hastings, who first appeared in Detective (Donald I. Fine, 1987) as by Hall. Hastings is an outwardly inept and reluctant private eye who does small-time jobs for ambulance-chasing attorneys. He is also still around, or so it seems, last appearing not so very long ago in Manslaughter (Carroll & Graf, 2003).

   Attorney Steve Winslow, to whom I’ll return in a moment, is the detective of record in the Hailey books, beginning the year after Hastings’ debut with The Baxter Trust (Donald I. Fine, 1988). He seems to have run out of cases to solve, though, since he hasn’t made an appearance in over 13 years now.

   Picking up the slack has been crossword puzzle constructor Cora Felton, who beginning with A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (Bantam, hc, 1999), again as by Hall, has proven to be very popular, solving a long line of detective novels that come out on a regular basis ever since.

   I’ve not read any of them, yet, but the way the elderly Cora Felton has been described, she seems to be a deliberate reverse take-off of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: crusty, promiscuous, and a lush. (If I have that wrong, please let me know. I’d hate to be sued for defamation of character.)

   Let’s get back to J. P. Hailey, though. Here’s the list of the books in which Steve Winslow is the sleuth of distinction:

The Baxter Trust. Fine, 1988. Lynx, pb, 1989.

The Anonymous Client. Fine, 1989. Tor, pb, 1993.
The Underground Man. Fine, 1990. Forge, pb, 1994.

The Naked Typist. Fine, 1990. No paperback edition.

The Wrong Gun. Fine, 1992. No paperback edition.

   Something is wrong here, very wrong. If a book with a title like The Naked Typist can’t get reprinted in a paperback edition, something is wrong with the world of publishing, totally. In any case, after two hardcovers for which the softcover rights were not sold, that was it, no more, end of series, nor do I know why.

   Sometimes I doesn’t pay to wonder about matters not under your control, only to enjoy what you already have, and enjoyable this book is. To wit:

   Steve Winslow is a lawyer with only one client, a wealthy woman (heiress?) a carry-over from the previous book. I’m not sure how correct I’d be if you were to try to pin me down about the details, but I think I have the wealthy part right.

   In any case, as a result of whatever it was that happened in the previous book, Winslow is now Sheila Benton’s personal attorney. As a result he has a steady income, which is of course a good thing, and he’s also essentially only on call when needed. His secretary Tracy Garvin is so bored with nothing to do that at the beginning of this, the second book, she has just given him two weeks notice.

   She reads mysteries, you see, and working for Steve Winslow is nothing like what happens to Della Street in the Perry Mason books. Not until, that is, the morning mail brings an envelope containing ten thousand-dollar bills as a retainer from a client who deliberately has not signed the note that comes with it.

   It may be difficult to believe, but this creates a big problem. Winslow already has a client, and he cannot act on behalf of this new one in case there is a conflict of interest with the old one.

   He also cannot return the money, because he does not know to whom to give it back. Luckily Winslow knows a private detective whose offices are in the same building, an old buddy named Mark Taylor, and if he doesn’t remind you of Paul Drake, you certainly don’t get out and read those old Erle Stanley Gardner books very often, do you?

   Many complications ensue, and I won’t go into all of them – or any of them, for that matter – but if you were thinking that there’s got to be some really unusual courtroom shenanigans that occur, then you are thinking along exactly the same line that you should be.

   Here is a lengthy quote that I liked, lifted from page 129. It is in one of the aforementioned courtroom scenes, and Winslow is on the stand. (I wonder if Perry ever was, in one of his books – on the stand, I mean.)

   And later on, from page 228:

   So there you have it. I enjoyed the jokes, and I enjoyed the complicated plot. Make that “really enjoyed” and “really complicated.” But I have a couple of comments to make – not guesses, you understand – but just an observation or two:

   Parodies are fine – can this be anything else? – but some people may not like the razzing of their heroes. The F-word was never heard in any of Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels, but it is in this one, and several times over.

   On the other hand, parodies can also fizzle, and badly, when the subject of the parody is no longer very popular or perhaps not even remembered. By the time Steve Winslow’s run of adventures was over, Perry Mason had long since vanished from the bookstore shelves and the TV screen, or very nearly so.

   So maybe this was the reason someone’s interest in the series fell off, whether the publisher’s, the author’s, or the general public’s — or a combination thereof. I enjoyed this one, though, and if your sense of humor is anything like mine, you will too.

[UPDATE] 03-06-10. After a gap of four years, there have been (will be) two more books in the Stanley Hastings series: Hitman (2007) and Caper (2010). There are now 11 books in the “Puzzle Lady” series, with a new one appearing at a rate of about one a year.

   But there have been no more Steve Winslow books, alas.

CRACK IN THE WORLD. Paramount Pictures, 1965. Dana Andrews, Kieron Moore, Janette Scott, Alexander Knox. Screenplay Jon Manchip White & Julian Halevy, based on a story by Jon Manchip White. Director: Andrew Marton.

   That pretty well sums up this fast paced British science fiction thriller from writer/producer Philip Yordan, director Andrew Marton (King Solomon’s Mines), and Welsh novelist, scholar, folklorist, and screenwriter Jon Manchip White (Nightclimber, The Game of Troy, etc.).

   Nobel Prize winner Dr. Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews) is dying of cancer and wants one last triumph to benefit mankind in his name, a project to tap into the Earth’s magma core and provide and endless supply of energy and rare metals. His method: deep core drilling, and the use of a thermonuclear warhead to break through the last thin crust before reaching the magma.

   Team geologist Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore) fears the use of the nuclear device will only aggravate cracks in the planets crust caused by nuclear testing. The Macedo Trench, deep beneath the ocean, could break open, a thousand mile wide crack in the world pouring molten lava and magma into the ocean and causing apocalypse.

   Complicating things are two factors: Sorenson is married to the much younger Maggie (Janette Scott), also a scientist, who was once in love with Rampion, and he is keeping hidden from her — and everyone — that he is dying of cancer.

   As Rampion races to London to convince Sir Charles (Alexander Knox) of the UN commission to stop Sorenson’s project, Sorenson pushes through. The missile is fired and all seems well. Rampion is forgiven and returns to the project.

   Then his worst nightmares start to come true. The Earth’s crust is beginning to shatter like a windshield hit by a bullet. But if they can set off a second thermonuclear explosion at the right point — a volcanic island on the Macedo Trench — they can use the hydrogen trapped in the magma core to create a backfire and stop the spreading crack in the world.

   A capable cast, fine production values and color photography, a literate script, and good direction, plus a melodramatic but appropriate score by John Douglas, contribute to a fast-moving science fiction thriller along the lines of other literate British science fiction films of the period as Five Million Years to Earth, First Men in The Moon, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, and Day of the Triffids (also produced by Yordan with Kieron Moore in the cast). Unlike some other sf offerings of the same general era there is no cheesy acting, zaftig leading ladies, or unfunny comic relief to get in the way.

   The touch of soap opera is just enough to make this one a bit more adult than the usual sf fare from the period without getting too much in the way of the suspense and excitement. The realistic special effects don’t hurt either. Excellent use of model work, location shooting, and imaginative cinematography all combine to keep the viewer from asking too many questions — which is their role in this kind of film

   After the bomb in the Macedo Trench fails, the planet seems certain to be torn apart and sent hurtling in pieces throughout the solar system as twenty thousand square miles of Earth’s surface are torn away — in effect the birth of a new moon, either destroying the planet or saving it by acting as a safety valve.

   Andrews is particularly good in this one as a proud man who fears failure more than death and pity more than abandonment. I’m not suggesting it’s an award-winning performance or anything, but it is a deeper and more nuanced than what we usually expect in this kind of film from this period. By this point his career was on the skids, thanks to both drinking and age, but he could still provide a good performance as he does here or in John Sturges’s much underrated The Satan Bug.

   Moore makes for a stalwart leading man, his penchant for playing villains and more complex characters (Mine Own Executioner as the disturbed veteran, the bully in Darby O’Gill and the Little People) adding a little depth to what would other wise be the usual colorless leading man stereotype of these.

   Janette Scott is mostly there for eye candy and plot points, but she manages to suggest there might be an actual character there torn between her heart, her mind, her passions, and her needs.

   Add some well-done set pieces inside a volcano and a harrowing escape up an elevator shaft into something out of Dante’s inferno, and this one has the factors it needs to hold the attention and provide that sense of wonder that marks the best science fiction on film and in print, and the birth of the new moon is exciting enough for anyone (not that they deal with the problems that would actually cause or the devastating after effects — this was well before anyone suggested the idea of nuclear winter).

   Still, this is an attractive little sf film you can enjoy without parking your critical faculties and one that may linger in your imagination longer than you expect.

Note:   Of the films mentioned here, The Day The Earth Caught Fire is outstanding, an intelligent sf disaster film told from the point of view of the city desk of a major London newspaper with an outstanding performance by Leo McKern, of Rumpole of the Bailey fame, as a Fleet Street city desk manager worthy of Gerald Kersh’s Bo Raymond stories.

   It’s something different than the usual cliches and thrills, with one of the most memorable endings of any sf film of its time.

TRAILL STEVENSON – The Silver Arrow Murder. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1939. No US edition.

   As a way of dying, it was a bit unusual. But there was Philip Delavalle transfixed with nine arrows — one silver, and eight belonging to various members of the local archery club, which had recently expelled Delavalle.

   Was this done by one demented archer, or was the victim the target of lots of his former fellow archers, almost all of whom had reason to despise him and possibly want him dead? And what, if anything, do the missing cocker spaniels have to do with the case?

   Detective Inspector Peter Flemont of New Scotland Yard has to get it all straightened out and isn’t quite up to the challenge. Luckily he discusses his cases with his grandmother, who is a fine little-old-lady armchair detective and who solves the case, though she had rather not.

   I knew who the murderer was, of course. If there isn’t a homicidal tramp to suspect, I always fix my view on the… But you don’t want to know that, do you?

   Despite the presence of Flemont’s grandmother, moderately dull has to be the judgment on this novel.

Editorial Comment: Traill is an unusual first name, and in retrospect I wonder why Bill didn’t comment on it. It turns out that it isn’t the author’s first name at all, and using Hubin as the first resource at hand, an even greater surprise lies in store:

— Bibliographic information:     [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

      The Whispering Bird (n.) Nash 1923
      The Diamond in the Hoof (n.) Cassell 1926
      The Island Murder (n.) Jenkins 1936
      Murder at the Bar (n.) Jenkins 1936

      The Nudist Murder (n.) Jenkins 1937

      The Silver Arrow Murder (n.) Jenkins 1939

   There is no indication of a continuing character in any of these books, the title of one of which sounds measurably of more interest than the others. Silver Arrow may have been Inspector Flemont’s solo outing.

   Also of note is that the author wrote at least two western novels in the mid-1950s. I know nothing else about her, nor have I come across cover images for any of the books above.

[UPDATE] Later the same day.   The three cover photos were sent me by Bill Pronzini, who also provided story lines for both Nudist and Bar. You’ll find these in Comment #3. Thanks again, Bill!

   In terms of Breaking News, it appears that much of what was assumed to be true about the author, Traill Stevenson, may not be so true after all, including whether he/she was male or female. Research is being done, even I speak. Stay tuned. You’ll know more as soon as I do.

[UPDATE #2] 03-11-10.   Excerpted from an email from Steve Holland, proprietor of the Bear Alley blog, just about an hour ago:

    “We established that Traill Stevenson was the father, not the daughter: Captain John Traill Stevenson (1889-1968). He was a businessman, living at various times in Glasgow, Birkenhead and Harrow, and stood for as a Liberal candidate for Parliament in the 1920s and for some time was the editor of the Lloyd George Liberal Magazine where it was noted that he had sold his first novel, The Whispering Bird.

    “There’s no indication that his daughter wrote the later novels… It was a simple error based on the initial (J, in her case for Janet). All the evidence points to her father being the author.”

TREAD SOFTLY STRANGER. Renown Pictures, UK, 1958. Diana Dors, George Baker, Terence Morgan, Patrick Allen, Jane Griffiths, Joseph Tomelty. Based on the play “Blind Alley” by Jack Popplewell. Director: Gordon Parry.

   Although not a perfect film noir, this one, made in England toward the end of the original noir era, comes very very close. In terms of images, including that of Diana Dors’ character who acts as the catalyst in sending the lives of two brothers headlong into disaster; a soundtrack that includes the constant throbbing of the industrial town where all three live, day and night; and a story with more than enough twists and turns to show that fate has more control over our lives than we’d like to believe – they’re all here.

   Johnny Mansell (George Baker) is living the life of his dreams in London, but when he dreams too high, he has to leave in a hurry, with gamblers and a small fortune in debts close at his heels. Forced to move in with his brother Dave (Terence Morgan) in a small strictly utilitarian apartment, he discovers that the platinum blonde nightclub singer Calico is the lady whom Dave has been spending all his money on.

   Calico, of course, is played to perfection by Diana Dors, she of the fabulous hourglass figure that overflows so abundantly on top, and more of a fatale femme you cannot imagine. Dave has been so smitten by her that he has been stealing from the mill where he works as an accountant, and the auditors are coming.

   Having no other alternatives, robbery is his only way out, he decides, and Johnny returns from a surreptitious but successful jaunt back to London too late to stop him. Even worse too late to keep from being involved himself when Dave’s plans go terribly wrong.

   As for Calico, as I said earlier, she is but the initiating factor. She didn’t ask Dave to give her things, but he is determined to give them to her.

   She in turn is in love with Johnny, or so she says, but he is determined not to believe her. Diana Dors, besides being a beauty, a stunning one even in black and white, is also good enough as an actress that we (the viewer) do not know whether to believe her either.

   Not that it matters greatly, as events are not under her control either. These three unfortunates both do and do not deserve their fates, and it’s with a certain amount of inevitability that their destinies turn out so badly.

   So – all of the right ingredients, but something’s missing, and it’s been difficult to say what it is. I think it may be, however, that the story releases its edge and its tension a little too soon.

   Once the two brothers are forced to start answering questions, you know that the movie’s over. The timid bookkeeper Dave is simply not going to hold up. He’s weak, both he and Johnny know it, and so do we the viewer, a few scenes too soon and well before the curtain falls.

   But if the ending is only ordinary, what precedes is not bad at all, and in my book, seeing Diana Dors at the peak of her beauty is worth more than the price of admission, several times over.

WALTER C. MASTERMAN – The Yellow Mistletoe. Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1930. E. P. Dutton, US, 1930. Reprint edition: Ramble House, 2009.

   I think KEW enjoyed this one for its sense of adventure.

   It begins with a murder in the London subway in 1930. The Rev. George Shepherd was on his way to deliver important documents to Scotland Yard when he’s found dead at the foot of a stairway. The official cause is an accidental fall.

   Sir Arthur Sinclair, a retired police investigator soon takes an interest in the case. He discovers the Rev. Shepherd was serving in a small town in Derbyshire, where he’d relocated to after his second marriage. The Reverend was survived by a son (Ronald) from the first marriage and daughter (Diana) from the second. Both of his wives had died, the second was found frightened to death in a wooded area near his church.

   Rev. Shepherd’s son and daughter soon make an appearance. We don’t get much of a description of either of them (descriptions of the characters is one of the few weak points of the novel), but we are told his daughter possesses golden hair and is the very image of her late mother (also named Diana).

   At this point the novel bogs down a bit as the step-siblings busy themselves dealing with the death of their father. Sir Arthur pops in and out and more characters are introduced. There’s an Italian restaurateur named Ganzani who tries to “buy” Diana for parties unknown. Carstairs, a chum of Ronald from his college days, makes an appearance. He has interests of his own in Diana.

   There’s a rich uncle R. Reginald Shepherd, who seems to know more about the reverend’s dead wife than he will admit, but he soon dies also. And we are introduced to Dr. Smart, a research physician. Lastly, there’s a smart set, Ralph and Doris Gorringe, ready to play tennis at the drop of a straw hat. Masterman has an irritating tendency to introduce a lot of characters quickly with similar names.

   It’s the half-point where the book turns from a conventional 1930’s mystery novel to a tale of high adventure. Diana suddenly disappears with Carstairs. It’s not clear if she was kidnapped or went willingly.

   Her step-brother Ronald decides to pursue her across Europe with the Gorringe kids in tow. The trail first leads to an ancient Italian town near Lake Nemi, then across the mountains of Bulgaria. Along the way they discover Carstairs is the leader of a lost tribe of a Greek fertility cultists, which survive in a hidden valley near the Black Sea. They practice unspeakable rites at spring. And the cult has designs on Diana, whose mother fled from the valley.

   It’s up to the mysterious Sir Arthur to save the day.

   Obviously Masterman studied George Frazer’s The Golden Bough for the ancient Greek survivalists in the lost valley. There’s plenty of references to the “priest-king” and Diana of the Woods. It wasn’t George Lucas alone who found Frazer useful for a work of fiction.

   I give credit to Masterman for a brief but well thought out depiction of an isolated lost race. Instead of portraying them as pure representatives of the noble past, he points out all the problems caused by in-breeding. Even the crops are having trouble .

   As for the title, it refers to a particular plant the initiates of the Greek cult use to identify each other. Sprigs of yellow mistletoe pop-up all over the place in the first 100 pages.

   Ramble House has done of a fine job of getting this book and other novels by Walter Masterman back into print.

Editorial Comments: This review first appeared on Tim’s Z7HQ blog. He’s graciously allowed me to reprint it here as a way for me to introduce him to you, if you haven’t stopped by there already.

   Besides reviewing books from Karl Edward Wagner’s three lists of Best Horror Novels (13 each in the three following categories: Supernatural Horror, Science-Fictional Horror, Non-Supernatural Horror), Tim covers pulp fiction (Operator 5, Doc Savage, etc.), mystery fiction (Fredric Brown, John Dickson Carr and so on), and numerous titles of a similar nature. Drop by and say hello.

   And, if you think you’ll find a copy of this book in either of its original UK or US editions, you’ll have another think coming. There’s not one offered for sale on the Internet. It’s the Ramble House edition or nothing.