JON MANCHIP WHITE – Fevers and Chills: Three Extravagant Tales: Nightclimber/ The Game of Troy / The Garden Game. Foul Play Press, trade paperback, 1984.

    Some books are magical. Once read they are difficult to forget or put aside. Scenes and set pieces from them stay with the reader and haunt him for days later, sometimes years. These three novels by Welsh screenwriter (Crack in the World, Mystery Submarine, The Camp On Blood Island …), novelist, and folklorist Jon Manchip White, who taught at the University of Tennessee, all fall into that category of books that possess that magical, even mythic, quality.

    Robert Louis Stevenson called such stories “Crawlies.” John Buchan called them “Shockers.” White calls them “Extravagant Tales.”

1. Nightclimber opens at night in a large city:

    The hero is an English art historian who since his days at Cambridge has been compelled to climb — not mountains, but buildings, and since the law frowns on such things he has always climbed at night. Now in Madrid, broke and behind on his book on the painter Velazquez, he finds himself recruited by two old school chums to climb a building in Paris and retrieve an antique key.

    Needing the money, he does so and soon discovers he is being tested. Basil Merganser, a wealthy East European and naturalized British citizen is something of a mysterious and sinister character. He wants something retrieved from the Cave of the Cyclops on the remote Greek island of Kavalla. The rewards are great, a beautiful woman is involved, and the world is about to descend into nightmare.

2. The Game of Troy also takes a note from Greek myth, the oldest of the stories of the heroes, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. The hero is an architect who has been having an affair with Astrid Sarrazin, the wife of Texas millionaire Gabriel Sarrazin, who rules over an estate known as El Pardo.

    The hero knows it is a bad idea, but the money is inviting and the chance to be with the woman he loves…

    Which is how the hero and heroine end up trapped in the maze with a modern Minotaur in the form of a deadly breeding bull, and hunted by Gabriel who wants his pound of flesh in torment before he ends the lovers’ misery, as the tension mounts and the nightmare becomes more palpable with each word, each page you turn.

3. The Garden Game is the only book in the trilogy to feature White’s roguish series creation, mercenary Captain Lewis Teague. Major Rickman is a tough ex-military type approached by a cabal of wealthy men in the armaments business. This adventure again takes a note from the distant past, this time the distant past of Rome:

    What Teague and Rickman discover is a deadly revival of the ancient gladiatorial games of decadent Rome, organized by a group of rich and slightly mad jaded men who find their only pleasure in blood and pain. How he is drawn into the madness and escapes takes up the rest of the novel, a thriller as compelling as it is fantastic.

    These three novels all manage to walk a fine line between the fantastic and the plausible. They recall some of Geoffrey Household’s novels such as The Courtesy of Death and Dance of the Dwarfs, and yet have a dark streak of humor running through them not unlike Edmund Crispin’s novels and elements that can only be called Poesque.

    They are clever tales that leave you thrilled, satisfied, and like the best of myths, just a little discomforted by the reminder that the gods of chance play such games with human fate and destiny. All three are fine entertaining tales, but Nightclimber in particular will stick with you.

    They are indeed extravagant tales in the best sense of that phrase. Short, to the point, and beautifully written, they are very much tales to be told on a stormy night, a perfect blend of fevers and chills, designed for a frisson of terror and sigh of relief as the heroes avoid one deadly trap after another, down to a satisfying and perfectly nuanced finale.

      Additional bibliographic data:

Nightclimber. Chatto & Windus, UK, hc, 1968. William Morrow, US, hc, 1968. Paperback reprint: Ace, n.d.

The Game of Troy. Chatto & Windus, UK, hc, 1971. David McKay, US, hc, 1971. Paperback reprint: Dell, 1972.

The Garden Game. Chatto & Windus, UK. hc, 1973. Bobbs-Merrill, US, hc, 1974. UK paperback reprint: Panther, 1975; US pb: Pinnacle, 1978.

   On TCM tomorrow, an all-day marathon. They’ve shown these movies many times before, but here’s your chance to watch (or record) them back to back to back …

         Monday, October 5th —

6:00 AM Whistler, The (1944)
A grieving widower hires an assassin to kill him only to have his late wife turn up alive. Cast: Richard Dix, J. Carrol Naish, Gloria Stuart. Dir: William Castle. BW-60 mins, TV-PG

7:15 AM Power of the Whistler, The (1945)
A young woman seeks an amnesiac’s true identity in the clues in his pockets. Cast: Richard Dix, Janis Carter, Jeff Donnell. Dir: Lew Landers. BW-66 mins, TV-PG

8:30 AM Voice of the Whistler (1945)
A dying millionaire marries his nurse for companionship, only to experience a miracle cure. Cast: Richard Dix, Lynn Merrick, Rhys Williams. Dir: William Castle. BW-60 mins, TV-PG

9:45 AM Mysterious Intruder, The (1946)
A detective discovers the woman he’s been hired to track down is the key to an unusual inheritance. Cast: Richard Dix, Barton MacLane, Nina Vale. Dir: William Castle. BW-62 mins.

11:00 AM Secret of the Whistler, The (1946)
An artist plots murder when his rich wife when she catches him in an affair with one of his models. Cast: Richard Dix, Leslie Brooks, Michael Duane. Dir: George Sherman. BW-64 mins, TV-PG

12:15 PM Return of the Whistler, The (1948)
When a woman goes missing on the eve of her wedding, her fiancee hires a detective to track her down. Cast: Michael Duane, Lenore Aubert, Richard Lane. Dir: D. Ross Lederman. BW-63 mins, TV-PG

1:30 PM Whistling In The Dark (1941)
A radio detective is kidnapped and forced to plan the perfect murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, Conrad Veidt. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-78 mins, TV-G, CC

3:00 PM Whistling In Dixie (1942)
A radio detective’s southern honeymoon is cut short by the discovery of a murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, George Bancroft. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-74 mins, TV-G, CC

4:15 PM Whistling In Brooklyn (1943)
A radio sleuth infiltrates the Brooklyn Dodgers to solve a murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, “Rags” Ragland. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-87 mins, TV-G, CC

ADAM HOBHOUSE – The Hangover Murders. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1935. Hardcover reprint: Grosset & Dunlap, n.d. Digest-sized paperback reprint: Mercury Mystery #118, 1947. Film: Universal, 1935, as Remember Last Night? (Edward Arnold, Robert Young, Constance Cummings, Sally Eilers; director: James Whale).

   The Hangover Murders, the only novel published by the pseudonymous Adam Hobhouse, and one of only two Borzoi Murder Mystery titles, is known today almost exclusively as the basis for the 1935 screwball comedy mystery film, Remember Last Night?, a pretty good entry in the string of imitations of the William Powell/Myrna LoyThin Man series.

   More’s the pity, because the novel is even more remarkable. Except for the basic premise and a few of the tamer plot elements, it is also wholly different from the screen version.

   Screwball, yes. Comedy, no.

   The basic premise, unlike the rest of the book, is simple: a group of rich, alcoholic Long Islanders wake up from a night’s debauch with monumental hangovers, to discover that their host has been shot to death sometime during the night. One or more of the menage is likely guilty, the problem being that none of them can remember what happened during or after their rowdy binge.

   These are not just weekend or party drunks, you understand; they’re chronic boozers who regularly embark on “nice little busts,” wake up with the screaming horrors, and immediately start all over again.

   Every major character in the novel is a flaming drunk — the unlikable but nonetheless intriguing narrator, Tony Milburn, his wife, Carlotta, and the half dozen friends/suspects. Even the detective called in by Milburn, a New York cop named Danny Harrison, spends almost as much time tippling as he does sleuthing.

   The jacket blurb states in part: “Mr. Hobhouse has written a murder-mystery you will not put down until you’ve read the last page — an invitation to a party! In a stripped metallic style, with the speed of a streamlined train, and in the masculine temper that belongs to today, he has presented the people you read about in the papers — the polo-playing, auto-racing, hard-drinking crowd of fashionable Long Island — hard but charming men, beautiful but brittle women — in an explosive crime story.”

   Jacket blurbs are notoriously inaccurate, but this one is reasonably on the mark — up to a point. The men are hard, all right, though to call any of them charming is a considerable stretch. The women are just as hard, and sometimes just as nasty (one of them casually uses the euphemism “frigging,” probably its first ever appearance in a mystery novel).

   The style is certainly stripped and metallic, the pace frenetic. But it’s what the blurb leaves out that makes this more than just another mystery novel; makes it, in fact, a jaw-dropping tour de force.

   In addition to being as tough and as anything penned by the Black Mask boys in the 30s, with three bloody murders and an equally bloody suicide, it is:

   ? A biting, perhaps intentional satire of the The Thin Man (also published by Knopf the year before), with the lighthearted boozy elements turned upside down.

   ? A fair-play detective story, well clued, with some genuine detection and a surprisingly convoluted plot worthy of Christie (though it would probably have horrified her).

   ? A wild tangle of ingredients including but not limited to: ultra-tough slanguage interspersed with lyrical descriptions of such topics as French antiques and erudite quotes from various literary sources; graphic descriptions of violent acts and autopsy procedures; clever clues such as a note written in Greek that refers to a Christian love-feast and an obscure poem by Lord Byron; a quarter of a million dollars in missing money, one missing chauffeur, one dead chauffeur, a roadside inn run by a gang of drunken Sicilians, a country swimming hole surrounded by muddy footprints, the murder of a psychologist cum hypnotist by a gunman perched in a tree, lessons in ballistics and the making of shellac-and-plaster impressions, a polo match, a booby-trapped polo mallet, and a Revolutionary War cannon.

   There are also two lengthy sequences of staggering (literally) proportions. In one, Milburn chases a suspect into a Manhattan bar, pauses to have a few drinks with the patrons, is slipped a mickey by the bartender, and wakes up hours later in a Brooklyn backwater where he buys a decrepit horse from an Italian vendor, immediately changes the horse’s name from Aida to Rosinante (for no apparent reason), then woozily rides Rosinante bareback among startled crowds in search of a cop, his next drink, and a bucket of beer for the horse.

   In the other, a penultimate “nice little bust,” Milburn and Carlotta consume nearly a dozen different kinds of straight and mixed drinks in NYC restaurants and bars, go for a long joyriding jaunt in the country at 80 miles an hour in Tony’s Bugatti, spend the rest of the night wreaking havoc in a graveyard, and at daybreak breakfast on bottles of brandy and champagne.

   Milburn himself offers the best summation of these extraordinary events. It’s enough, he says at one point near the end, “to put a crimp in your cerebellum.”

   If you can find a copy of The Hangover Murders (it’s extremely scarce and as such, pricey), by all means read it. You may not like it, but I’ll guarantee you won’t soon forget it.

SCENE OF THE CRIME. MGM, 1949. Van Johnson, Arlene Dahl, Gloria DeHaven, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, John McIntire, Donald Woods, Norman Lloyd, Jerome Cowan. Director: Roy Rowland.

   This was a belated attempt by MGM to jump on the Crime Noir bandwagon, but though the effort’s certainly there, the studio’s higher than usual production values seem to work in a conversely counterproductive fashion against any major success the film may have had.

   Van Johnson plays a homicide detective named Mike Conovan in this one, a guy who has to deal with two problems in his life at the same time. First of all, he has to solve the murder of a fellow policeman and a good friend who’s found murdered outside a bookie joint with over a thousand dollars in cash in his pocket.

   Secondly, he has a strikingly beautiful wife Gloria (Arlene Dahl) who loves him but who’s getting more and more fretful and worried about the danger he faces every day.

   The ringing of the telephone every night, calling Mike to duty, doesn’t help matters much, either.

   Surprisingly enough, she appears to be far less fazed when she learns that her husband is cozying up to a gangster’s glamorous girl friend named Lili (the equally glamorous Gloria DeHaven).

   If it weren’t for the fact that he keeps his wedding ring on, and that they keep their feet on the floor all the time, I think there’s more than a hint that something more serious could have been going on. (There wasn’t.)

   In another studio’s production, there may have been more sparks in that direction, just maybe. And yet, even without that particular scenario taking place, what remains is an early attempt at a Dragnet-styled documentary of an actual police investigation, but in unlike Dragnet fashion, one in which human and domestic touches are as much of Mike Conovan’s world as bringing justice into it is.

   There’s also an appreciable amount of violence in this film, certainly enough to make Gloria’s worries about him well-founded. There are also long stretches with no musical score in the background, a touch I always appreciate when I notice it, and I usually do.

   Arlene Dahl, as pointed out before, was exceptionally beautiful — but looking at her overall career, I am struck (and puzzled) as to how short it really was. Her movie career began in 1947 and was essential over by the mid-sixties.

   Absolutely perfect in her role was Gloria DeHaven, but after thinking it over, I don’t think that Van Johnson was quite up to his. Supposedly a tough cop torn between his job and his wife, he seems too bland, too youthful, and not yet having seen enough life to make us believe he had.

   Good, even very good, in other words, but far from exceptional.

LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY. Fox, 1934. Will Rogers, Rochelle Hudson, George Barbier, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Slim Summerville, Sterling Holloway. Screenplay by Lamar Trotti, adapted from the novel by Walter B. Pitkin. Director: George Marshall. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Rogers was probably closer to 50 than 40 when he played Kenesaw H. Clark, a small-town newspaperman who loses his paper to banker George Barbier who calls in a loan after Rogers hires recently released convict Richard Cromwell, who had been convicted of stealing funds from Barbier’s bank.

   This is one of Rogers’ patented do-good roles as his rehabilitation of Cromwell includes proving he was framed for the theft and putting up lazy Slim Summville as an opposition candidate to Barbier in the upcoming school board election.

   Sterling Holloway plays dangerously close to a dead-on Caucasian Stepin Fetchit impersonation, with Hudson the schoolteacher who falls for Cromwell, and Darwell, greatness still ahead of her, doing her folksy (and very effective) maiden lady who may have an eye for perennial bachelor Rogers.

   The film’s portrayal of small-town America introduces some elements that almost veer into crime drama and an attempted lynching of Cromwell that casts an ugly shadow on this family comedy/drama.

   Rogers propelled these evocations of period America into box-office successes that may seem liked faded snapshots to some, but their genuine humor, warmth, and basic dramatic conflicts still have the power to engage and entertain.

DEAN OWEN – Juice Town.   Monarch 290; paperback original; first printing, December 1962. Cover art by Rafael M. deSoto.

   Over the years that he was writing, Dean Owen (born Dudley Dean McGaughey, 1909-1986) was perhaps better recognized for his westerns than for his crime fiction, but at the present time I doubt that he’s a well-known name in either field — except to regular readers of this blog, of course.

   If you follow the link that follows, though, you’ll find a fairly lengthy and what I hope is a complete checklist of all the fiction he wrote, starting out in the pulps, then moving on to writing paperback originals almost exclusively.

   Of the books already listed in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, I’ve found two errors. First of all, Juice Town is listed as only a marginal entry. Not so, as you will see in a minute. And A Killer’s Bargain (Hillman, pbo, 1960) is included, and I don’t believe it should be. From all I can tell without having it in hand, it’s a western, with no more crime elements than almost any other western has.

   And of the “sleaze” books Dean wrote, some may have definite crime elements, but while they’re included in the checklist, I don’t own any of them, so someone else will have to report in on those. (And in fact, two of the hard-to-find digests Owen wrote as Hodge Evens have since been confirmed as having substantial crime content.)

   It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book like this one. It starts out really, really tough and doesn’t let up until it’s over. It doesn’t matter too much if it’s also only a song with only one note. The one note is like a small incessant drumming in the background that just doesn’t go away until the book is finished.

   In a sense (speaking of westerns) this is a western in theme, at least, if not in reality. One guy in a white hat comes to town and cleans it up, one guy against the mob, one guy who’s left himself vulnerable with a wife and kids, but he does his job anyway.

   The guy in this book is Del Painter. Out of a job and looking for work – there’s a story behind that as well – he is persuaded to return to his home town of Southbay, California, and to join the same police department that he was so proud his Uncle Ray, now deceased, was a member of for so long.

   Little does Del know that his uncle was a crook, that the entire police department is crooked (and rather openly so), and that he on his first day on the job is expected to be a crook as well. Juice, in the sense of the title, means protection, as it is carefully explained to Del on page 34, and the police in Southbay make out very well, including the use of the services of the local ladies of the evening whenever they feel they have a need for them.

   Del has a hard head, though, and hard heads make for harder enemies in towns like this. He does make a few friends, however, although it difficult to tell at times – well, most of the time – on which side some of the friends are.

   Only 144 pages long, this book can be read in only one evening, and probably in only one sitting.

   And even though several weeks later you are probably not very likely to remember much of the details of what is admittedly a rather minor effort, this vividly jagged portrayal of a town with such a blatant disregard of the law may stick with you a whole lot longer than you think it will, when you’re done with it.

Hi Steve,

   I am starting to research the authors of the Herbert Jenkins publishing company, and wonder if you can help me by asking if anyone knows anything about four of their 1930s authors.

   Robert Ladline, Peter Luck and Gret Lane are pseudonyms of unidentified writers. The HJ archive tell me the contracts they hold are signed by different names, but won’t tell me without a search for descendants who would give permission for them to release the information! Since I have waited over a year so far for them to find such a descendant for another writer, that may be something to leave till all other possibilities have been checked.

   Garstin Begbie is the name on the contracts for books under that name, but a search of Ancestry etc has failed to produce anything.

   So would it be possible for you ask on your blog if the names mean anything to anyone? I know it’s a slim chance, but there’s always a chance someone might be looking for the names.

               Regards

                 John

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

         BEGBIE, GARSTIN

    Murder Mask (Jenkins, 1934, hc) [Supt. Samuel Quan; England]
    Sudden Death at Scotland Yard (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [Supt. Samuel Quan; England]
    Trailing Death (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]

         LADLINE, ROBERT

    A Devil in Downing Street (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    The Man Who Made a King (Jenkins, 1936, hc) [England]
    The Quest of the Vanishing Star (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]
    The Shoe Fits (Jenkins, 1936, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    Sinister Craft (Jenkins, 1939, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    The Sky’s the Limit (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    Stop That Man! (Jenkins, 1940, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    They Stuck at Nothing (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]
    When Fools Endanger Us (Jenkins, 1938, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    When the Police Failed (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [England]
    The Wolf Swept Down (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]

         LANE, GRET. Given name probably Margaret.

    The Cancelled Score Mystery (Jenkins, 1929, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    The Curlew Coombe Mystery (Jenkins, 1930, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death in Mermaid Lane (Jenkins, 1940, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death Prowls the Cove (Jenkins, 1942, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death Visits the Summer-House (Jenkins, 1939, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Found on the Road (Jenkins, 1926, hc) [England]
    The Guest with the Scythe (Jenkins, 1943, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    The Hotel Cremona Mystery (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; London]
    The Lantern House Affair (Jenkins, 1931, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); England]
    The Red Mirror Mystery (Jenkins, 1938, hc) [Insp. Hook; England]
    The Stolen Scar (Jenkins, 1925, hc) [Idaho]
    Three Dead That Night (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [Insp. Hook; England]
    The Unknown Enemy (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]

         LUCK, PETER

    Crime Legitimate (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [England]
    Infallible Witness (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]
    The Killing of Ezra Burgoyne (Jenkins, 1929, hc) [England]
    Terror by Night (Jenkins, 1934, hc) [England]
    The Transome Murder Mystery (Jenkins, 1930, hc) [England]
    Two Shots (Jenkins, 1931, hc) [England]
    Under the Fourth-? (Jenkins, 1927, hc) [England]
    Who Killed Robin Cockland? (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [England]
    The Wingrave Case (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]
    The Wrong Number (Jenkins, 1926, hc) [England]

CARTER BROWN – Lament for a Lousy Lover. Signet S1856, paperback original; 1st printing, 1960 [Baryé cover art]. Third printing: Signet D3162 [Robert McGinnis cover]. Also published in Carter Brown Long Story Magazine #19, Australia, Horwitz, 1961.

   The Australian writer Alan G. Yates, a veritable one-man paperback factory, has turned out hundreds of lightweight private-eye and police novels under the Carter Brown pseudonym. The books borrow liberally from the old Spicy Detective pulp formula: action, wisecracks, coarse humor, plenty of voluptuous un- and underdressed sexpots.

   This one is a bit unusual in that it features two of Brown’s regular series characters in one book: Al Wheeler, the skirt-chasing Pine City sheriff’s detective; and Mavis Seidlitz, an astonishingly endowed and astoundingly dizzy blonde who somehow manages to fmd work as a private eye.

   Their historic meeting was prompted by a suggestion from Anthony Boucher, the only mystery critic of consequence to regularly review Brown’s paperbacks.

   As is the case with many of Brown’s books, the background is Hollywood. Mavis is on location for the filming of a hit TV western series, hired to keep a couple of feuding starlets apart. The star is murdered (via the ancient wheeze of substituting live bullets for blanks), and Wheeler is assigned to the case.

   Everybody has a likely motive; another murder ensues; Mavis blunders around like an idiot; Wheeler lusts after the starlets and winds up with Mavis. The first-person narrative alternates between Wheeler and Mavis (Yates/Brown deserves extra credit for successfully managing to provide this burlesque caricature with a semi-plausible character voice).

   Among the dozens of other Al Wheeler novels are The Brazen (1960), Burden of Guilt (1970), and Wheeler Fortune (1974). Mavis Seidlitz also stars in None but the Lethal Heart (1959) and Tomorrow Is Murder (1960).

   Brown’s other series characters include L.A. private eye Rick Holman; Randy Roberts, a randy San Francisco lawyer; and Hollywood scriptwriter Larry Baker and his drunken partner, Boris Slivka.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Other Carter Brown novels reviewed on this blog —

      Meet Murder, My Angel, by Geoff Bradley.

      The Deadly Kitten, by Stephen Mertz.

      Plus Toni Johnson-Woods on the CARTER BROWN MYSTERY THEATRE.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS. Orion Pictures, 1986. Patsy Kensit, Eddie O’Connell, David Bowie, James Fox, Ray Davies, Mandy Rice-Davies, Sade Adu. Based on the novel by Colin MacInnes. Original music: Gil Evans; cinematography by Oliver Stapleton. Director: Julien Temple.

   For me, this knockout of a movie musical was an absolute eye-opener. A veritable feast for the eyes and ears throughout, beginning with the opening narration by Colin (Eddie O’Connell):

   It is as if the war and the postwar recovery were over at last, and the world changed in a magical instant from black-and-white to vivid color. It is the summer of the teen-ager, brought to life and personified by Colin the photographer, and Suzette (Patsy Kensit) the model. Youth and young love and … money. Bright lights and glitter are always followed by trouble. No roads are ever easy, and there are always obstacles along the way.

   Success comes to Suzette first, and boy loses girl. Does that sum it up? Does boy win girl back? Don’t always be so sure.

   Beautifully photographed throughout, with the best of late 50s London pop and rock, as seen through the visual lens of 1986. If David Bowie and Ray Davies (of The Kinks) do not play your kind of music, as they do mine, this may not be the movie for you, but the flash and brilliant color may win you back.

   From the first sequence on, a melange of activity in a busy, thriving section of streets in a boisterous entertainment area in London, over two minutes long in one continuing shot filled with what looks like hundreds of musicians and dancers, I was caught up immediately. This is my kind of musical.

   Colin again:   “For the first time ever, kids were teenagers. They had loot, however come by and loot’s for spending. Where there’s loot, trouble follows.”

   Can you say “sell out”?

   And worse. The ending, incorporating as it does hints of class warfare (well, more than hints) and a well-choreographed racial riot that I’d have made several minutes shorter, but it is one of the four crucial parts of the book this film was based on, the events of which take place on four days in London — one a month — over an 18-year-old boy’s last summer as a teenager.

   Even so, some reviewers have said that this movie misses the whole point of the book, which I haven’t read, but I have a feeling they may be right, that any message the film may have intended is lost among the magnificent colors, vivid imagery, and above all, the music. An overload, in fact, but truthfully? I didn’t mind it for a second.

PETER CARTER BROWN – Meet Murder, My Angel. Horwitz-Transport, Australia, paperback, 1956.

   I’ve written before that one of my guilty pleasures is the Al Wheeler books of Carter Brown. Back in the 1950s and early ’60s, when I was an impressionable teenager, I read a lot of Brown in those large but thin Horwitz paperbacks.

   I found them to be fast, breezy and humorous reads and those few I’ve read in later days have been similarly entertaining.

   I saw this 1954 production — when Carter Brown was still Peter Carter Brown on the spine and title page, though he had morphed to just Carter Brown on the front cover — in a second hand bookshop and, though it was rather tatty, it was cheap and I couldn’t resist it.

   More fool me. When I got it home and started on it I expected a couple of hours of brisk humour but what I got was absolute rubbish. The story, narrated by Californian attorney Mike Stone, involves hidden treasures, old gangsters and beautiful women but is absolute tosh. Worse, it isn’t in the slightest bit funny.

EDITORIAL COMMENTS. I think it confirms Geoff’s judgment on this book to point out that unless it came out under a different title, this book was never published in either England or the US. It’s also a scarce book. There are no copies for sale anywhere on the Internet.

   Luckily Geoff kept the one he reviewed — I wasn’t sure after I read the his comments about the book! — so that’s the one you see up above. He adds: “The book is number 23 in the Horwitz series, and I believe it’s an Australian edition though the copyright page lists distribution agents for the UK, Ireland and Europe. The cover also has 2/- which is two shillings (or was in 1956).”