OTTO PENZLER, Editor — Whodunit? Houdini? Thirteen Tales of Magic, Murder, Mystery. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1976.

   This is an anthology of thirteen mystery stories dealing with the common theme of magic; yet this is not a book of fantasy. While magic is central to each story, the solutions (with one exception) are as down-to-earth as one could hope for (the exception, by John Collier, of course being sui generis).

   Despite the title, Harry Houdini never does appear in propria persona; but his spirit seems to thread its way through this anthology, especially in “One Night in Paris” in which Houdin/Houdini lore becomes a large part of the rationale for the story’s sometimes feverish action and resolution.

   The authors in Whodunit? Houdini? include Clayton Rawson, Carter Dickson, Frederick Irving Anderson, William Irish, Walter B. Gibson, Stanley Ellin, and Erle Stanley Gardner: an impressive representation of some of pulp fiction’s greatest practitioners. For that reason alone the book is worth seeking out.

   Otto Penzler tells us, “The magicians in this book take many forms …. Here, some of the world’s greatest writers have entered the many worlds of magic: the bright, happy world of exciting stage shows, the darker world of crime and murder, and the velvet black world of unrelenting terror. Some of these thirteen tales deal with the question of whodunit. But, as with all magicians and magic acts, the deeper question is howdunit. Sometimes, the answer seems impossible. But don’t look too hard. You might not want to know.”

   For each of the stories below, a short excerpt has been taken from Otto Penzler’s introduction, followed by some brief comments by myself:

1. “From Another World” (1948) by Clayton Rawson (1906-1971)

    “Rawson presented the problem in ‘From Another World’ to John Dickson Carr, who solved it and recorded his solution in a novel, He Wouldn’t Kill Patience. Rawson’s solution is entirely different.”

Comment: A locked-room murder solved by the Great Merlini. A very rich man dies in a sealed (literally) room, stabbed with a disappearing knife that was never handled by the only other person known to be present; seashells suddenly appear from nowhere; and auditory impressions assume the greatest significance.

2. “In the House of Suddhoo” (1886) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

    “‘In the House of Suddhoo’ is the oldest story in this book, but it could have been written yesterday.”

Comment: A confidence trick, Indian-style, with the “mark” an anxious, feeble old man; “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic.” With a little rearranging of the story’s elements, John Dickson Carr could have made an entire novel of this vignette.

3. “Rope Enough” (1941) by John Collier (1901-1980)

    In “the Indian rope trick … an apparently ordinary rope rises vertically in the air and remains in that position. In ‘Rope Enough,’ the reader will discover what is beyond the top end of the rope.”

Comment: You’ll either love or hate this one; with John Collier, there’s usually no middle ground.

4. “The New Invisible Man” (1940) by Carter Dickson (1906-1977)

    In this story, “Colonel March, the head of Scotland Yard’s aptly-named Department of Queer Complaints, calmly hears an account of a murder committed by a pistol fired by a glove — an empty glove unattached to an arm in an otherwise unoccupied room.”

Comment: It looks like murder, but where’s the body? Colonel March solves it in no time flat; think Rear Window without the grue.

5. “Blind Man’s Buff” (1914) by Frederick Irving Anderson (1877-1947)

   This story features “the American counterpart” of A. J. Raffles, the Infallible Godahl, who “… is such a brilliant thief that he has never been suspected of a crime. The intellectual superior of any potential adversary on the side of the law, his nefarious endeavors are inevitably successful. They cannot fail, because Godahl’s massive brain has foreseen every possibility, anticipated every difficulty, and discovered a solution to every problem.”

Comment: Godahl outwits everybody and shows that Barnum’s dictum about one being born every minute was low by a factor of fifty — no, make that fifty-ONE.

6. “The Lord of Time” (1946) by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

    This “… is a story about Cagliostro, who was a master magician. Or was he? It is surely a crime story, because a brutal murder is committed. Or is it? At least a clever con job is pulled off. Or is it?”

Comment: The author of The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, and Captain Blood offers a tale about one of history’s greatest con men; it’s told in that pseudo-archaic style appropriate to the time and place of the story. If nothing else, it’s a pleasurable read.

7. “Papa Benjamin” (1935) by William Irish (1903-1968)

“Black magic is one of the oldest forms of magic, of apparently supernatural force. It is easy to ridicule it, to disbelieve it, to laugh at it (if you dare). Yet whole nations have believed in its power for centuries. Why?”

Comment: “William Irish,” of course, was a nom de plume of Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich, who often wrote with the Cornell Woolrich byline. You might have read this one under its original title, “Dark Melody of Madness”; but whatever it’s called, the narrative’s compelling power derives unmistakably from its atmosphere, gloomy and oppressive and all-enveloping — an achievement comparable to the best efforts of another writer to whom Woolrich, personally and professionally, bears some resemblance, Edgar Allan Poe. You probably won’t forget this story for a long time, if ever.

8. “Juliet and the Magician” (1953/1958) by Manuel Peyrou (1902-1974)

    “When the great writers of mystery and detective stories are discussed, the names that head the list of immortals are almost exclusively English and American, as if writers from other nations eschewed the genre. Well, to be truthful, both quantitatively and qualitatively, they lag far behind the English-language authors. Of course there are exceptions, but not enough to notice. Among writers in Spanish … are Jorge Luis Borges” and “his close friend, Manuel Peyrou ….”

Comment: A murder on-stage during a magician’s act — with it, the killer hopes to rid himself of a vexatious persoon and establish an unbreakable alibi at the same time; but some clever armchair (actually, barstool) deductions by an onlooker severely curtail what had seemed, in all honesty, to be a most unpromising career.

9. “The Mad Magician” (1938) by “Maxwell Grant” (1931-1967)

    This story from Crime Busters magazine features “… Norgil the Magician. The suave, handsome, and mustached conjurer appeared in a series of stories that never approached the success of the Shadow tales, but consistently ranked among the magazine’s most popular features …. Filled with action and colloquial speech, it is typical of the Norgil stories and, in fact, of most pulp fiction. Its background of magic is absolutely authentic ….”

Comment: Norgil the Magician solves two crimes at once with the assistance of his pretty protégé Miriam and a very curious cat, despite a tricky Japanese Box and a murderous mummy case; not a fair-play mystery, but nevertheless diverting.

10. “One Night in Paris” (1955) by Walter B. Gibson (1897-1985)

    “The Great Gerard fights crime in two stories,” both of which were penned by Walter Gibson who “… produced more than a million words a year for fifteen years. He wrote more than 300 novels, 283 about a single character — one of the most important heroes ever to stride majestically across the pages of a popular publication: The Shadow. The ‘Maxwell Grant’ byline under which the stories appeared was a Street and Smith ‘house name’ used by Gibson (and occasionally a few other writers) during the 1930s and 1940s. The only other pulp hero created by Gibson (‘Grant’) is Norgil the Magician, who appears in the previous story.”

Comment: Someone commits a locked-room murder and tries to pin it on the Great Gerard: BIG mistake, because as a trained magician he knows how to avoid traps as well as set them. The next time you’re in Paris at the Cabaret de la Mort (“Soiree Fantastique”), between La danse des squelettes and the cotelette de loup garou, watch out for the man with the mitraillette …

11. “The Shadow” (1931) by Ben Hecht (1894-1964)

    Hecht is best-known for his plays and movies (Gunga Din, Notorious, Spellbound, Kiss of Death) but “… his stories inexplicably lack the popularity of less talented writers of the same period,” among them being “‘The Shadow,’ a strange tale of retribution involving the Marvelous Sarastro ….”

Comment: An unrelievedly grim story of doom and irony that for some reason reminds me most of Poe’s “William Wilson.”

12. “The Moment of Decision” (1955) by Stanley Ellin (1916-1986)

    “In some ways the ultimate detective story is the riddle story — the puzzle without a solution, the winding road that leads nowhere. In these tales of uncertain endings, there is only one detective who can offer an answer to the problem: you …. this brilliant riddle story is … unforgettable and hauntingly terrifying …. Read this …. Then make YOUR decision.”

Comment: A clever variation of Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?” — Penzler tells us this story was televised in 1961 with Fred Astaire in a non-singing, non-dancing dramatic role.

13. “The Hand is Quicker than the Eye” (1939) by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

    Unlike Gardner’s other literary creations (e.g., Perry Mason), “Lester Leith is a different kettle of herring. He is on the opposite side of the legal coin, a confidence man of the first rank. He appeared in about seventy-five adventures, beginning in 1929 and extending through the vital days of the pulps. He solves crimes merely by reading newspaper accounts of them, then proves to the thieves that crime does not pay by ‘liberating’ their ill-gotten gains. There is little fear of legal retribution because his victims are not likely to press charges. Leith turns the swag over to charity — minus 20 percent for ‘costs of collection.'”

    The crime has everything to challenge the imagination of the investigator: Oriental background, fabulous pearls, a mysterious disappearance …

Comment: Lester Leith turns to magic to recover a stolen necklace and succeeds right under the noses of the criminals and the police. The story is fast-paced and quite entertaining; its original title was “Lester Leith, Magician.”

M. K. WREN – Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   When Corey Benbow, half owner of a kite making business, meets a tragic fate in a late night accident on the ruggedly beautiful Oregon coast, Conan Flagg is neither surprised nor fooled. He knows murder when he sees it.

   Flagg was the first series creation of Pacific Coast novelist Wren, who has also written a science fiction trilogy, mainstream fiction, and a second series about Neely Jones, a small town law officer in the same Oregon coastal setting she long lived in.

   Flagg is something of a paragon of virtues and skills, a sort of liberal Northwest Coast take on Travis McGee. He’s the scion of a wealthy ranching family, owner and proprietor of the Holiday Beach Bookstore, and a licensed private investigator.

   He is also darkly handsome with striking, almost oriental eyes, thanks to a mixed blood heritage. He lives by himself, of his own choice, in a fabulous house on the beach, and is frequently drawn into other people’s troubles, bringing the skills he learned in military intelligence in Cold War Berlin to bear.

   Beautiful Corey Benbow had enemies– mostly the family of Benbow patriarch Gabe Benbow, her father-in-law. Corey is the mother of the son the Benbows want to carry on the family name and heritage, and worse, a thorn in the side of their plans to sell a wildlife refuge known as the Spit as a housing development.

   There’s not much doubt her killer is one of the six Benbows present on the night of her accident, when she left after a confrontation about the fate of the Spit. The only question is which of the six Benbows killed her.

   Although he’s a far cry from Travis McGee, in many ways Flagg has a tendency to use the same high handed tactics and doesn’t mind bending or even breaking laws in the name of justice — or vengeance.

   To be honest, I’ve liked other entries in this series better than this one. The big confrontation at the end seems contrived and rings false, and Flagg comes across as the most self-satisfied and smug sleuth since the heyday of Philo Vance in his righteous wrath. An act of God at the end that was probably meant as irony simply seems heavy handed and pasted on to bring a satisfactory ending to the proceedings.

   It may be the McGee-like justice figures work better in the first person where we are privy to all their thoughts and feelings. With a third person narration, such as Wren uses, the added distance from the protagonist is enough that you may find yourself asking how he is much better than the bad guys, other than his motives.

   Flagg reveals the killer with a particularly nasty bit of business that Vance or McGee would likely have drawn the line at, and one even Mike Hammer might have found a bit outside the bounds.

   That said, Wren is a fine writer. The Oregon setting is handsomely presented and if Flagg is at times a bit full of himself, he is presented as a well developed creation. The motives and plot elements are well handled, and only the denouement is a disappointment, a bit contrived, melodramatic, and frankly preposterous.

   Put it this way: you wouldn’t have accepted it as the ending of seventies television mystery series, much less in a novel.

   Darlin’ Corey is a minor entry in the Conan Flagg series. It’s worth reading, but only if you have read some of the others first and gained some affection for the writer and the series. Don’t skip this one by any means, but don’t let it be your introduction to Wren or Flagg either. She has done much better and so has he.

   Note: The title is taken from the 1941 song “Darlin’ Corey” by John A. and Alan Lomax:

        The Conan Flagg series —

    Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat. Doubleday 1973.

    A Multitude of Sins. Doubleday 1975.
    Oh, Bury Me Not. Doubleday 1976.
    Nothing’s Certain But Death. Doubleday 1978.
    Seasons of Death. Doubleday 1981.
    Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday 1984.
    Dead Matter. Ballantine 1993.

    King of the Mountain. Ballantine 1995.

GRAHAM GREENE – The Confidential Agent. William Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1939. Viking Press, US, hc, 1939. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and soft, including Bantam #971, pb, 1952.

   Graham Greene wrote The Confidential Agent pretty much off the top of his head in 1938 as the Spanish Civil War slouched toward its depressing end, which may be why this tale of a hunted man on a secret mission for a government that doesn’t trust him never names names.

   The country — in the midst of civil war and desperate to buy supplies before the rebels get them — is only referred to obliquely and the major players are simply given initials with no hint of national flavor. But there weren’t that many countries struggling through civil war just then, and readers of the time probably saw right through it.

   All of the action is set the in the giddy atmosphere of pre-war England anyway, and Greene evokes the feel of a nation teetering at the brink of war (as he did in This Gun for Hire) with a fine mix of dread and excitement, like a child standing in line for a roller coaster that will tragically malfunction.

   The story, with D, a professor-turned-agent hounded through the countryside by a rival agent, betrayed by his contacts in England, and befriended by a spoiled heiress and a romantic teenager offers very little of what one thinks of as action, but moves quickly along nonetheless, helped considerably by Greene’s obvious affection for his shabby cast and their personal quirks.

   Plot twists rise from the characters themselves, rather than from the dictates of plot, and the resolution, as usual with Greene, comes about when some of these characters manage to rise above their petty concerns and look about them.

   Thus, the tension arises not so much between one side versus another (though there’s plenty of that) but between the universal conflict of self-interest and altruism. It’s an interesting approach for a thriller, and Greene brings it off with the skill that made him a major player in the genre.

CONFIDENTIAL AGENT. Warner Brothers, 1945. Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall, Victor Francen, Wanda Hendrix, George Coulouris, Peter Lorre, Katina Paxinou. Screenwriter-producer: Robert Buckner. Director: Herman Shumlin.

   Confidential Agent was filmed by the Warners in 1945, by which time all the wraps were off: Spain is clearly designated as the source of intrigue, and French Charles Boyer, German Peter Lorre, Belgian Victor Franken and Greek Katina Paxinou all play Spaniards; at least they’re more convincing than Lauren Bacall as a British socialite.

   That’s right, Brooklyn-born Bacall (aka Bette Perske) plays the daughter of an English “honorable” and nothing in the screenplay makes any attempt at explaining her flat American accent.

   Normally, faced with incongruity of this magnitude, the writers throw in something about being raised by an aunt in Canada or something, but not here. Nope, that’s just the way she talks and let’s get on with the show.

   And despite the Hollywood absurdities, the show ain’t bad at all.

   Director Herman Shumlin was primarily a stage director (with only one other film, the very stagy Watch on the Rhine to his credit) and not terribly sharp at conveying action or keeping up the pace, but he’s very good with the actors.

   Lorre and Paxinou make a terrific pair of nasties in the Lorre/ Greensteet tradition, playing off each other quite nicely, and though Bacall, in her second film, seems a bit cautious away from Howard Hawks and husband Bogart, she manages some real chemistry up against a very steely Boyer.

   Shumlin is also wise enough to get out of the way and let veteran photographer James Wong Howe fill the screen with images of poetic loneliness, evoking Greene’s themes of isolation, backed up by the lush music of Franz Waxman, one of the defining composers of the ’40s.

   Writer/producer Robert Buckner, a studio stand-by with Dodge City and From Hell to Texas to his credit, tightens Greene’s tale neatly, eliminating bits of the book that really go nowhere, while keeping true to the letter and spirit of the thing.

   He also adds a couple neat twists of his own, including a come-uppance for nasty Katina Paxinou that I won’t spoil for you, and a wonderful bit where Boyer prepares to kill Lorre for selling him out:

   Lorre grovels as only he can, trying to justify his treachery on the grounds of ill health, pleading, “I have a bad heart! The doctor said I had six months to live!” to which Boyer quietly replies, “He was wrong.”

   Gotta love it.

V. C. CLINTON-BADDELEY – Only a Matter of Time.

Dell, paperback reprint; 1st printing, July 1981; Murder Ink Mystery #23. Hardcover edition: William Morrow, 1970. Prior UK edition: Victor Gollancz, hc, 1969; pb reprint: Arrow, 1974.

   Not knowing very much about the author, and assuming that perhaps that you don’t either, I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing the autobiographical blurb that was included at the end of this book:

   This explains a lot, and I’ll get to that in a moment. His full name, according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, was V(ictor Vaughan Reynolds Geraint) C(linton) Clinton-Baddeley, 1900-1970, and his mystery writing career consisted of five detective stories that came out between 1967 and 1972, all featuring Dr. R. V. Davie as his continuing series character. (I’ll list the five books at the end of this review.)

   But what struck me when I was reading Only a Matter of Time was how erudite both the author and his sleuth were, and the brief biographical notes above only confirmed my thoughts. Not in a snobbish way, though. Not at all. The author has a dry if not wry sense of humor that had me smiling if not laughing throughout.

   The novel takes place in a small town called King’s Lacy during a week in the summer when a week-long classical music festival is going on.

   The town also has a multitude of antique and small curio shops, and every so often the murder investigation stops and we (the reader) are treated to a knowledgeable discussion involving something to do with the fine arts. Either major or minor tidbits of information, it doesn’t matter, they’re still a treat.

   There is a slow, leisurely pace to this novel. I mentioned a murder investigation, but the first death is not known until the book is half over, although the victim had disappeared some time before that. Dr. Davie cooperates with the police, but since the second victim was known to him, that is his only rationale for continuing to stay involved.

   As the title suggests, you might be wise to keep close tabs on the timing of events, including watches that stop or run erratically and a church bell that does not chime overnight.

   One definition of a cozy mystery is perhaps one in which no commotion occurs when the murder does, and if so, that makes Only a Matter of Time the perfect example of a cozy mystery. The festival is not canceled, the show goes on, and Dr. Davie continues to take his afternoon nap, right on schedule.

   Overall, then? If you don’t mind leisurely, discursive detective novels with plenty of clues and false leads, this is the perfect one for you to try on for size the next time you’re looking for a book precisely like this one to read.

V. C. CLINTON-BADDELEY. Dr. Davie in all. First UK editions only:

      Death’s Bright Dart (n.) Gollancz 1967.

      My Foe Outstretch�d Beneath the Tree (n.) Gollancz 1968.

      Only a Matter of Time (n.) Gollancz 1969.
      No Case for the Police (n.) Gollancz 1970.
      To Study a Long Silence (n.) Gollancz 1972.

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Overlook. Little Brown & Co, hardcover; first edition, May 2007. Paperback reprint: Vision, January 2008.

   This was originally published as a serial in the New York Times Sunday Magazine with a final chapter added later which I guess accounts for the three years of copyright in the paperback edition (2006, 2007 and 2008). And perhaps for the book being under 300 pages, a rarity nowadays.

   Harry Bosch has recently joined the Homicide Squad at LAPD, and his first case is the murder of Dr. Stanley Kent whose body is found at the Overlook in Hollywood hills. Soon Bosch’s old flame, FBI agent Rachel Walling turns up. She’s a member of the FBI’s Tactical Intelligence Unit and is there because Dr. Kent had access to dangerous radioactive substances which could be used by terrorists.

   Sure enough, it turns out Dr. Kent had removed one hospital’s complete supply of Cesium after receiving a photo showing his nude wife hogtied and gagged in their bedroom with the threat of killing her unless he complied.

   The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are more interested in recovering the stolen Cesium, but Bosch’s main concern is solving the murder and he won’t allow anyone to push him aside no matter how many capital letters are in their name.

   As usual, with Connelly, the story was very well written and the characterization can’t be faulted. What can be faulted is the plotting. Pretty much from the get-go I knew which way the story was heading even if I didn’t know everything about the solution. Too bad his plotting isn’t the equal of his writing.

WHIT HARRISON – Strip the Town Naked. Beacon B-350, paperback original, 1960.

   Whit Harrison is a pseudonym of the prolific Harry Whittington. I’ve read and enjoyed a few books by him, and I read a recommendation for this title a while back, where and by whom now forgotten. It’s another of those books that I bought intending to read soon that has been staring accusingly at me from the to-be-read-soon for far too long.

   This is a typical Whittington (or what, with my limited exposure to him, I take to be a typical Whittington) in that a man falsely imprisoned has returned on his release from jail to his small home town to find the real crook.

   Vic Radford had been one of two partners in an investment company when $92,000 had been stolen from the company safe. Only he and his partner had known the money was there and his partner had an alibi. Radford’s return causes ripples in a town where everybody knows each other, and reignites tensions and not a few passions.

   It took a while to get into the book, but the pace of the story eventually took hold, and I raced to the conclusion.

   It’s really just a potboiler written to the Whittington formula that gives an enjoyable couple of hours. One complaint is that Vic has too many sexual encounters in the two days or so that it takes to clear up the case. All the women that we meet in the town are not only available but more than willing, including his wife, whose masochistic tendencies Radford is happy to oblige.

CORNELL WOOLRICH – The Bride Wore Black. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1940. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including: Pocket #271, 2nd printing 1945; Pyramid #80, 1953, as Beware the Lady; Dell D186, 1957, Great Mystery Library #1; Ace G-699; Collier, 1964; Raven House, 1981; Ballantine, July 1984.

Film: Films du Carosse, 1968, as La mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black). Co-screenwriter & director: Francois Truffaut.

   The Bride Wore Black is Cornell Woolich’s first novel and has been reprinted by about half a dozen different paperback houses. If you’ve never read Woolrich, it is a splendid introduction and [when this review was first written] a recent edition from Ballantine may still be available.

   While it is not Woolrich at his very best (for that, you’d have to read pulp novelets like “Goodbye, New York” or later books like Rendezvous in Black, also reprinted by Ballantine), it is very good indeed.

   Woolrich is best known for his heart-stopping suspense, emotional prose, and use of outrageous coincidences. In The Bride Wore Black, we have his usual narrative drive, but the language is a bit more objective than it sometimes is, and the result is a bit less reader involvement than is needed.

   The coincidences are there, in spades, and that makes suspending disbelief a bit tougher than usual. Still, only someone who’s read the best Woolrich would dare to cavil at this book, so don’t miss it if you’ve never read it.

Editorial Comment:   As soon as I’m able, I’ll be posting the three reviews of Woolrich novels that Mike Nevins did for 1001 Midnights, one a day, perhaps, beginning tomorrow. The three: The Bride Wore Black, The Black Curtain, and The Black Angel.

HUGH AUSTIN – The Milkmaid’s Millions. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1948.

   This is the second and apparently last in the “Sultan’s Harem” mysteries. The Sultan is Wm (that’s the way he spells it) Sultan, the only surviving member of Sultan, Sultan & Sultan, counselors at law.

   Wm is thirty-five years old, but talks and thinks as if he were in his seventies. His staff, all female and thus “the harem,” treats him as if he were their grandfather, though his secretary appears to regard him as a possible swain.

   Wm’s main interest in life is compiling his late uncle’s “Life & Letters.” His staff is typing up the forty-second chapter of the second volume, which seems to comprise the twenty-seven thank-you letters the uncle sent for presents received on his fourteenth birthday.

   One shudders to think what the other forty-one chapters in volume two might consist of, and volume one doesn’t bear thinking about at all.

   One of Wm’s few clients has prepared a codicil to his will, having recently discovered a direct descendant, and Wm is called upon to prove the bona fides of the new family member. Shortly after Wm arrives at the client’s home, however, the testator is murdered.

   The investigators think that Wm did it, evidence arises that Wm probably didn’t do it, and then new developments seem to demonstrate that he did indeed do it.

   Wm’s harem, who were responsible for his getting involved in the mess, arrives on the scene to vamp some of the suspects and rig some evidence so that Wm will not be convicted of the crime. Those who enjoy the pedantic and stuffy, mixed with the preposterous, will find this novel delightful. The crime’s rather good, too.

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

         AUSTIN, HUGH. Pseudonym of Hugh Austin Evans.

    It Couldn’t Be Murder (n.) Doubleday 1935 [Peter Quint]
    Murder in Triplicate (n.) Doubleday 1935 [Peter Quint]
    Murder of a Matriarch (n.) Doubleday 1936 [Peter Quint]
    The Upside Down Murders (n.) Doubleday 1937 [Peter Quint]
    The Cock’s Tail Murder (n.) Doubleday 1938 [Peter Quint]

    Lilies for Madame (n.) Doubleday 1938.
    Drink the Green Water (n.) Scribner 1948 [Wm Sultan (Sultan’s Harem)]
    The Milkmaid’s Millions (n.) Scribner 1948 [Wm Sultan (Sultan’s Harem)]
    Death Has Seven Faces (n.) Scribner 1949.

   Peter Quint was a lieutenant in the New York City police department. The small cover image of The Cock’s Tail Murder seen above (by Artzybasheff) is the only one of Austin’s books that I’ve been able to come up with so far in jacket. No other information about the author, other than his real name, seems to be known.

[UPDATE] Later the same day.   British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has just supplied me with another cover, this one for The Upside Down Murders. It came from a Grosset reprint, but both he and I believe it to be the same as the Crime Club edition. Art by Duggaru:

[UPDATE #2] 10-26-09.   Thanks to the combined efforts of Victor Berch, Jamie Sturgeon and Al Hubin — and Google! — it has been learned that Hugh Austin Evans was born in 1903 and died in 1964.

DAY OF WRATH. 2006. Christopher Lambert, Brian Blessed, Blanca Marsillach, Szonja Oroszlán, James Faulkner, Phillida Law. Written and directed by Adrian Rudomin.

    This has nothing to do with the classic Carl Theodor Dreyer film Der Vredens Tag (1943), but instead is a Hungarian production that’s set in Spain of 1542, fifty years into the Inquisition and its terrors.

   Taking place in a world of opulence and degradation and the excesses of religious zealotry, the film is supposedly based on a true story.

    Lambert plays Ruy de Mendoza, a minor noble, and the newly appointed sheriff of a Spanish province, who finds his life and that of his family at risk when he refuses to ignore a murder on his watch.

    Despite efforts by everyone, including the governor, Lord Francisco del Ruiz (Brian Blessed) to the head of the Inquisition Friar Anselmo (James Faulkner) to keep a conspiracy of silence, Mendoza pushes forward in his investigation.

    In the world of Spain during the Inquisition, birthright was everything, and the slightest taint of Jewish blood was a ticket to financial ruin, torture, and a heretic’s death by fire.

    As Mendoza delves into the mystery, he begins to uncover secrets he should not know and a conspiracy among the leader of the local Inquisition to extort money from noble families with the Jewish taint — including the newly appointed and vainglorious governor, but the truth is darker and more complex than mere religious persecution and zeal.

    A series of murders with the letters D R (for the Latin Day of Wrath) carved into the victims is related to these secrets, and massive keys left on the bodies are part of the answer.

    Finally Mendoza has to put his duty and his family against his blood and his honor in order to survive.

    This is an attractive film, and the story is fascinating, but the script is disjointed and despite some interesting touches (at one point Lambert uses an early form of ballistics to identify a bullet used in a murder), it doesn’t hold together.

    Day of Wrath is a decent time passer, a B movie at heart, with a few “A” touches in costuming and set decoration.

    There is a bit of nice swordplay, a hint of sex, and a masked killer in black and silver, but a better script and direction would have been more helpful in dealing with a conspiracy this complex and with problems this dark.

    The movie ends in a blood bath and a new conspiracy with Lambert’s Mendoza at its head, as it only could, but you have to wish a surer hand had been at the helm. Even with its flaws, there is a good idea here. It just lacks the skilled input needed to develop it fully.

    And I couldn’t help but think while watching it, it might have made a better novel than movie. A little structure would have been a major improvement.

    

SIN TAKES A HOLIDAY. Pathé Exchange, 1930. Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna, Basil Rathbone, Rita La Roy, Zasu Pitts. Director: Paul L. Stein.

   Besides the two “Topper” movies she was in, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the other movies that Constance Bennett made. For a name that’s awfully familiar, not to mention being a beautiful and talented sad-eyed actress, she made a rather large number of awfully forgettable pictures.

   Including this one, I’m sorry to say, one that TCM chose to play on her birthday earlier this week (October 22). She plays the secretary who’s secretly in love with her playboy boss (played by Kenneth MacKenna), a well-known divorce lawyer. But when he proposes to her, it’s with no sense of delight that she accepts.

   It’s a marriage of convenience only. He needs a wife to get one of his many divorcee clients (Rita La Roy) off his back. Little does he know when he sends his new bride off to Europe that she’s going to turn into a glowing beauty. (She also somehow learns to play classical musical pieces on the piano; quite a change from living in a cramped apartment with two other working girls, one of whom is Zasu Pitts.)

   Basil Rathbone plays the jaded bachelor who falls in love with her, and this is the triangle (or quadrilateral, if Miss La Roy is included) that the plot revolves around, and all the more so once the lady’s husband decides that maybe he really does want a wife.

   Being a pre-Code movie, the light-hearted way that men in upper society are allowed to pal around with women who are not their wives would scarcely meet with approval a few years later.

   Unfortunately for those of us who happen to have spent the first 60 plus minutes waiting for a payoff that matches the rest of the film, the wait will have been in vain. There are many many clever ways that this movie could have ended. The way that this movie does end – and don’t worry, I shan’t tell you which one it is — it isn’t one of them.