LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Sugartown. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprints: Fawcett Crest, 1986; Ibooks, 2001.

   Since the publication of Motor City Blue in 1980, Estleman and his tough Detroit private eye Amos Walker have been a formidable team, combining to create an average of one high-quality PI novel per year.

   Walker has been called “hard-edged and relentless”; Estleman has been lauded as “having put Detroit on the detective map.” Both encomiums are accurate; and in Sugartown, author and Eye carry on the tradition.

   Walker is hired first by an elderly Polish immigrant to find her grandson, who has been missing for nineteen years: He disappeared following an ugly, tragic incident where his father shot his mother, his sister, and then himself — a scene of carnage that the boy discovered upon returning home from school. Later the old woman also asks Walter to find a family heirloom, a silver cross — a job that leads him directly into a murder case.

   Walker’s second client is a Soviet defector and famous author who thinks a Russian spy is out to kill him. After an investigation that takes Walker through the dark underbelly of Detroit, he escapes a trap that almost takes his life and establishes a connection between the two cases.

   Plenty of action and solid writing in the Chandler tradition make Sugartown (which won the PWA Shamus for Best Novel of 1984) the same kind of potent book as its predecessors in the Amos Walker series. The others are Angel Eyes (1981), The Midnight Man (1982), and The Glass Highway (1983).

   The versatile Estleman has also written two novels as completely different from the hard-boiled private eye as it is possible to get: a pair of Sherlock Holmes pastiches pitting the Great Man against two legendary Victorian “monsters,” Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula (1978) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1979).

         ———
   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.

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Kill Zone. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Fawcett, 1986.

   In Kill Zone, Loren Estleman, who is best known for his rough-and-tumble, Chandleresque private-eye novels, introduces Peter Macklin, “efficiency expert” — a euphemism for hit man.

   Macklin is the toughest character — hero or antihero — to arrive in crime fiction since Richard Stark’s Parker; and Estleman’ s prose the hardest-boiled since the days of Paul Cain and Cap Shaw’s Black Mask. Macklin and Estleman, in fact, would probably have been too grimly realistic even for the pioneering Shaw and his magazine.

   A terrorist group takes control of a Lake Erie excursion boat with 800 passengers, rigging it as a floating bomb. They demand the release of three prisoners within ten days. Michael Boniface, the head of the Detroit mob, offers his assistance from his prison cell in return for parole, but it is not until the FBI discovers that one of the passengers on the boat is a cabinet member’s daughter that they take him up on it.

   Boniface’s assistance is in the form of his top “efficiency expert,” Peter Macklin. Macklin tries to concentrate on the business at hand while dealing with an alcoholic wife, the knowledge that someone close to him has betrayed him, and the fact that he is being stalked by a killer working for Charles Maggiore, acting head of the mob, who does not want Boniface to get out of prison.

   Estleman takes an expertise previously displayed in PI and western novels (one of his westerns, Aces and Eights, won the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for Best Novel of 1982) and in applying it to a different type of novel has once again scored high marks.

   Fans of hard-boiled fiction won’t want to miss it — or subsequent Peter Macklin titles: Kill Zone is the first of at least three.

         ———
   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.

    Bibliographic Data: There was a long delay between the first three and the fourth and fifth:

       The Peter Macklin series:

Kill Zone (1984)
Roses Are Dead (1985)
Any Man’s Death (1986)

Something Borrowed, Something Black (2002)
Little Black Dress (2005)

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Angel Eyes. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1981. Paperback reprints: Pinnacle, 1984; Fawcett Crest, 1987; Ibooks, 2000.

   As is the case with all good private eyes, Amos Walker is a man with an unswerving code of honor. When his client, a girl singer with unforgettable eyes, disappears, as she had predicted she would, shaking him from the case is as easy as sneaking a steak from a hungry dog.

   The scene is Detroit, and union politics combine with and merge inevitably into the background of a city in slow decay. To perk things up and to keep the case moving, Estleman is a current master of the well-tuned metaphor. He is also better at mood than he is at plot, and there is enough plot in the second half of the story to choke a full-grown horse.

   The longer the trail becomes, the more it insists on turning incestuously back upon itself. Not surprisingly, there are also plenty of guns to go around.

Editorial Comment: This is the second book in Loren Estleman’s “Amos Walker” series. How many of the PI series being written when he began are still being written today? That’s “enough said” to say it all.

   The Amos Walker series:

Motor City Blue (1980)

Angel Eyes (1981)
The Midnight Man (1982)
The Glass Highway (1983)

Sugartown (1984)
Every Brilliant Eye (1985)
Lady Yesterday (1987)

Downriver (1988)
General Murders: Ten Amos Walker Mysteries (1988)
Silent Thunder (1989)

Sweet Women Lie (1990)
Never Street (1996)
The Witchfinder (1998)
The Hours of the Virgin (1999)

A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (2000)
Sinister Heights (2002)
Poison Blonde (2003)
Retro (2004)
Nicotine Kiss (2006)

American Detective (2007)
The Left-Handed Dollar (2010)

● House of Frankenstein. Universal Pictures, 1944. Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Anne Gwynne, Peter Coe, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, Elena Verdugo. Story by Curt Siodmak. Director: Erle C. Kenton.

● House of Dracula. Universal Pictures, 1945. Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, Lionel Atwill, Onslow Stevens. Director: Erle C. Kenton.

● Bride of the Gorilla. Realart Pictures, 1951. Barbara Payton, Lon Chaney, Raymond Burr, Tom Conway, Paul Cavanagh, Gisela Werbisek. Screenwriter and director: Curt Siodmak.

   Following The Body Snatcher (reviewed here ) came House of Frankenstein / Dracula, the sad swan songs of the Monster Movie heyday, offering the Frankenstein monster, Dracula and the Wolfman, with Mad Scientists and Hunchbacks tossed in for good measure.

   These movies are two of my guilty pleasures; I know in my head they’re ridiculous, but it thrills my heart to see all the old cliches — and I mean all of them — treated respectfully one last time.

   As for Bride of the Gorilla, it shows more intelligence than you’d expect to find in a movie called Bride of the Gorilla.

   Written and directed by Curt Siodmak, it offers Raymond Burr as a virile man-about-jungle who kills his mistress’s husband and finds himself the subject of a jungle-movie curse with predictable echoes of The Wolf Man (also written by Siodmak).

   One interesting twist is that Burr gets cursed not because he killed a man, but because he toyed with the affections of a local girl. The other twist is … well, I won’t reveal it except to say that this tatty little quickie repays careful viewing.

BRIAN ANTHONY & ANDY EDMONDS – Smile When the Raindrops Fall: The Story of Charley Chase. Scarecrow Press, 1998.

RICHARD LEWIS WARD – A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

   Together these two books give a nice portrait of one of the most interesting smaller studios during Hollywood’s Golden Period. The Charley Chase book covers the creative sides by telling the story of one of Hal Roach’s most talented stars and directors. The Ward book covers more of the business and practical aspects of the studio and includes a great deal of specific figures on the cost and earnings of individual films and series.

   I am a bit late to the party on Charley Chase, as other than his supporting role in Laurel & Hardy’s wonderful Sons of the Desert, I was not very familiar with his film work. I had seen a few of his shorts but those few were years ago. More recently, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) ran some of his silent short subjects as well as talkies and it piqued my interest. Chase was a very talented fellow, both as a performer and director.

   Born Charles Joseph Parrott in Baltimore in 1893, he spent his first 10 years in an ethnic neighborhood near the inner harbor. After his father died, the family moved in with his mother’s sister and Charley began running errands and anything he could to bring in money.

   A talented tap dancer with a pleasing voice, he began earning money on the streets as an entertainer. Soon he teamed up with two other boys and the trio gained bookings in vaudeville theaters. Eventually, he teamed up with another comic for a routine entitled “The Boys from Nutsville” that was very successful. Charley became tired of living out of a trunk and stayed in Los Angeles when a tour ended in 1911.

   He found employment with Lon Chaney’s stage troupe as a member of the chorus. There he met his wife, but soon Chaney abandoned his stage career to enter movies. Out of a job, Charley did the same, first with the Christie Studios and then with Mack Sennett.

   With Sennett, Charley began doing bits and graduated to featured roles, and along the way, was given his first chance at directing. He also became friends with the star of the Sennett lot, Charlie Chaplin, and appeared in several of the Chaplin films circa 1914. After several years with Sennett, Charley freelanced as a director and performer at Paramount and other studios.

   His younger brother Jimmy Parrott went to work for the Hal Roach Studio in 1917 as a gag writer on Harold Lloyd comedies and eventually made his way in front of the camera. Jimmy was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe where he was wounded.

   After his return, Roach put him back before the cameras but soon James Parrott left acting to become one of Roach’s best directors.

   Meanwhile, his brother Charley joined Roach and because of his experience with some of the best producers, he was made supervisor of all productions. It was at Roach that Charley made his mark both in front and behind the camera.

   As a studio manager, Charley lured Stan Laurel into returning to the Roach Studio trom vaudeville. Charley had worked with Oliver Hardy in the Billy West comedies and in 1924, he added him to be Roach stable of actors. While others have credit for teaming L&H, Charley got them to the same studio.

   The star of the Roach Studio in the early days was Harold Lloyd. I attended a 100th birthday party for Hal Roach given by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Nearly completely deaf, Roach did answer questions posed. Asked who was his favorite comedian, Roach immediately answered “Harold Lloyd.” Why? “Because I made the most money with him.”

   I need to dig up my notes from the Roach interview to be exact but when he was asked who he thought was the funniest comic, he quickly said “Charley Chase. But he was a terrible drunk.” Alas, in a hard-drinking era, Charley was notable for his love of brandy and eventually, it killed him in 1940.

   Rail thin, slicked-back hair and a small mustache was the picture of a young man on the go in his early movies and even as he grew older, he maintained a very likable film persona. It is ironic that he is best remembered for his role as the obnoxious fraternal order convention-goer who plagues Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert.

   When Roach exited the short subject field (except for the “Our Gang” series), he used Chase in a couple of features and then fired him. Chase took a full page ad in Variety to thank Roach for a wonderful 17-year run. He moved over to Columbia where he had his own series, and he directed others including several of the best by the Three Stooges including Violent Is the Word for Curley.

   The biography is an odd collaboration as Andy Edmonds had done much of the research years before but had never finished the biography. One day Anthony knocked on his door and asked him “Why?”

   Together they finished the book: The close cooperation of Chase’s daughters and children add a human element often missing from biographies. The writers also visited the homes they lived in and that added a lot of physical detail.

   Edmonds’ early interviews saved a lot of information that would have been lost with the death of Chase’s contemporaries. He even tracked down Joe Kavigan, the bartender at the theatrical oriented Masquers Club where Charley was an officer. Kavigan used to drive Chase home when he was in his cups. Chase would yell “Stop the car!! Get out!!” And outside, he said “Look at the sky! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

   Kavigan said his helping the patrons home could be misinterpreted. He often escorted an inebriated Spencer Tracy from the club to his home. One late evening, Mrs. Tracy came to the door to help her husband in and said sharply, “How come when he’s with you, he’s always drunk?” She probably had no idea he was the bartender.

   The Ward history of the Hal Roach studio is a much drier book but I found the level of detail fascinating. Discussed in detail are the relationships with Pathe as his distributor, fol1owed by the glory years with MGM and then finally with United Artists.

   I knew Roach had been in trouble in the early 1930s after the crash but was surprised to learn that the studio nearly went under in 1940. Although Roach produced the wonderful Of Mice and Men starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith, the rave reviews did not translate into profitability due to mishandling by United Artists.

   As documented in a wealth of detail, the studio was never in great financial shape. Hal Roach, Sr. eventually turned it over to his son and Hal Roach, Jr. made the lot one of the most active in the early days of television. Shows shot at Roach included My Little Margie, Blondie, Racket Squad, and The Stu Erwin Show.

   Independent producers rented the studio to make series including Amos and Andy, Life of Riley, Beulah, You Are There, and Waterfront. Yet, the studio couldn’t make money because of the debt it was carrying, including a hefty buy-out for Hal Roach Sr. Eventually, it went bankrupt.

   Interesting tidbits: “Our Gang” weekly salaries in 1937: Spanky $200, Alfalfa $175, DarIa $150, Buckwheat $80.

HOWARD BROWNE – Thin Air. Carroll & Graf, reprint paperback, 1983. Originally published by Simon & Schuster, hc, 1954; Dell #894, pb, 1956.

   Ames Coryell, successful advertising executive, is bringing his wife, Leona, and their three year old daughter home from a peaceful, happy summer vacation. They arrive home at 3:00 a.m. Leona opens the front door and goes into their home. In the time it takes her husband to carry their daughter upstairs and come back down, she has disappeared — into thin air.

   No signs of a struggle, purse left behind, and no goodbye note. What happened to Leona? And why does their daughter tell the police “Why didn’t Mommy come home with us?”

   Ames attempts to locate Leona himself, after feeling frustrated by the apparent unconcern of the police. On the other hand, the police consider it a strong possibility that Ames killed his wife.

   When a woman resembling Leona is found murdered (discovered by Ames, no less!), the action and intrigue quicken.

   This is a tautly written tale, with strong characterization and a compelling style. Thin Air is not likely to disappoint any mystery fan.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Bishop Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1929. Cassell, UK, hc, 1929. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including: Pocket #305, July 1945; Gold Medal T2140, no date given [1970s].

Film: The Bishop Murder Case. MGM, 1930. Basil Rathbone, Lilia Hyams, Roland Young, Delmer Daves. Directors: David Burton & Nick Grinde.

   Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the most seemingly incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying, was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.

   The Bishop Murder Case is not the best of the Philo Vance mysteries, but it is the showpiece of the series, a full out extravaganza that mirrors many of the strengths and weaknesses of the Classic Detective novel of its time — and particularly of the Van Dine brand that became the American model of the Golden Age Detective Story, at a time when Van Dine’s (art critic Wilfrid Huntington Wright) Twenty Rules became as faithfully entrenched on this side of the Atlantic as those of the British Detection Club were on the other.

   The Bishop Murder Case finds the supercilious Philo Vance up against his most dangerous adversary, a Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme killer who calls himself the Bishop, and whose crimes have rhyme, but seemingly no reason.

   With District Attorney Markham, Sgt. Heath, and Dr. Doremus, the dour Medical Examiner, in tow and loyal secretary Van Dine recording it all, Vance plunges right into the murder of Joseph Cochraine Robin, by arrow at the Riverside Archery Club, who died shortly after meeting with Raymond Sperling, Sperling being German for sparrow.

   The clues lead them to the home of Professor Dillard which runs alongside the Archery Club, and an intellectual who’s who of suspects including a physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a chess master.

   And we’re off with a second murder out of Mother Goose as John Sprigg is murdered.

   Clues include a knowledge of Ibsen’s plays, and the Reiman-Christofell Tensor for determining the Gausian curvature of spherical and homolodial space… And it wouldn’t hurt if you were familiar with world class chess, abnormal psychology, the Einstein-Bohr theory of radiation, and the implications of modern mathematical theory that would boggle the mind of Newton and Leibnitz…

   But knowing who the killer is and proving it are two different things, and after the rescue of the young victim of the next planned killing, Little Miss Muffet, Vance turns to the most high-handed action since the great days of Sherlock Holmes to unveil the killer and serve justice, resulting in perhaps the most famous passage in the Vance canon:

   If there is a more perfect example of the Nietzschean superman as detective other than M.P. Shiel’s Prince Zaleski I can’t think of one.

   The film with Basil Rathbone as Vance is a major disappointment. Rathbone is flat and reserved as Vance (and it’s hard to take him seriously in that bowler hat), and despite some decent attempts at atmosphere, the whole Mother Goose nursery rhyme motif is used to little effect. It certainly can’t hold a candle to the William Powell Vance films from the same period. Incidentally the Delmer Daves listed in the credits is the future director of films such as 3:10 to Yuma and Jubal.

The Bishop Murder Case hasn’t so much as a moment of reality in it. It is the classic detective novel in its most artificial form, but it is also, for all of its posing and intellectual pretense, a splendid example of the form and Van Dine and Vance at close to their best.

   The Greene Murder Case is likely the best puzzle and formal detective novel of the Vance canon, but Bishop is more fun. Reading it you may understand why Philo Vance once dominated the field and influenced such major writers as Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and Anthony Abbot.

   Nash may well have been right, but I think for this one, both he and Van Dine also deserve to take a well deserved bow — without risking that inviting boot to the rear end. The Bishop Murder Case is the game played full out and to splendid effect.

LEO BRUCE – Jack on the Gallows Tree. Academy Chicago, paperback; first US edition, May 1983. Hardcover edition: June 1983. British edition: Peter Davies, hardcover, 1960.

   Carolus Deene, history master in an English public school, is recuperating from jaundice at the Royal Hydro in Buddington-on-the-Hill. He encounters the murders of two elderly ladies, each of whom has been strangled and laid out with a madonna lily on her chest.

   It seems that the two deaths must be related, but how? The ladies had not known one another, and had little in common. Deene dips into the mystery, much to the displeasure of his headmaster. At once he is beset by the snobbish elderly cousin of one of the ladies, and by one of his students who is determined to play Watson.

   Along the way he comes across characters who are reminiscent of Edmund Crispin’s books: a farmer whose house pet is an ocelot, an elderly couple who practice both vegetarianism and nudism, two local ladies who vie for the attention of the police and of Deene, and a Miss Shapeley who keeps strong language out of her bar.

   If this is a parody, it is deft enough to be enjoyable as a serious read. Bruce is a pseudonym of the late Rupert Croft-Cooke, who wrote other mysteries under his own name and the Sergeant Beef books under the Bruce cognomen.

Editorial Comment:  Maryell Cleary, who died in 2003, was an ordained minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church as well a voluminous reader and collector of detective fiction. I met her once while she was taking a trip by car through New England. She stopped here to look at my collection and to go through my duplicates, and of course we spent a long, wonderful afternoon talking about each of our favorite characters and authors.

   Maryell was especially fond of mysteries in the Golden Age tradition. In fact, she had a letter in the same issue of The Poisoned Pen as the one above in which she protested mildly that fans of private eye novels had taken over the pages of recent issues! More coverage, she requested, of authors like Martha Grimes, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Moyes, Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson and P. D. James.

   To that end she also wrote many reviews and articles herself for the mystery fanzines of 20 and 30 years ago, including the still late lamented Poisoned Pen, published for many years by Jeff Meyerson. I’ve conferred with Jeff, and we both agree that she would have liked her reviews to go on after her. They will appear here on a regular basis for some time to come — she wrote a lot of them!

GREGORY DEAN – Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, 1939; Detective Novel Classic No. 17, no date stated [1943].

   There are several things to be sought in a mystery novel. Style, to this reader, is foremost. When the author on page one writes, “He trajected his mind back,” it is a pointer that style will not be found.

   Characterization comes next, and the author fails here, too.

   Finally — though to many readers the most important aspect of a book — comes plot. In this area Dean gives good value for the money, particularly if you actually paid a Quarter for the reprint.

   A good, kindly, thoughtful rich man — most unusual in mystery novels — is murdered in a locked room. Although the murderer’s intent was to have the man’s death appear to be suicide, the murderer botched this aspect rather badly. The rich man was supposed to appear to have shot himself through his blanket while in bed, but there are no powder marks on the blanket.

   The window locks have been wiped clean of fingerprints, as has the safe in the room. Dirty work has obviously been afoot.

   Fourth Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon is the investigator here. It is he who deduces murder rather than suicide. He also figures out early on how and who. He doesn’t reveal it, thus being responsible for another murder. At the end of the novel when he finds out why, all is belatedly revealed.

   Unfortunately, the explanation for the murder in the locked room, and a later appearance of the murderer there — while the room again is locked and a policemen is in it — is rather lame.

   This novel will be of interest only to those who collect locked-room puzzles. It also may be of interest to another type of collector, but reviewers’ rules do not allow that information to be divulged.

   (If anyone is curious about the title, which is the only reason I bought the book, the murdered man lived in what was called “the house on stilts,” a dwelling apparently constructed on a concrete arch. I say “apparently” because this is not mentioned in the novel; it is information provided by the paperback publisher.)

Bibliographic Data: From Bill’s review, it is difficult to imagine that there were additional cases in Commissioner Simon’s career, but it is true. There were two others, as a quick reference to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, will immediately show:

DEAN, GREGORY. Pseudonym of Jacob D. Posner, 1883-?
      The Case of Marie Corwin. Covici Friede, hc, 1933. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      The Case of the Fifth Key. Covici Friede, hc, 1934. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, hc, 1939. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Narrows. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, May 2004. Reprint paperback: Grand Central, March 2005.

   Harry Bosch is working as a PI when he’s approached by Graciela McCaleb to look into the death of her husband Terry, a former FBI agent, and friend of Harry’s. Terry had presumably died of a heart attack while working on his boat on an extended charter, but Graciela has discovered that Terry’s medication had been replaced, causing his death.

   Meanwhile FBI agent Rachel Walling, exiled to the Dakotas after the botch-up of the serial killer case involving “The Poet” is assigned to a task force near Las Vegas because it looks like the latter has returned with the discovery of the bodies of several men pin-pointed by a GPS device sent to the Bureau.

   Looking into Terry’s death, Harry discovers that Terry was investigating several unsolved crimes and offering his expertise to the local police. Among those cases was one involving those missing men.

   Harry also finds of photos of Graciela and her children, along with a photo of a road sign bearing the word “Zzyzx,” which is where the bodies of those missing men are discovered. So pretty soon Harry is nosing around in an FBI investigation, and Rachel Walling decides to tag along with Harry once she realizes she’s only being used as a stalking horse by her colleagues.

   A pretty good effort. I gather this was the one Connelly wrote to show his displeasure with the way Clint Eastwood adapted his novel Bloodwork by killing off his Terry McCaleb character. It is quite suspenseful and decently plotted.

   Harry even gets beat up somewhat, one of the prerequisites of the PI novel, even though by story’s end he has decided to go back to the LAPD.