JAMES ANDERSON – Assault and Matrimony.

Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover, 1981. UK edition: Frederick Muller Ltd., hc, 1980. TV movie: NBC, 1987 (with Jill Eikenberry & Michael Tucker).

   On the surface, Sylvia and Edgar Chambers have a marriage that is too good to be true. In fact, it isn’t. Unknown to either, each hates the other with a passion, and it takes only a nudge to send them both completely over the edge.

   The comedy of errors that quickly follows is deeply tinged in black. Each of these two basically unlikeable people tries in fierce desperation to kill the other — and any innocent bystanders who happen to be wandering by — and yet neither of them quite manages to succeed.

   There is not an ounce of conscience between them. It would not be at all difficult for the easily disillusioned reader to become completely exasperated with both of them, giving up with disgust at the seemingly endless variety of their elaborately structured plots.

   Fortunately, the ending is even more clever and complex, surpassing anything either of them has come up with before then. It’s a challenge, but it’s also well worth the wait.

[UPDATE] 11-03-09. I still have the book but not the patience to find out which of many, many boxes in the basement it could possibly be in. It’s a shame, too, as the ending (as I’ve described it) intrigues me. Do I remember it? In a word, no, I don’t. (That’s a heck of a thing, isn’t it?)

   James Anderson, a British author, made a specialty in his early career of writing books whose titles begin with the letter “A” (The Alpha List, Angel of Death, Appearance of Evil, Assassin and so on).

   Later on he wrote three well-regarded detective mysteries taking place in the 1930s and solved by Inspector Wilkins (e.g., The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg-Cosy) and three Murder, She Wrote novelizations (with Jessica Fletcher).

[UPDATE #2.] 11-11-09. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon for sending me the cover image at the top of this review. It’s from the Muller edition, not the Crime Club edition I own but which remains unseen for anyone for almost 30 years, including me.

DICK BARTON STRIKES BACK. Hammer Films, 1949. Don Stannard, Sebastian Cabot, Jean Lodge, Bruce Walker. Based on the BBC Radio serial Dick Barton Special Agent, created by Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason. Director: Godfrey Grayson.

   In 1947 listeners to the early evening BBC tuned in to hear the voice of the ‘Beeb’ intone, “The time is a quarter past seven. This is the BBC Light Programme …” followed by Charles Williams’s “The Devil’s Gallop” thundering over the airwaves.

   With a gasp of anticipation ten year old boys of all ages in post-Second World War England gathered to hear the daily fifteen minute edition of the adventures of ex-commando Captain Dick Barton M.C., and his pals Snowey and Jock as they made their on air debut.

   Somewhere between Jack Armstrong, All American Boy and Carleton E. Morse’s I Love an Mystery, the Dick Barton series captured the imaginations of young boys (and girls) in the dreary days of post-WWII England with tales of derring-do, adventure, and dastardly villains. Dick was played by Noel Johnson early on and later Gordon Davies and Duncan Carse.

   Dick and his pals found themselves at odd ends in Post War England, so when their ex-commander approached them to act as semi-official agents investigating matters that were too delicate for Special Branch or MI5, it seemed the perfect solution to their post war blues. So Dick Barton Special Agent was born

   Which is why the then fledgling Hammer Studios (yes, that Hammer, of Dracula fame) grabbed up the rights to the series and churned out three quick programmers starring handsome Don Stannard in the lead role. These were Dick Barton Special Agent (1948), Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949), and Dick Barton Bay (1950).

   Dick Barton Strikes Back was filmed third but released as the second in the series. Hammer intended to continue the series, but Don Stannard was killed in a car wreck in 1949. Sebastian Cabot was in the car with him but emerged without fatal injuries. Since the films had improved with each new entry, we may well have missed the definitive screen Dick Barton.

   The opening of Strikes Back could easily come from one of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass serials or an episode of The Avengers (Patrick McNee ironically plays a British agent in the opening scenes of the film Dick Barton at Bay ). A remote English village lies silent, everyone and every thing in it lies dead. And no bird sang.

   Dick Barton and his pal Snowey are called in. Their investigation leads to a group of gypsies and the evil Alfonso Delmonte Fourcada (Sebastian Cabot), second in command of the mad scientist whose deadly sonic ray has wiped out two English villages and now is ready for the attack on London.

   Dick and Snowey battle Fourcada and his goons, escape, evade, hunt, and in general chase around in solid thriller tradition. In one particularly good sequence they are left in a snake house, and all the glass shatters with Dick and Snowey suddenly knee deep in deadly serpents.

   Will the boys escape?

   Tune in tomorrow …

   Same time same place …

   The climax is an exciting chase up the famous BBC radio tower in Blackpool where the madman plans to broadcast his sonic weapon and destroy London. Someone must have found the irony of Dick’s final film adventure ending on the very tower that broadcast his adventures all too delicious.

   While no masterpieces, the Barton films are well done programmers, with some nice noirish photography and good if hammy performances. Stannard may proclaim his lines in all capital letters, but he certainly looks like what we expect of ex-commando Dick Barton.

In 1979 Dick returned to the small screen in Dick Barton Special Agent, a series with Tony Vogel as Dick that ran four seasons. Done tongue in cheek, the series was a good deal of fun and spawned a series of paperback adventures. In recent years a series of Dick Barton plays have been a great success mixing nostalgia, camp, and theatrical thrills.

   The creators of Dick Barton, Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason (creators of the long running soap The Archers) issued a collection of short illustrated never broadcast Dick Barton adventures, Dick Barton Special Agent (Contact Publicaions) for Dick’s fans. In addition the television series was featured in annual albums of comic books stories and photos from the series as well as the paperback adaptations.

   Several sites of Old Time Radio collections have the first Barton radio serial (ten episodes) available to listen to for free on your computer or download to your MP3 player. They hold up pretty well all things considered. A good example of the charms of the form.

   The Barton phenomena was popular enough that Eric Ambler sent it up in his screenplay for Roy Ward Baker’s Highly Dangerous (1951) where his heroine, Margaret Lockwood, believes she is Frances Conway Special Agent, after her nephews favorite radio serial, Francis Conway, when a blow to the head while she is on a dangerous mission behind the Iron Curtain leaves her confused.

   But if you still thrill to the William Tell Overture and the sounds of a great white horse’s hoofbeats on the vast plains of the airwaves, to the mysterious Valle Triste and a voice intoning I Love a Mystery, or ever the catchy tune of Little Orphan Annie, then you will fully understand the appeal of the “Devil’s Gallop” on ten year old boys everywhere.

   And now back to today’s episode of Dick Barton Special Agent. As you know Dick and Snowey had just entered the elevator at Professor X’s secret lair when suddenly …

   Editor, reviewer, anthologist, bibliographer, and crime fiction scholar extraordinaire, Allen Hubin’s extensive contribution to the field began over forty-years ago. In 1967, working out of his basement, he founded the legendary fanzine, The Armchair Detective (TAD).

   Then, with just one review under his belt, Hubin was asked to review for the New York Times Book Review, taking over for Anthony Boucher. In his column, “Criminals at Large,” Hubin reviewed six books a week for almost three years. He hadn’t given anthologies a thought until Dutton called and asked if he’d carry on for Anthony Boucher and edit the Best Detective Stories of the Year.

   Hubin’s involvement in crime fiction bibliography began innocently enough, as well. He was asked to write the introduction to the world’s first crime fiction bibliography compiled by North Dakota librarian Ordean Hagen: Who Done It, (published by Bowker in 1969). During the compilation, Hubin opened his home and extensive library to Hagen and offered to help with the research. Unfortunately, Hagen passed away before the book was released.

   When corrections and additions to Hagen’s published work began to accumulate, Hubin decided to publish them in the pages of TAD, but they were rather extensive and a bit too random, and he had some ideas on how the information could be better organized. So, with the six-book-a-week reviews having wound down, he decided he could manage a “little” bibliographic work.

   That work mushroomed into a massive and seemingly never-ending project laboriously begun during the typewriter era, and in 1979, The Bibliography of Crime Fiction, 1740-1975 was published. Hubin could have left it at that, but he had in mind to add another five years of coverage and a new feature or two. Crime Fiction, 1749-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography appeared in 1984.

   And that was not the end. Others followed, and by the year 2000, the end of the 20th century seemed to Hubin a more fitting climax to what would be more than thirty years of bibliographic effort, bringing him to the current Crime Fiction IV: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1749-2000! This impressive work contains author and title indexes to over 106,000 books, the contents of more than 6,600 collections, and identification of over 4,500 movies.

   A 2008 revised edition of the bibliography has been published on CDROM (by Locus Press). In addition, given that hundred of pages of new/corrected material has since accumulated, a 2009 edition (still with the 12/31/2000 cutoff date for new publications) is contemplated (again on CDROM by Locus Press). Much of this material for the 2009 edition can be found (with linkages and enhancements that won’t appear in the CDROM) at www.crimefictioniv.com.

[UPDATE / EDITORIAL COMMENT]. 11-02-09. Bouchercon 2009 has come and gone. I’d have loved to have been there, but the closest I got was my annual Columbus Day weekend trip to see my brother and sister back in Michigan something close to the same time.

   I certainly don’t know who deserved the award more. If you look at Al’s resume and all of those numbers, his accomplishments are staggering. (And all the more so when you consider that he began when typewriters were all the rage.)

   The updated version of the Revised Crime Fiction IV is now available on CD-Rom from Locus Press. I don’t have my copy yet, but it was on sale at Bouchercon. It incorporates all of the online Addenda included through Part 34. I uploaded Part 35 this morning, and I have some material to send Al later today that will appear in Part 36.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Universal, 1925. Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin. Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John Sainpolis.

Based on the novel Le Fantôme de l’Opera by Gaston Leroux. Directors: Rupert Julian; Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle, Edward Sedgwick (the latter three uncredited).

   October is the month I spend watching Monster Movies and reading scary books. I kicked things off with The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Rupert Julian, Edward Sedgwick and possibly others, and adapted by no fewer than seven writers from Gaston Leroux’s novel.

   Phantom has its moments, but overall it’s something of a mess — the result, no doubt of so many cooks at the broth, fingers in the pie, pigs at the trough or who-ever in the what-have-you.

   Universal did a lot of tinkering with this thing, adding and cutting scenes, restoring deleted parts and cutting added ones, and finally emerged with a rather disjointed film: a slow, mysterious first half capped by a horrific climax in the middle of the movie, followed by a colorful romantic interlude, trailed by some rather tepid serial-type chills, with a wild chase for the finish.

   A few pretty nice things creep out of the cinematic jungle though, mostly due to Lon Chaney and the incredible force of personality he brings to Eric the Phantom (Some reports aver that he directed his own scenes himself.) Chaney moves with a compelling balletic grace, and whoever directed his scenes knew how to play up billowing capes and staring skull-faces for all they might be worth.

   The Bal Masque scene is a riot of two-strip Technicolor dominated by Chaney’s Red Death, and the ensuing love scene among the statues achieves a fine romantic creepiness: the furtive lovers embracing under cool blue estuary in the night air, as a red-cloaked monster broods above them.

   Chaney’s acting is magnetic, and Mary Philbin puts visible enthusiasm — if no discernible subtlety — into heroine Christine’s histrionics.

   But it’s Norman Kerry as the nominal hero of the piece who walks off with the show: Aging, bland, over-groomed, dull and unimaginative, Kerry is everything the nominal hero of a Monster Movie should be.

   He has only to walk on screen to bore you to tears, and his declarations of undying love offer a listlessness that horror films were not to see again until the “living Dead” movies of the 70s.

   But wait, there’s more; where the heroes of most monster movies are merely dull and ineffectual, Kerry actually has to be led by the hand to rescue his beloved and finally faints dead away when things get tough.

   There are subversive tendencies in Monster Movies, where the bad guys we’re supposed to fear are always more interesting than the good guys we’re supposed to cheer, and there’s no better illustration of the concept than Norman Kerry in The Phantom of the Opera.

DOUGLAS RUTHERFORD – Kick Start. Walker, US, hardcover. 1973; Ballantine, pb, 1976. UK editions: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1973; Fontana, pb, 1975.

   The hero of this book is really not a person; it’s a motorcycle, a Norton Commando to be precise. And while reading the story isn’t as much fun as being able to ride as well as the protagonist does, it’s a close second.

   Kroll commits a crime, gets caught, and is recruited to penetrate an area ravaged by earthquake, accessible only to a skilled biker. He narrowly gets to his destination (a particularly good scene has him crossing a cracking dam), and then things get worse (the dam breaks; the race in front of the flood waters is another high point).

   One of the most entertaining things about the book, though, is the large number of flaws in the plot — or what appear to be flaws. The reader keeps thinking that the author is doing a really sloppy job, right up until the end, when suddenly the flaws are shown to be in Kroll’s interpretation of events.

   He’s been wrong all along; the reader has been right. And the bitterly ironic ending somehow seems highly appropriate.

Editorial Comment:  I regret to say that I have not turned up a cover image of the Ballantine paperback, but these two should easily do.

   Rutherford, whose full name was James Douglas Rutherford McConnell, 1915-1988, has a total of 25 titles in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, most of them dealing with motorcycles or motorcar racing (e.g., A Shriek of Tyres (1958), The Gunshot Grand Prix (1972) and Rally to the Death (1974)).

   Of more immediate significance, though, is that under the pen name Paul Temple, he co-authored two novels in that series with Francis Durbridge. See the preceding post.

PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery. Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1957. “Paul Temple” was a pseudonym of Francis Durbridge and Douglas Rutherford. Reprinted as by Francis Durbridge: Hodder, UK, pb, 1960

    A solid entry in the long running series about debonair British mystery writer Paul Temple (“By Timothy!”) and his wife and partner in solving crimes Steve (Stephanie), the former Steve Trent, a Fleet Street reporter. She and her husband solve crimes while enjoying the pleasures of the leisured upper middle class English lifestyle.

   The Temples are something of a cross between Nick and Nora Charles and the Lockridges’ Pam and Jerry North (though considerably more sober than either), with Paul himself a bit of an Ellery Queen figure (at least the radio or television versions) appearing in some fifteen books written with collaborators like Charles Hatton, John Thewes and Douglas Rutherford (appearing under the Paul Temple byline). A good deal of the charm of the series involves the byplay between the attractive husband and wife crime solvers.

   In addition to the books, there were ten radio plays and serials, movies, a television series, and a long running comic strip by Alfred Sindall and others (updated to reflect the 1969-1971 television series).

   When Betty Tyler is found stuffed in the boot of an abandoned Jaguar strangled with her own scarf on the Chipping Norton Road outside Oxford, Steve Temple, recently moved into their new Eaton Square flat with their Cockney servant Charlie, knows Sir Graham Forbes of the Yard is likely to show up at any time to ask her mystery writer husband’s help, interfering with her plans for a trip to Paris to celebrate Paul’s latest book deal.

   Sure enough, Forbes (“a splendid example of an Englishman”) shows up on their doorstep with Oxford Constabulary Inspector Vosper in tow.

   Paul and Steve agree to do a favor for Forbes, but still are intent on keeping out of the whole thing and making that Paris holiday — which Steve emphasizes by humming “I love Paris” at key times when Paul is tempted to defect, but after a suspicious near accident on the way to investigate Paul and Steve can no longer avoid involvement. Especially after a call from Jane Dallas — whom Paul finds strangled in the bedroom of her flat.

   All the victims work for a chain of beauty salons owned by the mysterious fashionable Spaniard Mariano (“a drink like a prophet is never honoured in its own country”).

   Paul and Steve investigate and capture the strangler, but Paul knows the man with the scarves is only the front for the man behind the murders, and in true style throws a dinner party to gather the suspects and expose the killer with a flourish. There is even a bit of a surprise in the killer’s identity and of course a touch of drama in the capture.

   There is nothing surprising about the Temple books. They are competently written, feature a bit of mystery, a bit of detection, and considering their radio serial origin, contain a good deal of action and suspense.

   Four movies featured Paul and Steve Temple, with Anthony Hulme and Joy Shelton in Send For Paul Temple (1946), and John Bentley (who also played John Creasey’s the Toff in two outings) and Dinah Sheridan in Calling Paul Temple (1948) Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950), and Paul Temple Returns (1952), all directed by Maclean Rogers, who directed the two Toff films as well. (In Returns, Patricia Dainton replaced Dinah Sheridan as Steve.)

   I’ve seen Calling Paul Temple, and it is an entertaining B picture with some nice location photography in Cambridge, some solid thrills, and builds to a good climax.

   Francis Matthews (Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the voice of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s “Captain Scarlet”) played Temple and Ros Drinkwater Steve in the 64 episode Temple series co-produced with Germany’s ZDF (1969-1971). In addition in the mid sixties several of the radio serials and books were done for British and German television. Eleven episodes of the color episodes of the Temple series are available on DVD as of 2009.

   Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was the Levinson and Link of British television. His popular serials included The Teckman Biography, The World of Tim Frazer, Melanie, Operation Diplomat, Portrait of Alison, The Scarf, and others. Most were also books.

   In addition his non Temple serials inspired films such as The Teckman Mystery, Postmark to Danger (Portrait of Alison), and the The Vicious Circle. His other series character, Tim Fraser, is featured in three books.

   The original ten Paul Temple radio serials are available as CD’s (a pricey Omnibus edition of all ten serials is well worth the price for the sheer hours of entertainment). In addition, there have been new productions as late as 2006, making a total of some twenty-seven Temple radio productions from 1938 to date.

   Postmark to Danger and at least one of the Temple movies are available on DVD on the gray market. Of the films, Postmark to Danger stars Robert Beatty and Terry Moore, and The Vicious Circle (1957) with John Mills, Roland Culver, Lionel Jeffries, Derek Farr, and Mervyn Johns has showed up on TCM several times and is well worth catching.

   Douglas Rutherford, the best of the Durbridge collaborators, and the only one to write as Paul Temple, was a first class action-suspense novelist whose own books were compared to Dick Francis. The novels under his own name always feature a background of racing cars and motorcycles, though the plots varied from crime, to murder, to spy-jinks. Barzun and Taylor had a few nice things to say of them in Catalogue of Crime.

   The Paul Temple books may sometimes show their origins as radio drama, but they offer pleasant thrills with an attractive pair of sleuths, and a bit of well done suspense and often clever mysteries.

   All of Durbridge’s books are worth reading, and hopefully more of the television serials will be finding their way onto DVD sets. When a German comic revealed the name of the killer in the German airing of The World of Tim Fraser, there was a major uproar.

   A modern American audience may not get quite that involved, but skillfully done fare along the lines of Durbridge’s radio and television serials, series, movies, and books are not to be sneezed at. These are well worth discovering and enjoying.

Editorial Comment:  Prompting the immediate posting of this review which David just sent me was, of course, my preceding review of Melissa, one of Durbridge’s many story productions for BBC-TV. The availability of the Paul Temple TV shows on DVD just a few months ago has only strengthened myresolve to obtain a multi-region player. The set is Region 2 only.

MELISSA. BBC-TV 3-part miniseries: December 4 through 18, 1974. Peter Barkworth, Guy Foster, Moira Redmond, Ronald Fraser, Joan Benham, Philip Voss, Ray Lonnen, Lyndon Brook, Elizabeth Bell. Story: Francis Durbridge; novelized as My Wife Melissa (Hodder, 1967). Director: Peter Moffatt.

   I have mystery writer Martin Edwards to thank for letting me know about this relatively ancient but remarkably well-preserved TV detective drama, first shown in the UK some 35 years ago and (believe it or not) available now in this country on DVD.

   Martin reviewed it on his blog back in June, and after his positive appraisal, I snapped it up from Amazon almost immediately. With the stacks of DVDs and shows on video tape all clamoring for my attention, though, I didn’t get around to watching it until the middle of last month.

   A piece of advice, if I may? If you’re a fan of complicated detective stories full of clues, false trails, mysterious happenings and twist after twist in the plot, don’t wait around as long as I did. Get this and watch it now. And do I mean that? Indeed I do. You won’t regret it. It’s fusty, it’s old-fashioned, and it’s absolutely terrific.

   Note that if you’re more of a fan of PI stories or hardboiled crime fiction, the recommendation I extend to you isn’t quite so urgent, but within its limitations, I think you might very well enjoy it too.

   I don’t know if a quickie, non-detailed recap will suffice, but here goes. A writer who’s been going through some tough times without a steady income allows his wife (Melissa) to go to a party with friends without him; when she calls him later to meet her somewhere, he goes, only to find her dead and all of the evidence pointing directly to him – and he has no alibi.

   Worse, a doctor specializing in neurological cases swears to the police that he was a recent patient, and so does his nurse, while Guy Foster, that’s name (played by a suitably rumpled and increasingly haggard Peter Barkworth) knows he has never seen either one before in his life.

   More funny business continues. By the time a second murder occurs, Foster is so wrapped up in elaborately phony (and highly unlikely) stories (although from his perspective, they are all perfectly true) he has nowhere to turn — until a chance comment he happens to make tells Detective Chief Inspector Carter (perfectly played by a suavely genteel Philip Voss) that the fantastic stories he’s been telling are the real truth.

   The story’s the thing in this case, and the only thing, with each of the first episodes ending in a beautifully constructed cliffhanger. I don’t imagine – no, make that I simply can’t imagine any killer going to such lengths to shift the blame to someone else, but it certainly creates a lot of fun for readers really, really fond of detective puzzles in their everyday brand of mystery fiction. In Melissa they’ll find something just as good, for a change, on the TV screen. Guaranteed.

   (On the other hand, I have to admit that Raymond Chandler might have found the overly elaborately and wholly invented affair utterly stagy and ludicrous, and therefore by extension, Raymond Chandler fans may very well follow suit. If you fall in the latter category, I can’t make you like it – but on the other hand, you might.)

   Other notes: Melissa was televised once before, as a 6-part mini-series beginning in 1964 with essentially the same characters (though not the actors) so I assume the story was the same.

   Another version appeared on TV in 1997, but the synopsis sounds makes it sound rather different in a number of ways. (The new guys who come along always seem to want to do that, for some reason.)

   Francis Durbridge, who wrote the story, is all but unknown in this country, but in the UK he was quite famous as a writer of detective stories and radio plays (e.g., Paul Temple), movie scripts and TV. The quickest way to check out his credits may be his Wikipedia page.

FREDRIC BROWN – Night of the Jabberwock. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1950. Paperback editions include: Bantam #990, April 1952; Morrow-Quill, 1984. British edition: T. V. Boardman, hc, 1951.

Based on two pulp stories: “The Gibbering Night” (Detective Tales, July 1944) and “The Jabberwock Murders” (Thrilling Mystery, Summer 1944).

   After hearing several people tell me about this book, I just had to read it. I went up to the loft and searched but to no avail. Fortunately a couple of days later, when I was looking for something else, I stumbled across my copy.

   Doc Stoeger, the narrator, is the proprietor/editor of a small town newspaper and a huge fan of the work of Lewis Carroll. After putting the paper to bed and getting home for the evening, he faces a night of catastrophic events, including a mysterious bank robbery, an escaped lunatic, a midnight gathering of the Vorpal Blades in a haunted house, and more.

   Most of them are unconnected, but after a murder for which he has been framed, Doc is fighting for his life and an explanation that will make sense of what has gone on.

   That the explanation makes as much sense as it does is a tribute to the plotting abilities of Fredric Brown, who has weaved a tangled web of intrigue. This madcap, humorous affair is a pleasurable romp with a satisfying ending, and I enjoyed the reading of it.

   Brown is an author that I am underexposed to, having previously only read Madball, which was only so-so, and The Fabulous Clipjoint, the first in the Ed and Am Hunter series, which I somehow didn’t take to.

Editorial Comment:   Happy Halloween, everyone!

THAT CERTAIN THING. Columbia, 1928. Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr Mcintosh, Aggie Herring, Carl Gerard, Sydney Crossley. Screenplay by Elmer Harris; photography by Joseph Walker. Director: Frank Capra. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    Described as a “restoration in progress” (the film is is a blow-up from a 16mm print), this domestic drama tracks the fortunes of a hotel newsstand clerk (Dana) after she marries Graves, the son of a magnate, who promptly disinherits his son, forcing him to go to work as a day laborer.

    When his co-workers prefer his wife’s box lunch to their own lunches, he has a brainstorm and starts the “Molly Box Lunch Company,” which takes off and attracts the attention of Graves’ father, who doesn’t know that his daughter-in-law is the Molly designing the lunches.

    Molly uses her native sharp wits to outwit her father-in-law, roping him into a highly profitable deal (for the company) to which he responds by showing he’s a good sport and finally accepting his husband’s wife.

    A good-natured comedy drama that makes light fun of big business and the innate good sense of the Little Man (or, in this case, Little Woman). Capra’s first film for Columbia.

   On his own Bear Alley blog, Steve Holland has just posted a long essay on the life (and sad death) of Gil Brewer, author of many bestselling paperback originals from Gold Medal in the 1950s before the market moved away from him, compounded by his own struggles with alcoholism.

   Based on his own research, Steve provides us with substantial evidence as to Brewer’s full name and his date of birth. Some of the rest of his article is based on Bill Pronzini’s well-known essay on Brewer, which can be found online on the main Mystery*File website, but by incorporating information from other sources as well, Steve covers Brewer’s life and writing career as completely and as full of insight as anything that’s been done so far.