CRAIG RICE – Trial by Fury. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprints include: Pocket 237, 1st printing, October 1943. Dell D187, Great Mystery Library #2, 1957. International Polygonics, 1991.

   Now married (drunkenly ever after?), Jake and Helen Justus are off on a trip to Wisconsin lake country. Stopping in a rural county courthouse to get a fishing license, they soon encounter murder, naturally enough.

   Jake, hailing as he does from the land of Chicago (gangsters!) is immediately suspected of the crime by the local hick sheriff. Soon he is in jail and the family friend, John J. Malone, that brilliant, sodden defense attorney, is called to the rescue by Helene.

   Malone eventually explains all, after several more killings, an explosion and the formation of a lynch mob, but only with the help of Hercules, a Bloodhound-Great Dane mix and one of the author’s most inspired creations.

   Praised by Anthony Boucher as possibly Rice’s best book, Trial by Fury is quite good. It features some of the standard (and for me shopworn) Rice devices — the idea that drunkenness is inherently hilarious, and that it’s fascinating to read about Helene’s many wardrobe changes — but the portrayal of small-town, pre-WW2 America is original and really enjoyable. (No doubt much of this is drawn from Rice’s own youth?)

   The interaction of her urbanite series characters with the locals is tremendously amusing as well. Perhaps the solution of the mystery doesn’t quite live up to all the involution that preceded it, but all in all, I would say this is one of the finest American detective novels of the Golden Age period (roughly) that I have read.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      8 Faces at 3 (by Curt Evans)
      Trial By Fury (by David Vineyard)
      People vs. Withers & Malone by Craig Rice & Stuart Palmer (by Bill Pronzini and George Kelley)

“The Jack is High.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 2, Episode 6). First air date: 19 November 1964. Edd Byrnes, Pat O’Brien, Henry Jones, Larry Storch, Harry Bellaver, William Bramley, Michael Macready, William Boyett. Writer: William Wood. Director: Ralph Senensky.

    “What we have here,” says Inspector Dan Zarilla (Pat O’Brien), “is an alliance of losers wanting to get into the Win column.” He’s referring to a band of misfits who have successfully pulled off an armored car robbery in Nevada, netting $3 million.

    The heist was masterminded by a man who prefers to be called The Professor (Henry Jones), with the help of a dishonorably-discharged ex-Marine (Edd Byrnes), a not-so-funny standup comic (Larry Storch), a technician (Harry Bellaver), and the only professional criminal in the bunch (William Bramley).

    The Professor has purchased a gasoline tanker truck to use in the getaway; it will act as something of a Trojan Horse as they make their way west towards Los Angeles. To complete the illusion, The Professor has had the technician weld a false bottom in the tank, leaving enough space for 2,000 gallons up top to act as ballast and to fool the cops in case they’re stopped.

    But this “alliance of losers” simply can’t get along, especially the ex-Marine and the professional criminal; plus, the technician has a heart problem he’s told no one else about; some of the welds inside the tank are not exactly tight; not to mention the dogged pursuit by Inspector Zarilla; so that ultimately The Professor’s beautifully-planned caper begins to unravel ….

    I saw this one just the other evening for the first time in nearly half a century — and in color. I didn’t remember all the story developments, but I had never forgotten the final scene after all this time, a finale that’s even more effective here than it was in black and white.

    The hollowed-out tanker truck is a direct lift from James Cagney’s White Heat (1949). At one point, during a roadblock stop, Storch, in order to divert a highway patrolman’s attention, launches into several fairly bad imitations of Hollywood stars, including Cagney — which may have beeen intended as a double inside joke because of White Heat and the fact that Pat O’Brien was often teamed with Cagney in Warner Brothers ’30s gangster films.

    In this one, however, O’Brien comes across less as a high-octane minion of the law and more like Inspector Maigret, laid-back but persistent.

    Edd Burns will always be remembered as Kookie in the 77 Sunset Strip TV series (1958-63). Pat O’Brien had a huge career, including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Having Wonderful Crime (1945, as Michael J. Malone), Crack-Up (1946), Riffraff (1947), the failed pilot for The Adventures of Nick Carter (1972), and many others, including Ragtime (1981, with Cagney).

    Henry Jones was all over films and TV: 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Vertigo (1958, as the coroner), five appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and a continuing role on Mrs. Columbo (1979-80). You might remember Larry Storch as Corporal Agarn in F Troop (1965-67).

HATTER’S CASTLE. Paramount 1942/1948; Robert Newton, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Emlyn Williams, Henry Oscar, Enid Stamp-Taylor, Beatrice Varley, Anthony Bateman, June Holden, George Merritt, Laurence Hanray. Screenplay by Paul Merzbach, Rudolph Bernaur and Rodney Ackland, based on the novel by A. J. Cronin. Director: Lance Comfort. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   This Paramount production was made with frozen funds in England in 1941 but was only released in this country in 1948, when both Mason and Kerr had become box-office names.

   They’re fine in supporting roles, but the real star is Robert Newton, probably best known to American audiences for his role as Long John Silver in Disney’s Treasure Island. He plays a successful haberdasher, whose claim to royal lineage has made him a civic force to be reckoned with in the small Scottish where the drama plays out.

   Newton is a brooding tyrant, running his household with an iron fist and terrorizing his wife and son, with only his daughter (Kerr) showing some signs of independence. The hiring of an assistant (the lover, unknown to him, of his mistress, and superbly played by Emlyn Williams) will prove to be the fault in his carefully constructed world that will be his undoing.

   The arc of the movie is a long downward spiral in an unrelentingly grim drama that’s dominated by Newton’s powerful performance.

SHE. Hammer Films, UK, 1965. MGM, US, 1965. Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, John Richardson, Rosenda Monteros. Screenplay: David T. Chantler, based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Director: Robert Day.

   I missed seeing this movie when it first came out — I don’t remember why, or what I was doing at the time that was more important. I had seen Dr. No, and, well, I imagine that if I said that I’d have liked to have seen more, I think you’d know what I mean.

   One of my more immediate acquisitions from Amazon-UK arrived last week, a huge box set of Hammer Films, and She was among them. It ws, in fact, the one at the top of a stack of some 20 odd DVDs, and it was the first to be plunked into my new multi-region player.

   I probably should have seen the movie in 1965, or whenever it played in the US. I might have enjoyed it more back then, in the heyday of my youth.

   My opinion now? Disappointing, in a word. I found it to be not Very Good, alas, and while definitely not Bad, far from what I had for so long anticipated.

   I have been told that Hammer spent more on the budget for this film than any other at that point in time. That may be, but the story is dismal and the spectacle is, for the most part, hardly any better, and in only a couple of instances (one being the grand entrance into the Lost City) does it come even close to overwhelming.

   I’ve never read Haggard’s novel (and I don’t want to embarrass myself by saying that I’ve never read anything by Haggard, so I won’t), so I can’t compare book with film, but for me, if you were to tell me that they made up the script as they went along, I’d believe you.

   John Richardson, the handsome and rather hunky primary star (but among the least well-known of the ones I listed above, I’m sure, and the chap on the right, below) plays Leo Vincey, recently demobbed in the Middle East after the Great War (WWI), who in appearance is the re-incarnation of the man She (who must be obeyed) Kallikrates, whom she killed ages before in a fit of jealous rage.

   Now that’s she’s immortal (and by the way, you’re right, Ursula Andress does indeed play She, a role she was born to play), she wants him back, and after several trials and tests that he passes, will not accept No as an answer. Things turn out badly from here.

   Ursula Andress (whose dialogue was dubbed for her) is beautiful, majestic, and exotic, but now as I’ve grown older, I realize that she was never meant for anyone as plebeian as I. Truth be told, I have much more in common with the slave girl Ustane (Rosenda Monteros) who in turn is completely smitten by Leo. Ninety percent of her dialogue consists of her fervently saying, “My Leo.” If only she knew me back then. Leo would have been long forgotten.

   Ah, the stuff dreams are made of!

ROBERT KAPLOW – Me and Orson Welles.

MacAdam-Cage; hardcover; First edition, 2003. Trade paperback: Penguin, June 2005.

   Only 35 pages into this lyrical and magical one-week interlude in 17-year-old Richard Samuel’s life, even he recognizes the fact that he’s “the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth.”

   Recruited by chance to be an actor in Orson Welles’ stage production of Julius Caesar, Richard, still a high school student in suburban New Jersey, must sneak out of classes and lie to his mother to become a part of history: opening night for The Mercury Theatre: New York City, November 11, 1937.

   On the stage with Orson Welles, John Houseman, Joseph Cotten, and George Coulouris, and madly in love with Sonja Jones, Orson Welles’ personal assistant, what flame could burn brighter than young Richard’s, if only for a week?

   The show itself is Orson Welles’ pet project. Whenever there’s a need for it, he’s creative on the spot. As we watch him slide the pieces of the play into position, this convincing portrayal of actor-producer-director Orson Welles, towering over everyone in a three-mile radius, is a gem to behold. The man, then only 22 years old himself, was a genius, and Robert Kaplow does the near impossible: he brings him back to life.

   His was a flawed genius, we know that now. It was a conclusion that became more and more obvious as his career went on. Kaplow suggests that it was clear from the beginning. Orson Welles was a gigantic talent, but only that. From page 181: Human virtues, virtually none: “generosity, decency, loyalty — whatever — all missing.”

   Richard’s life intersects that of Mr. Welles only briefly, and perhaps luckily so. This beguiling coming-of-age tale is also one of the funniest and most warm-hearted stories I’ve read in a long while. This one’s a keeper. Don’t miss it.

[UPDATE] 02-09-10.   I missed the movie that was made of this book. We just couldn’t get there. Inertia, in all honesty, and cold weather. It played here in the Hartford area for about ten days, which is about eight days longer than I expected it to. It hardly seems like the kind of picture people will flock to, no matter how well made it is. (It’s gotten 7.4 stars out of ten on IMDB.)

    It stars Zac Efron as Richard, Claire Danes as Sonja, and Christian McKay as Orson Welles. I’ve signed up to be notified by Amazon when the DVD is released. No doubt I’ll be the first on my block to have it, but I’m certainly looking forward to it.

CARA BLACK – Murder in the Marais. Soho Crime; trade paperback, October 2000. Hardcover edition: Soho Press, 1998.

   The publication date for the hardcover edition of this book is generally accepted to be 1998, but I’m a little puzzled about it. In the paperback edition I have, the copyright date is given as 1999. And the book was an Anthony (and Macavity) nominee for Best First Mystery in 2000, so … I’m confused.

   A small question of little importance, perhaps. What does matter is that since the success of this, her first book, Cara Black (who is not the young tennis player from Zimbabwe, whose name also comes up if you try Googling her) has written several more in the series, to whit:

       2. Murder in Belleville. Soho Press, 2000; trade paperback: April 2002.
       3. Murder in the Sentier. Soho Press, 2002; trade paperback: April 2003.
       4. Murder in the Bastille. Soho Press, 2003; trade paperback: April 2004.
       5. Murder in Clichy. Soho Press, 2005; trade paperback: March 2006.
       6. Murder in Montmartre. Soho Press, March 2006.

   These are all cases of murder and intrigue in one form or another for Parisian private eye Aimée Leduc, a specialist in computer penetration, and her partner, René Friant, a “handsome dwarf with green eyes and a goatee.” Either the author or her character has struck quite a chord with her readers, as witness the almost yearly addition to the saga, and all in multiple printings. The books themselves are handsomely made as well, solid and somehow daring you not to pick them up.

   In Marais, the first of the six above, Aimée is hired by an aged French Nazi-hunter to take a digitalized photo (converted from computer code) to an elderly woman still living in the Jewish section of Paris. Aimée arrives too late, finding Lili Stein murdered soon before her arrival; and her employer, Soli Hecht, is hospitalized soon thereafter in what is called a horrrific pedestrian accident. (We know better.)

   In France and apparently Paris in particular, life has gone on since World War II, but the days of Nazi control are never far from the memory of many of its inhabitants, both victims and collaborators. It is one sad story such as this in which Aimée finds herself up to her neck.

   Aimée herself reminded me of Emma Peel and a not-so-voluptuous Honey West, mixed in with a dash of Sydney Bristow (of TV’s Alias) with her penchant for disguise and undercover work, slinking across Parisian rooftops in high-heeled pumps. And a form-fitting tight black skirt. (I can picture that.)

   Her partner René does not have much of a role in this one, content to opening password-locked computer accounts with an ease and nonchalance that makes it seem all too easy, with his one big scene consisting of being hung by his suspenders by one of the villains on a peg on the wall. It would seem churlish to suggest that passwords are not discovered as easily as they are in this book, but perhaps the author was just trying to keep the pace of the book moving, which is constant, fierce and filled with action upon demand.

   A large portion of Aimeé’s background is described in broad outlines, but some of her past is only hinted at. The part that is hidden may be part of what it is that has had readers coming back for more. That, and of course, the independent and free spirit that is Aimée herself, living as she wants, and being attracted to and sleeping with whomever she wants.

   Life in Paris is always an attraction to people in the United States, and whether her depiction is authentic or not, Cara Black makes the city come to life, the non-touristy part, made even more real by the inclusion of more than occasional phrases in French, in my mind just the right dosage. (Some of the reviewers of this book online have taken issue with the authenticity, which I noted but did not care to know about. If it was an illusion, I did not want the illusion broken. So I am pointing this out but stepping back, and with double grains of salt, I shall allow you to be the judge.)

   I am disappointed in myself for having to tell you some of my other impressions. The book is not meant for speed-reading. The prose, while not clumsy, is often as disjointed as the plot, jumping here and there and including good scenes when a good scene is called for, whether it is sometimes that particular scene or sometimes not.

   Here is one example of the author’s carelessness in the details. On page 217, the dying Soli Hecht’s last words are related as having been “Don’t … let … him …,” then “Lo … ” On page 251, the man’s last utterance, as Aimée is puzzling over the case to that point, she remembers as “Ka … za.”

   Faulty details like this are deadly in a detective story, even if both versions could have been true. To my knowledge the point was never addressed, just another indication that in today’s world of detective fiction, atmosphere and eye-catching characters can often carry the day, even if the puzzle of the plot is present but is shunted aside as if it almost really doesn’t matter.

   But here’s what is really funny, not in the sense of “ha-ha” funny, unless the joke is on me, but funny in the sense of “I can’t explain it either.” I enjoyed the book, and if you were to ask me if I am going to read another of Aimée’s adventures, the answer would definitely be yes.

           The Aimée Leduc series, continued —

   Perhaps I should not make promises in print that I have not kept, or at least not yet. There have been four more books in the series since I wrote this review, either published or forthcoming. I’d be remiss if I didn’t include them here.

        7. Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (2007)

        8. Murder in the Rue de Paradis (2008)
        9. Murder in the Latin Quarter (2009)
       10. Murder in the Palais Royal (2010)

   But while I’ve purchased most if not all of these, I have not read another, and that is really remiss of me. I shall endeavor to do something about it.

CRAIG RICE – 8 Faces at 3. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1939. Hardcover reprint: Tower, 1943 (shown). Paperback reprints include: Mystery Novel of the Month #21, 1941, as Murder Stops the Clock; Bonded Books #13, 1945; Intl Polygonics Ltd, 1989.

   Rice’s debut detective novel, which introduced that rye-soaked couple, Jake Justus and Helene Brand, and the rumpled, sodden lawyer John J. Malone to the world, is an impressive debut.

   The first murder — that of a tyrannical, rich old lady despised by her heirs and servants — offers a classical situation immediately familiar to readers of British mystery, but the resemblance begins careening off course with the appearance of madcap, hard-drinking, reckless-driving heiress Helene Brand on the scene.

   Soon the lovely young lady suspect — a family friend of Helene’s and the newlywed wife of a band leader client of Jake’s (he’s a press agent) — has been spirited away from the police by Jake and Helene and hidden away in a whorehouse, so that Jake and Helene can find the real murderer, with the help of Malone.

   Copious drinking ensues, along with some genuine detection.

   Despite all the drinking (which is truly non-stop), Rice’s first detective novel devotes considerable attention to the puzzle, which, though not as convoluted as some of her later ones, is nicely put together.

   Rice wastes little time on red herrings, but the exact working out of everything, including the tantalizing problem of the eight clocks all set to 3:00, is interesting to follow. (Rice works out the Clock conundrum in much more interesting way than does Agatha Christie in the later The Clocks.) Indeed, as a puzzle 8 Faces at 3 is superior to Rice’s later Trial by Fury (considered her masterpiece by some), though the latter is the better novel.

   The supporting characters in 8 Faces at 3 tend to remain cardboard (the most interesting to me was the presumably Jewish D.A. with a chip on his shoulder, Hyme Mendel), so the interest tends to remain in puzzle and the antics of Helene, Jake and Malone.

   The antics, fueled by rye and many other adult beverages, will be a plus or minus depending on the reader. Much of the book I found genuinely funny, but I have to admit the amount of drinking did tend to pall on me a bit. One starts to feel that almost every other line, is “let’s have a drink.”

   I have not yet received Jeffrey Mark’s biography of Craig Rice, but I know a bit of her sad story and I have to admit I found myself thinking of that every time Helene passed out into Jake’s arms.

   I presume readers of the 1940s found drunkenness more uproariously funny than readers of today; and of course those readers of yesteryear did not know of Rice’s own alcoholism — at least until her messy personal life, including suicide threats, started, I presume, to get in the papers.

   For me that knowledge tempered a bit my amusement at the non-stop drinking, which is frequently accompanied, I might add, by driving. (These characters make Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe look like a teetotaler.)

   Still, 8 Faces at 3 offers an a good puzzle and is written with verve. It is a very good detective novel and I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a great deal of liquor-fueled zaniness accompanying the elucidation of a mystery.

Editorial Comment: Also on hand is Curt’s review of Trial by Fury, which he mentioned in passing above. Be on the lookout for it. I’ll post it here soon.

WILLIAM HARDY – The Case of the Missing Coed. Dell D360, reprint paperback; 1st printing, July 1960. First published as A Little Sin, Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1958.

    Case of the Missing Coed was one of those old-bookstore finds that proved to be quite rewarding. Bruce Graham is a professor at a small college, just getting on toward middle-age, who finds himself pursued by an attractive coed and growing a bit distant from his wife, a situation that can lead to some very enjoyable regrets.

    What this leads to is trouble, as Graham, tempted to visit the coed at a remote lodge, finds her murdered. Bad enough, but author Hardy rings in some interesting wrinkles: naturally, Graham has to remove any trace of his presence in order to preserve his marriage and his job, a task which he bungles beautifully.

    Then, since he thinks he knows who killed the coed, he tries to lead the police to her ex-boyfriend and proceeds to entangle himself in enough circumstantial evidence to get him convicted of murder.

    The mystery here isn’t particularly mysterious, and I’m betting most steady readers of the genre will spot the “surprise” killer early on, but Hardy does a neat job of getting his hero enmeshed in his own mistakes without making him look stupid, creating that sick, dizzy sensation of watching a character get spun out of control.

    As such, it’s a pretty engrossing few hours’ read… and you can’t beat that cover!

“Leviathan Five.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 1, Episode 14). First air date: 30 January 1964. Arthur Kennedy, Andrew Duggan, John Van Dreelen, Harold J. Stone, Frank Maxwell, Robert Webber (prosecutor), Frank Overton (the defense), Judson Laire. Teleplay: Berne Giler, David Giler, and William P. McGivern. Story: Berne & David Giler. Director: David Lowell Rich.

   Four men are standing trial for murdering another man. All five had been working in a high-security installation 1,500 feet underground when an earth displacement blocked the elevator and airshafts to the surface. Being scientists, they start calculating how long they have to live before help arrives.

   No matter how they figure it, unless one of them dies they’ll all suffocate. When it is suggested that someone could sacrifice himself (they have a gun) if he draws the short stick, one man refuses on moral grounds to be part of any plan involving suicide.

   The group then devises another approach — whoever is selected won’t kill himself but instead will wait until everybody has retired from the main area (to conserve air), fetch the revolver, and go to another man’s cubicle (chosen at random), where he will shoot that person, return to the common area, wipe the gun clean of prints, go back to his own cubicle, and pretend innocence.

   And so it comes to pass — except, as we learn later, the man who dies was not chosen at random ….

   This description makes the play sound like a whodunit, which it is — but, at the same time, it isn’t. The main thrust of the story is to explore such heavyweight ideas as: What is the difference between murder and execution? Can five men behave as a sovereign nation, making their own laws and deciding who lives and who dies?

   If a man consents to sacrifice himself, can his death at someone else’s hand be deemed a murder? If one man commits murder, can three other men who never wielded the weapon be held equally responsible? Isn’t this a nation “under God” and His laws?

   As I say, ponderous matter for a one-hour TV drama; yet the script smoothly proposes them all without bogging down in pointless moralizing.

   Although it’s never mentioned in the play, the term “leviathan” in the title must be a reference to English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ dubious conception of government: “For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State (in latine Civitas) which is but an Artificial Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Sovereignty is an Artificial Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body ….”

   There are plenty of undiscovered treasures waiting out there in those old Gold Medal Books, some of them by authors you may never have heard of. Clifton Adams is a case in point.

   His name is probably much more familiar to readers of western novels than to readers of crime fiction because he was much more successful as a western writer. But he wrote a couple of crime novels for Gold Medal that are well worth seeking out, Whom Gods Destroy and Death’s Sweet Song.

   These books are of the James M. Cain school, and while they don’t quite come up to the best of Cain, they belong on the same shelf.

   Both books are set in small Oklahoma towns. Whom Gods Destroy is the story of Roy Foley, who returns to his hometown of Big Prairie on the death of his father only to discover that his life is still ruled by his feelings of love and hate for a woman named Lola.

   In fact, his feelings for her have pretty much driven him crazy, though he doesn’t know it. He finds another woman named Vida (I’ll leave all discussions of symbolism to the English majors among you), but even his attraction to Vida isn’t enough to save him.

   To hear him tell it, Foley is one of those hardluck guys, plenty smart, but he’s just never gotten the break he deserves. He thinks he’s found the chance in Big Prairie, however. He’s going to take over the thriving bootlegging trade in the town, and he’s going to do it fast.

   He gets off to a bad start, as his first plan goes wrong. So does his second. And his third. Each time something goes wrong, he pays a price, and just when his plans finally seem to be working out, things fall apart.

   Roy winds up in a cheap hotel and in despair: “Out of the emptiness, I kept thinking: What are you going to do, Foley? What are you going to do? There had to be an answer — if I could only find it. Lost somewhere in the violence and rage there was an answer.”

   The guy in Death’s Sweet Song is Joe Hooper. He owns a little filling station with a couple of tourist cabins out back in Creston, Oklahoma. Like Roy Foley, he’s waiting for his big break, and one day it shows up in the persons of a safecracker named Sheldon and his wife, Paula.

   Paula is one of those women who often turns up in stories like this: bad clear through, and as beautiful as she is bad.

   Before long, Joe finds himself involved in robbery and murder, and at the end of his downward spiral, he’s thinking a lot like Foley: “I looked at them and they were waiting for the answer. They wanted a simple, clear-cut answer, and there wasn’t one. It was a long story, almost a month ago, I thought; that was when I saw her for the first time . . . Less than a month ago it had been. It seemed like a thousand lifetimes.”

   The simple plot summaries don’t do much to convey the quality of writing in these books. It’s the real thing. Uncluttered prose, smooth, and assured, with just the right amount of description to make things real and immediate.

GOLD MEDAL BONUS: If you’re curious about Adams’s westerns, I highly recommend two of his earliest, The Desperado and A Noose for the Desperado.

   These are dandy noir westerns with a protagonist worthy of Jim Thompson. They’re hard to find, though. They hardly ever turn up even on eBay. Copies of Death’s Sweet Song and Whom Gods Destroy show up now and then, and no one even bids on them. Maybe people don’t know what they’re missing, but if you’ve read this far, you don’t have that excuse.

NON-GOLD MEDAL BONUS: Adams also wrote a paperback original for the Ace Double line. He used the name Jonathan Gant, and the book is one half of D-157, Never Say No to a Killer.

   It seems to have been influenced by Horace McCoy’s Kiss Tomorrow Good-Bye, as it’s narrated by an intellectual killer and begins with an escape from a prison work gang. Roy Surratt deludes himself in much the same way that Joe Hooper and Roy Foley do, though he’s well aware that he’s far from the innocent they think themselves to be before they begin their crime sprees.

   This book has a nice twist in that it doesn’t appear to be a mystery novel until the very end, when it’s revealed that one character was indeed doing some detecting and putting the clues together. Maybe this one’s not quite in the league with the two Gold Medals, but it’s worth a read.

   In a way it’s too bad that Clifton Adams found his biggest success writing westerns and didn’t write more crime novels. He was very good at it.

Selected Bibliography:

       ● Death’s Sweet Song. Gold Medal #483, pbo, May 1955.
       ● Whom Gods Destroy. Gold Medal #291, pbo, March 1953.

       ● The Desperado. Gold Medal #121, pbo, 1950.
       ● A Noose for the Desperado. Gold Medal #168, pbo, 1951.

       ● Never Say No to a Killer, as by Jonathan Gant. Ace Double D-157; pbo, 1956.

Editorial Comments:   This column first appeared in Mystery*File #42, February 2004. Covered in previous installments appearing online are authors Day Keene, Dan Marlowe, Charles Williams, Marvin Albert, and Bill Pronzini & Ed Gorman.

   A checklist of the western novels Adams wrote as Clay Randall can be found here earlier on this blog.   [LATER:]   In comment #5, I’ve listed all of Adams’ westerns that I own which were written under his own name.

   And look for additional commentary by Bill on the Jonathan Gant book over on his blog, where it was a “Forgotten Friday Book” a week or so ago.