H. PAUL JEFFERS – Murder on Mike. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1984. Ballantine, reprint paperback, 1988. Júcar, Colección Etiqueta Negra nº21, 1987, Barcelona, as Muerte al micrófono.

   A small but persistent trend in recent years is the retrospective private-eye novel — the nostalgic adventures of PI’s operating in the Thirties and Forties, contemporary recreations of a bygone era.

   Andrew Bergman, Stuart Kaminsky, and Max Allan Collins have each done quite well with Chandleresque heroes of this sort; judging from the two Harry McNeil novels published to date — Rubout at the Onyx Club (1982) and Murder on Mike — H. Paul Jeffers will, too.

   McNeil is a very likable character, “an ex-cop who’s now a private investigator who’d prefer nothing better than to play clarinet with a top jazz band and leave the detective work to better guys,” a shamus who uses his head and his legs and his heart in lieu of violence. Harry McNeil, “the help of the hopeless.”

   It is a few days before Christmas, 1939. Harry is in his office above the Onyx Club on Fifty-Second Street, New York City. Enter Maggie Skeffington, a radio actress on “Detective Fitzroy’s Casebook” on the Blue Network (NBC).

   A few days earlier, Derek Worthington, the star of the show and a man heartily disliked by his co-workers, was shot to death in Studio 6B at Radio City; and Maggie’s boyfriend, announcer David Reed, has been arrested for the crime. Maggie is convinced that David is innocent, even though he is the only member of the cast and crew who does not have an airtight alibi for the time of the shooting.

   Harry takes the case, of course. And meets the various suspects: J. William Richards, owner of the Mellow-Gold Coffee Company and the show’s sponsor; Miles Flanagan, the producer; Veronica Blake, the head writer (with whom Harry later has an affair); Jason Patrick, Worthington’s costar; Rita DeLong, an aging musician; Guff Taylor, the engineer; and Jerry Nolan, the expert sound-effects man.

   Any of the lot might have killed Worthington — except for those alibis. The key to cracking the case lies with young Robby Miller, a Radio City tour guide, who heard the fatal shot fired through a studio mike someone inadvertently left open and who has turned up missing….

   The mystery here is lightweight but entertaining — until its resolution. The final unmasking, which Harry brings about in Studio 6B on Christmas day with the aid of a self-written radio script, is far-fetched and highly derivative of a famous novel by a certain popular Golden Age writer.

   That part of Murder on Mike is disappointing. Still, there is Harry. There is New York at Yuletide 1939, “a city for dreamers because it was a city that could make dreams come true,” a city full of fascinating real-life characters — Winchell, Woolcott, Ed Sullivan, and comedian Fred Allen (both of whom have speaking parts), dozens more.

   There is an equally fine evocation of the world of dramatic radio (a subject Jeffers knows intimately: He works for a Manhattan radio station). And there is a nice, old-fashioned flavor to the narrative, a feeling that you are reading a combination of whodunit and bittersweet private-eye romance written in 1939.

         ———
   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.

H. PAUL JEFFERS, R. I. P. (1934-2009). According to a short online obituary in the Pottstown (PA) Mercury, H. Paul Jeffers died on Friday, December 4th, in Manhattan.

   Besides his fictional work (see below), in the 60s he was a Fulbright Scholar in the 1960s and reported from Vietnam with Peter Jennings. He later wrote news for WINS, WABC, WNBC, and WCBS, all in New York City. His non-fiction work included books on history, Westerns and biographies, including books on Theodore Roosevelt and Sherlock Holmes.

   The covers and titles of the books below may give you an idea of the wide range of his interests. If his non-fiction were to be included, the range would be even wider.

   The Harry MacNeil series:

      1. Rubout At the Onyx (1981)
      2. Murder On Mike (1984)
      3. The Rag Doll Murder (1987)

   The Morgan western series:

      1. Morgan (1989)
      2. Blood On the Nueces (1989)
      3. Texas Bounty (1989)

   The Sergeant John Bogdanovic series:

      1. A Grand Night For Murder (1995)
      2. Reader’s Guide to Murder (1996)

      3. Corpus Corpus (1998)

   The Arlene Flynn series:

      1. What Mommy Said (1997)

   The Nick Chase series, as by Harry Paul Lonsdale

      1. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Murder (1999)
      2. Smoking Out a Killer (2000)

      3. Up in Smoke (2001)

   The Kate Fallon series, as by M. T. Jefferson

      1. In the Mood for Murder (2000)

      2. The Victory Dance Murder (2000)
      3. Decorated for Murder (2002)

    Other Novels:

      Adventures of the Stalwart Companions (1981)

      Murder Most Irregular (1983)

      Portrait in Murder and Gay Colours (1985)
      Gods and Lovers (1989)
      Secret Orders (1989)
      Owlhoot Trail (1990)
      Tombstone Revenge (1991)
      The Forgotten Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2005)
      The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Stalwart Companions (2010)

ELLERY QUEEN – The Finishing Stroke. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1958. Paperback reprints include: Cardinal C-343, March 1959; Signet P3142, May 1967; Carroll & Graf, 1988.

   Thirty years after the fact, I still recall the anticipation with which I awaited the paperback reprint of Ellery Queen’s The Finishing Stroke. Hardcover reviews had described it as a throwback to the great masterpieces of fair-play deduction of the 1930s.

   If it wasn’t quite The Egyptian Cross Mystery or The Tragedy of X, it was nonetheless a fine detective story, and I was not disappointed then, nor should readers of Carroll and Graf’s recent reprint.

   Queenian scholar Francis M. Nevins has pointed to the implausibility and stylized nature of The Finishing Stroke, and objectively I can understand his viewpoint. I, however, had little trouble suspending disbelief and relishing a book whose setting is a 1929 Christmas house party with an assorted group of people stranded by that old cliche, the snow storm.

   The cast of characters includes the young Ellery Queen, who has just published his first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery, and “the Maestro,” as Sgt. Velie used to call him, is in good form solving the bizarre happenings in what I considered the best book in the last two decades of the writing career of Dannay and Lee.

RIVER BEAT. Eros Films (UK) / Lippert Pictures (US), 1954. John Bentley, Phyllis Kirk, Leonard White, Glyn Houston, Patrick Jordan, Robert Ayres. Director: Guy Green.

   This is one of a small host of British movies made in the 1950s for which they imported a semi-star from the US, or a fading one, in order to boost its marketability in the States, and maybe boost audiences in the UK as well.

   Not that Phyllis Kirk was a star that anyone in England had heard of at the time, I don’t imagine, but she had been in the US hit House of Wax (the one with Vincent Price in 3D) which I first saw when I was eleven, and I’ve been madly in love with her ever since.

   A petite and decidedly pretty brunette, she had very little future in noir films (of which this is one, but only by the widest of definitions) since she was radiantly and too obviously innocent (in this case) of smuggling diamonds into England from the ocean-going liner which she’s the radio operator for.

   No, even though she’s arrested twice for being involved, it’s a complete frame-up, and even Detective Inspector Dan Barker (John Bentley) knows it, even though the incidents do complicate the romance and growing attraction between them.

   John Bentley, among other roles, played Paul Temple three times, and John Creasey’s “Toff” twice. He’s stalwart, handsome and strong, and he’s 100% right for the three roles: this one and the other two, which I can easily tell you, even though I’ve yet to see him in the other two.

   Phyllis Kirk, who of course was the primary reason I watched this otherwise fairly ordinary crime film, later when on to play Nora Charles opposite Peter Lawford for two seasons of the TV version of The Thin Man, of which I am sure I watched every episode. And some more than once. (I have the series on collector edition DVDs, and no, it doesn’t hold up very well today. Perhaps it never did.)

   The major problem with this movie, the one at hand, though, is that the crime involved, and how it’s committed, makes no sense at all. That is, it doesn’t once the movie ends and you back up and start running it through your mind again.

   While you’re watching, though, it’s suspenseful enough for me to recommend it to you on that basis alone, although some might say, and truthfully so, that the early pace is slow.

   As you can see, I’m somewhat split on this, but another huge plus is the well-guided black and white photography, with much of the movie filmed on location.

   All in all, it made for a decent start for director Guy Green, whose debut this was. He later went on to helm such ventures as Diamond Head, A Patch of Blue, and Luther, among a few other films whose titles you will recognize much more readily than you will this one.

   Part 1 of this series: RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

2.)   JAMES HERBERT – The Jonah. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, 1981. UK edition: New English Library, pbo, 1981.

   James Herbert has established himself as one of the leading British horror novelists with chillers like The Rats, The Fog, Survivor, Fluke, Lair, The Spear, and The Dark.

   His latest novel, The Jonah, features undercover policeman Jim Kelso as a jinxed man, a jonah no one will work with. Through a series of flashbacks, Herbert shows Kelso’s early life in England — his abandonment at birth, the horror of the orphanage in post-WW II Britain.

   Even then, death struck those around Kelso — when bullies chase him into an abandoned house, a savage death befalls them. Later, Kelso finds his step-father mysteriously dead, and a few years after that the woman he lives with dies in horrible circumstances.

   When Kelso begins his career with the police, misfortune seems to strike those colleagues who work with him. Eventually, because no one will work with him, Kelso is assigned to undercover assignments where he can work alone. Even so, whenever a big bust comes down, the police involved with Kelso are killed or injured.

   As a last resort, Kelso is teamed with a woman undercover agent, Ellie Shepherd. Together, they are supposed to break up a drug ring operating around a NATO base where a pilot recently crashed into the sea while taking drugs on a mission.

   Kelso stubbornly resists a romantic involvement with Ellie and tries to discourage her from working with him on the assignment before his jinx strikes her. Although one of the pushers is murdered and an attempt is made on their lives, Kelso and Ellie get closer and closer to the secret of the drug ring.

   There’s a solid presentation of police procedure in all of this, but all the while Herbert also generates a mood of rising terror through the use of his flashbacks.

   The final climactic scene is chilling but lacks the impact of Herbert’s classics, The Spear and The Dark. Nevertheless, for a few hours of suspenseful reading, The Jonah will do.

JOHN BUCHAN – Greenmantle. Hodder & Stougton, UK, hardcover, 1916. George H. Doran, US, hc, 1917. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hc, 1947; Penguin, UK, pb, 1956; Pocket #94, US, pb, 1941.

   I’ve debated whether or not Greenmantle could be classified as a mystery. Set during World War I, it certainly revolves around one: who is Greenmantle and can he be found in time to interfere with German plans to use him in their bid to grab the Middle East?

   Richard Hannay, last seen just before the war in The 39 Steps and now a major in the Lennox Highlanders, is recuperating from shrapnel wounds suffered at Loos, as is his friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Anxious to return to the front line, they are instead asked to undertake a secret mission.

   Hannay, Arbuthnot, and “sedentary dyspeptic” American John S. Blenkiron, joined later by an old friend from Hannay’s South African days, must find the mysterious Greenmantle and assess the situation so the British can take countermeasures. It is a matter of great urgency and no time can be lost.

   However, they must begin the task with no clues except three words scribbled on a piece of paper — Kasredin, cancer, and v.I. In different disguises the men take separate roads to Constantinople where they will meet and begin their search, if they all arrive safely — and it’s a big if.

   Along the way they encounter dangerous enemies and life-threatening situations and must use fast thinking and physical daring to even get to Turkey to begin their quest in the first place.

My verdict: This novel mirrors a time and society where fair play, decency, and honour were important and practiced as far as possible even in wartime. Military and intelligence gathering methods have changed since WWI and for the modern reader this gives Greenmantle a poignant air at times.

   Even so, it’s a rattling good yarn, with plenty of action, excitement, and suspense, along with a dash of wit. Although I’d read the novel before, I still laughed out loud at the mental picture of Hannay in jammies and dressing gown when, due to circumstances, he is “left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the cupboard.”

Etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/gmntl10.txt

AMBROSE BIERCE – Can Such Things Be?   Cassell, US, hardcover, story collection, 1893. Included in The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce, edited by Clifton Fadiman, Citadel Press, 1946. Reprinted several times since, both as an individual collection and in omnibus form.

   Clifton Fadiman’s 1946 collection of supernatural tales by Ambrose Bierce may not be quite top-of-the-line, but Bierce’s gift for turning the apt phrase: “The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not to him seem to prove that he was dead; he had always been a hard man to convince.” or “…all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation. ”

   Or this description of an encounter with an inopportune ghost: “According to the Chinese faith, a man is like a kite: he cannot ascend to heaven without a tail. Well, while I was here that night, alone and thinking of anything but him, that Chinaman came back for his pigtail. He did not get it.” Such writing makes for memorable reading, even when the stories are unremarkable — which is often the case.

   Bierce may have just been too misanthropic to convey the essential horrific humanity that must form the basis of a really scary story, except in one case: “A Diagnosis of Death” is a quick, perfect gem of a tale that ought to be required reading for lovers of this sort of thing.

INIGO JONES – The Albatross Murders.   The Mystery Novel of the Month #33; digest-sized paperback reprint, 1941. Hardcover first edition: Mystery House, 1941.

   Inigo Jones, a pseudonym, wrote two mystery novels under that name: this one and The Clue of the Hungry Corpse (1939). The latter has nothing to recommend It, but The Albatross Murders I found quite enjoyable.

   Somewhere in the Northeast, in a city that would have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, some young thespians are putting on a play.

   On opening night, an actor who is to be shot as part of the script is shot In reality, and the player shooting him — as part of the play or for real, deliberately or because someone gave him a loaded pistol by mistake or with malice aforethought — exits the stage and keeps on going out of the theater. An oddity in the killing is there is no bullet in the dead man and no exit wound.

   Besides the gaggle of actors and actresses, the deceased’s sister, who loathed him and is not very pleasant besides, was at the opening night and might have committed the, murder, if only it could be figured out how the killing was accomplished if the actor who was supposed to have shot him as part of the play didn’t do it and what became of the bullet. And what does the history of the area have to do with the murder? Nothing? Everything?

   Sebastian Booth, State Police Inspector, solves the case and explains how the murder was done satisfactorily — even though it’s as Rube Goldbergish a method as I have encountered in some time — in about twenty-four. hours, but meanwhile three more people have died.

   Booth is a delightful detective with a great deal of personality. He knows his mind and speaks it. In a case with many theater people, Booth says: “I’d as soon have a Gila monster around the house as an actress. Or an actor, either. I’ll be glad when this case is broken. I long for the company of a simple-hearted thief or an honest hatchet murderer.”

   It is Booth’s presence that makes The Albatross Murders a mystery worth reading.

Editorial Comment:   Longtime readers of this blog may remember that I reviewed this book several years ago. Check out my comments here. (All in all, I agree with Bill. This is not surprising, as Bill was seldom wrong.)

    Not only that, but I followed up the review with a post entitled The Compleat INIGO JONES, wherein I included every piece of information I could come up with about the author, which unfortunately did not include his (or her) real name.

    Have I learned anything about Inigo Jones since then? Alas, the answer is no.

  NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. Warner Brothers, 1946. John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Tobias, George Coulouris. Screenplay by W.R. Burnett, based his novel. Director: Jean Negulesco.

    When Nick Blake (John Garfield “People like me don’t change.”) comes back to New York from the war he finds his girlfriend night club singer Tony Blackburn (Faye Emerson who has a nice number, “You Again” in the club) has double crossed him and given the $50,000 he left with her to her boyfriend. Nick gets the money back and heads to Los Angeles with the $50k for seed money with his pal Al Doyle (George Tobias) to take up his old life of con man.

    Once he reaches L.A. Nick meets another old con, Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan), who tells him about Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald) a widow with two million dollars and Nick sets out to woo her, win her, and fleece her, but he finds he is falling for her, and when he tries to back out of the con runs afoul of one time partner Doc Ganson (George Coulouris) and ends up having to rescue the kidnapped Gladys after a number of well handled plot twists and Blake’s struggle with his unexpected reform.

    The slick little exercise in romantic noir is a neglected little gem from both Burnett and director Negulesco. Brennan and Tobias are scene stealers as usual, Fitzgerald gets a rare chance to shine as a romantic lead, and Garfield gets a showcase for his tough but tender screen persona.

    Coulouris had a long colorful career in such bad guy roles (he was still at it as late as the Lord Peter Wimsey adaptation of Clouds of Witness, where he plays a murderous farmer), and gets to shine here. Emerson has a nice turn as a none too honest blonde bombshell who sets up a nice contrast with Fitzgerald later in the film.

    The film is true to the book, as might be expected, since Burnett wrote both, but Garfield can’t help but bring a layer of vulnerability to Nick that may not be as obvious on the printed page, and Brennan makes the most of Pop Gruber (you have to wonder if this is a nod to Frank Gruber with whom Burnett sometimes collaborated on screenplays).

    Nobody Lives Forever isn’t major noir, but it is an attractive and well done little film that delivers what it promises, with an outstanding cast that never falters or missteps.

    It may be noir in a minor key, but nary a false note is struck, and at 100 minutes the film is lean and stripped down, yet has time to develop character and a plot that has some nice touches, such as a scene in which Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” plays on a juke box in the bar in counterpoint to Nick’s internal debate.

    Humphrey Bogart allegedly turned the role of Nick Blake down. Just as well, it fits Garfield’s persona like a glove.

    This isn’t a great film, but it is an example of the kind of intelligent and entertaining fare the studios used to turn out with surprising regularity. Like Jules Dassin’s Two Smart People, it’s well made and stands on its own merits.

    It’s one of those films that succeed so well at what it sets out to do that you may have to watch it a second time to recognize just how artfully it is constructed and played.

THE CARDBOARD LOVER. Cosmopolitan/MGM, 1928. Marion Davies, Nils Asther, Jetta Goudal, Andres De Segurola. Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert, based on the play Dans sa candeur naive by Jacques Deval. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   A comedy to be classed with Davies’ performances in The Patsy and Show People. For much of her silent film career, Davies starred in costume dramas that her long-time lover William Randolph Hearst fancied.

   Her native gift, however, was for comedy and she established herself as a first-rate comic actress in the comedies that showcase her undeniable talent.

   In The Cardboard Lover she’s a vacationing American tourist who collects autographs and in the process of trying to snare the autograph of tennis star Asther (in photo) she becomes infatuated with him and sets out to separate him from the stylish vamp (Goudal) who’s been toying with his affections.

   Davies gets a chance to display her skill at impersonation when she does a dead-on imitation of Goudal’s slinky vamp and Asther, not noted as a comic actor, is a charming foil, caught between the two women, while Goudal, for much of the film, ably counters Davies’ moves with her not inconsiderable wiles.

   One of the delights of this year’s screenings and a major addition to Davies’ filmography, apparently copied from the sole surviving print.

W. R. BURNETT – Little Caesar. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1929. Paperback reprints include: Avon #329, 1951; Bantam Giant A1871, 1959; Signet, 1972. Film: First National, 1931 (with Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell; director: Mervyn LeRoy).

      “Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?”

    Few movie lines have endured as long and as well as the signature line of Burnett’s Little Caesar screenplay. He ended the novel on which the movie was based with virtually the same line. Burnett mastered an idiom and rhythm that, while essentially literary, spoke directly to the masses.

    Caesar is serious and detailed, charting the rise and fall of a Chicago gangster against a backdrop of political and social turmoil. As in his other great novel, High Sierra, Burnett means to treat his headline subject with novelistic scrutiny.

    In a bittersweet interview given near the end of his life, Burnett complained that he was often praised for his “plotting,” a compliment he refused on the grounds that he never plotted, but let his characters carry the story to its own organic end.

    To a large degree, Burnett was correct. In some parts, Little Caesar is a novel of manners, and the overriding concern is not for the story per se but rather how certain events affect the characters who weave in and oat of the book.

    Little Caesar is too often used as a bludgeon with which to decimate The Godfather. The books should not be compared. Mario Puzo wrote a fine romance, perhaps a novel of the first rank, after all. Burnett, however, wrote a treatise that was part sociology, part character sketch, part comedy and most of all, a naturalistic reflection of the squalid Chicago slums of the time.

    Caesar remains fresh, potent, funny, tragic. Rico, its center, like an great characters, eludes final understanding.

    The 1930 film version with Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is likewise a classic. Robinson’s portrayal of Rico has often been imitated (by himself as well as others, notably in his role in Key Largo) but never surpassed.

    Burnett’s other major crime novel is The Asphalt Jungle (1949), the film version of which — starring Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe — has been called “the gangster film of the Fifties.”

    Minor but excellent novels are Dark Hazard (1933), The Quick Brown Fox (1942), and Vanity Row (1952). Among Burnett’s numerous screenplays are those for This Gun for Hire (1941) and the 1955 remake of High Sierra starring Jack Palance, I Died a Thousand Times.

         ———
   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.

Editorial Comment:   Novels by W. R. Burnett previously reviewed on this blog, both by Dan Stumpf, are Dark Hazard and Romelle.

    In his comment following the former, David Vineyard suggests that while “Burnett is seldom ranked with Hammett, Chandler, and Cain […] at times he was their equal, and I think sometimes surpassed Cain.” He goes on to say that “… maybe that holy trinity of the hard boiled school should be a quartet.”

    I can’t quarrel with the sentiment, but the fact is, barely no one remembers Burnett today (and Cain is slipping fast). But this fact, if true, leads to the immediate question:

    Can you think of another author as outshadowed as Burnett by the films based on the novels he wrote? The films are seared into the memories of everyone who’s watched them, but how many of those who’ve seen the movies have any idea who wrote the books?