CIRCUS. Columbia, 2000. John Hannah, Famke Janssen, Brian Conley, Peter Stormare, Fred Ward, Eddie Izzard, Amanda Donohoe. Directed by Rob Walker.

   There’s plenty of split opinion to go around on this movie, but to get mine out of the way first, me, I liked it. For the most part, the dissenters fall into two camps: first, those who couldn’t follow the plot line and gave up, and secondly, those who found it inferior to a number of other similar movies of the British gangster persuasion that came out around the same time: Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, to name two.

   Not so coincidentally, both of these were directed by Guy Ritchie, and as to the latter objection, my opinion may be biased because I’ve yet to see either one.

   But as for the complicated twists and turns of the plot: I loved them! Compared to a movie like Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (reviewed here) in which the story line is straight as a string, with the mildest of zingers at the end, Circus is absolutely dynamite.

   One never knows (until the next scene) who is in cahoots with whom, and not even with a scorecard can you even tell which players are on which team.

   It would take several watchings before I’d feel totally confident that I’d have the story completely in my grasp, so that I could relay them on to you, and even then it might not even be possible. I’ll do my best, but I won’t go into detail, and of course you wouldn’t want me to anyway. (You’d hate me tomorrow if I did.)

   In any case, here goes: a con artist couple named Leo and Lilly (John Hannah and Famke Janssen) are planning one last final scam, but unknown to them a brutal crime lord named Bruno (Brian Conley) has plans of his own, targeting Leo with a blackmail scheme that’s built around hiring him as a hit man to kill a woman named Gloria (Amanda Donohue) who’s already on Leo’s team, or has Lilly been bending Bruno’s ear so that she’s really working for him, or did I just make that up? In the meantime Leo’s bookie Troy (Eddie Izzard) is after him for some bad bets that he made and he wants to get paid, and can Leo actually trust Lilly? Bruno’s accountant Julius (Peter Stormare) is in on the blackmail scheme, but is he working for Bruno, for Leo, for Lilly, or himself, or is he only a poor schnook who’s being taken advantage of by all three? (Is Gloria really his wife, or is she only another pawn, or does she have a mind of her own?)

   Once again, please keep in mind that some or all of the above is true. Would I lie to you? Yes, I would.

   A complicated story like this could be a huge flop easily if the actors involved weren’t involved, and believe me, they are. No phoned-in roles in this movie. John Hannah you might remember as the later Inspector Rebus in that series, and Famke Janssen is even more memorable as Jean Gray in the “X-Men” extravaganzas. They make a terrific pair, whether working together in this movie, or not, when they are even better.

ANNE PERRY – Callander Square. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1980. Reprint paperback: Fawcett Crest, 1981. Reprinted many times since.

   Anne Perry’s books featuring London police inspector Thomas Pitt are called “Victorian mysteries.” One look at the covers of the paperback editions would lead the reader to believe they are just more of what has been called the “Gasp in the Grass” genre — the kind of stories that find the virginal heroine crawling at least once across the grassy slopes of a Victorian mansion in the moonlight.

   Not so. Perry has very cleverly portrayed British Victorian society with a sharp eye for its particular brand of social deceit. She is especially skilled at making the reader realize the almost unbelievable subjugation of women in those days, and if one ever wonders why women began to rebel against social constriction at the turn of the twentieth century, these books will clear up that mystery, too.

   Detective Thomas Pitt is a working-class hero in the extraordinary position of being called upon periodically to blow the cover of the English aristocracy. Being a policeman, he can exercise certain influence; if any blustering old gent attempts to order him out of the Morning Room, Pitt can threaten a search warrant.

   He rarely needs to resort to such tactics, however, because he gets inside help from his charming wife, Charlotte, who stepped out of her upper-class world to marry him. She is an honest and enthusiastic woman whose family despairs of her insistence on following her own inchnations (although most of the women she grew up with admire her courage).

   And she is invaluable to Pitt, since most of his cases involve his exposing the passion beneath the icy breast of the upper classes. Pitt analyzes the facts with cool logic, while Charlotte uses her family connections to pick up pertinent gossip over tea and crumpets.

   In Callander Square, gardeners have inadvertently dug up the corpses of two newbom babies in the square of one of the most affluent suburbs of London. The neighborhood residents, while forced to admit the monstrosity of the deaths, simply chalk them up to the irnrnorality of some servant girl who “let herself” be molested — probably by a footman, perhaps the master of the house; gentlemen always dally with the servant girls “just for a spot of fun.”

   It is too bad, they concede, that the girl was stupid enough to get herself into such a mess — but then, what can one expect from the working class anyway?

   Of course, those babies never belonged to a servant girl, and it is Pitt’s job to expose the enormous hypocrisy of the self-righteous elite — as well as two murderers, a blackmailer, and a gentleman drunk. This is an excellent novel that says a great deal about social pretension and the harm it can do.

   Other highly recommended books in this series are The Cater Street Hangman (1979), Paragon Walk (1981), Resurrection Row (1981), Rutland Place (1983), and Bluegate Fields (1984).

         ———
   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.

ANNE PERRY – Southampton Row.  Ballantine; reprint paperback, Feb 2003. Hardcover edition: Ballantine, February 2002.

   I probably haven’t thought enough about this yet, so there are probably any number of exceptions I’m not thinking of right now. But it’s treacherous ground for detective stories to get into, isn’t it, when the case to be solved in one novel is nothing more than a continuation of that begun (and not finished) in another?

   Thomas Pitt supposedly thwarted Charles Voisey, the villain in The Whitechapel Conspiracy, the book in the series before this one, and here he is, acting up again. It doesn’t feel right. Detective novels are supposed to have some sort of closure, aren’t they?

   Or perhaps I should take it back. Sherlock Holmes had his nemesis in Professor Moriarty, Bulldog Drummond had to battle Carl Peterson for several adventures, and Sax Rohmer’s Nayland Smith was constantly dueling if not outwitting Fu Manchu, and it obviously didn’t hurt the popularity of any one of those series.

   But — as far as I can recall, and you tell me if I’m wrong — each of Holmes’ cases was self-contained, and except for the escape of the villain at the end, each of the Drummond and Fu Manchu books tied up the loose ends, and this one of Anne Perry’s, at least, doesn’t. At the book’s end, we still don’t know who the other hidden adversary is, an alienated member of the Voisey’s Inner Circle? And/or is he one of Pitt’s superiors? Could the corruption reach that high?

   Epic science fiction sagas seem to come in trilogies — rightly or wrongly, blame it on Tolkien? — but it’s a little disconcerting to discover it in detective fiction. I’m relatively new to Perry’s work in general. Her stories of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt seem to make up one long, extended Victorian drama, and you could say the same about the William Monk books as well. Which is all well and good, and Perry’s work is very popular. I understand the attraction, but when there’s no resolution to the mystery end of things, I (speaking for myself) start to feel uneasy.

   In the case at hand — to get back to the review in progress — it takes a while for an actual murder to occur for Pitt to solve, that of a medium who may also be a blackmailer. Her death may also involve Voisey, and his attempt to run for Parliament.

   Before that, and even afterward, there is a large amount of 19th century British politics to be expounded upon, and arguments about social justice and Home Rule for Ireland, either by the candidates themselves, or their wives. You may or may not find it all very interesting, but I got the strong impression that this is the story that Perry really wanted to tell, and it goes without saying (doesn’t it?) zeal and enthusiasm does matter.

   As for the mystery, I noticed small glitches in the plot here and there. And while Anne Perry’s narrative technique often consists of characters mentally asking themselves all manner of questions, the questions I wanted to ask were almost never among them.

   Charlotte has only a minor role this time. In a melodramatic finish Thomas solves the murder, but if he has the goods on Voisey on another matter — “a complicated scheme of personal revenge” — why does he let him go? I’m badly fuddled. It didn’t help to go back and read certain passages again. In fact I think it made matters worse. Befuddled, therefore, I remain, and bodaciously bemused.

[UPDATE] 08-14-09.   Before reprinting this review (which may not have actually appeared anywhere else until now), I confess I looked at the comments posted on Amazon, and I discovered that I was not alone in being put off balance by coming in at the middle and not having read the previous book in what’s now apparently a small “arc” in the overall Pitt series.

   It didn’t bother regular readers of the series, however, of which there are many. I’ve read (but not reviewed) only one other of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt’s adventures, the title of which I no longer recall.

   Earlier on this blog, though, you can read my comments here on Funeral in Blue, a case for William Monk, another book which, unfortunately, I also found disappointing.

SHERIDAN HAY – The Secret of Lost Things.

Doubleday, hardcover, March 2007. Trade paperback: Anchor, March 2008.

   After her mother dies, Rosemary Savage, with the financial help of her mother’s best friend, moves to New York City, and soon finds a job at the Arcade, a mammoth used bookstore (clearly inspired by The Strand), where she hopes, as she puts it, to “call herself into being.”

   This coming-of-age novel will delight any bibliophile, but it should capture the interest of mystery lovers as Rosemary becomes enmeshed in the intrigue that surrounds the discovery of a lost Herman Melville manuscript.

   Still, what will probably finally linger in my memory are the incisively etched portraits of the peculiar staff of the Arcade and the portrayal of the store as a mysterious entity inhabiting a space seemingly detached from the world outside its walls.

   It drew me in so completely that, given the chance to return, I would abandon the work-a-day world without a second thought.

WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE? 1966. Originally released in Czechoslovakia as Kto chce zabíc Jessii? Director: Vaclav Vorlicek.

   Despite the title, Who Wants To Kill Jessie (1966) is not a murder mystery, but a Czechoslovakian pop-art sci-fi satire (you know the type) made the same year as Alphaville and sharing many of that film’s fetishes for pop culture and politics.

   An eminent (and rather dowdy) female scientist invents a serum designed to purge dreams of their unsettling elements, leading to happy, productive dreams (“No longer will people be allowed to dream anything they wish.”) and when she discovers her husband dreaming of a scantly-clad comic-strip heroine constantly menaced by a cowboy and a superhero, she purges his dream, only to have the characters materialize and begin a comic chase through their society.

   A basic situation that could have led to facile clowning or heavy moralizing in lesser hands is handled here with charming slapdash panache and innocent energy delightful to watch.

   Director Vaclav Vorlicek mixes sight gags and verbal humor (that survives the subtitling surprisingly well) with a deft touch and an obvious love of the comic-book culture he’s exploiting, and his players (whose names would mean nothing to you) convey a conflict of bureaucratic buffoonery and pulp-paper passion with that sincerity which is the essence of Comedy. A film that deserves a bigger reputation.

   By the way, I know I said the cast names would mean nothing to you, but for the sake of Academic Correctness, I should add that the actress who plays the comic-strip-heroine starred in some enjoyably gaudy English-language films (like The Vengeance of She) and eventually found her way into the December 1969 issue of Playboy.

   Just thought I’d mention it.

Editorial comment:   And on the cover of the March 1964 issue. Worth mentioning, too, perhaps?

E. BAKER QUINN – One Man’s Muddle. Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1936. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1937.

   Two years before Raymond Chandler introduced us to Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1939), E. Baker Quinn, a British writer, anticipated both his voice and his attempt to do something more serious with the detective novel with her first novel about former Scotland Yard sleuth James Strange, an accomplishment noted by critic James Sandoe in his famous list of notable hard-boiled writers.

   When we first meet her sleuth James Strange, he has fled to a “… tu’penny ha’penny inn a hundred miles from nowhere,” to escape his past. But he knows it’s hopeless. “Do a bunk to the jungles of Africa and ten to one you’ll meet your mother-in-law’s char coming around the first bush …”

   And for Strange it is much worse than his mother-in-law’s charwoman. He’s runs smack into the former Mrs. Boynton, now Mrs. Geoffrey Wharton, a former London snowbird, an addict, who knows all about Scotland Yard’s former bright young thing who has just completed four years in the pen for possession of illegal drugs.

   And of course Mrs. Wharton is promptly murdered, and Strange finds himself forced to help her husband cover up her past while trying to cover up his own and keep the police from finding the .32 caliber automatic hidden in his luggage, the gun he used in a manslaughter case he was acquitted in — but would rather not bring up again — and coincidentally, the same caliber Mrs. Wharton was shot with …

   His attempts to keep his head above water push him deeper into the mess, and force him back to his ex-fiancee in London and to Ratchet, the partner who ratted on him and testified against him as King’s evidence.

   That’s the set up for a novel that anticipates the style and voice of Chandler’s novels:

   Before it is over Strange will solve the case, but find himself facing another two years in prison.

   In later books Strange gets out of prison and goes to work as a private eye with his despised ex-partner Ratchet. The voice continues in the Chandler vein.

   Who Quinn was, and how she came to discover a voice and subject matter so close to Chandler is a mystery in itself. But her books are worth discovering and reading, and Strange a curious compliment to Marlowe and his world.

   Here are a few samples of Quinn and Strange:

   One Man’s Muddle and its sequels are an interesting look at a Marlowe that might have been, one of those curious side roads that sometime run parallel to a more successful track. And well worth reading and discovering as first rate mysteries by a writer who deserved more recognition than she got.

         Bibliographic data: [From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

QUINN, E(LEANOR) BAKER

       One Man’s Muddle (n.) Heinemann 1936. Macmillan, 1937. [James Strange]
       The Dead Harm No One (n.) Heinemann 1938.    (**)
       Death Is a Restless Sleeper (n.) Heinemann 1940. Mystery House, 1941. [James Strange]

(**) While it seems likely that he is, it is not known whether James Strange is in this book or not.

    Peeking ahead at next November’s schedule, I found a bonanza of “Falcon” movies coming up on Turner Classic Movies. Synchronize your calendars!

      Friday November 20

6:00 AM Gay Falcon, The (1942)
   A society sleuth tries to break up an insurance scam. Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Gladys Cooper. Dir: Irving Reis. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC

7:15 AM Date With The Falcon, A (1941)
   The gentleman detective postpones his wedding to find a cache of stolen diamonds. Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, James Gleason. Dir: Irving Reis. BW-63 mins, TV-G

8:30 AM Falcon Takes Over, The (1942)
   A society sleuth and a lady reporter try to track down a murderous thug’s lost girlfriend. Cast: George Sanders, Lynn Bari, Ward Bond. Dir: Irving Reis. BW-63 mins, TV-G

9:45 AM Falcon’s Brother, The (1942)
   A gentlemanly detective calls on his brother to help him stop the Nazis from assassinating a key diplomat. Cast: George Sanders, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph. Dir: Stanley Logan. BW-63 mins, TV-G. [Screenplay by Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer.]

11:00 AM Falcon Strikes Back, The (1943)
   A society sleuth is framed for murder by criminals running a war-bond racket. Cast: Tom Conway, Harriet Hilliard, Edgar Kennedy. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-66 mins, TV-G

12:15 PM Falcon In Danger, The (1943)
   A society sleuth tracks a lost plane carrying $100,000. Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Elaine Shepard. Dir: William Clemens. BW-70 mins, TV-G

1:30 PM Falcon And The Co-Eds, The (1944)
   A society sleuth investigates murder at a girls’ school. Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell. Dir: William Clemens. BW-68 mins, TV-G

2:45 PM Falcon Out West, The (1944)
   A society sleuth turns cowboy to investigate a Texas murder. Cast: Tom Conway, Carole Gallagher, Barbara Hale. Dir: William Clemens. BW-64 mins.

4:00 PM Falcon In Mexico, The (1944)
   A society sleuth travels South of the border to investigate an art dealer’s murder. Cast: Tom Conway, Mona Maris, Martha MacVicar. Dir: William Berke. BW-70 mins, TV-G

5:15 PM Falcon In Hollywood, The (1944)
   A society sleuth tours the movie capital, where he uncovers an actor’s murder. Cast: Tom Conway, Barbara Hale, Sheldon Leonard. Dir: Gordon Douglas. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC

6:30 PM Falcon In San Francisco, The (1945)
   A society sleuth enlists a little girl’s help in nabbing a mob of silk smugglers. Cast: Tom Conway, Rita Corday, Sharyn Moffett. Dir: Joseph H. Lewis. BW-66 mins, TV-G.

             —

   These, of course, have played many times over on TCM, but if you’ve never seen or taped them before, here’s a great chance to obtain them all at once. There are two more in which Conway appeared, followed by three starring John Calvert. You may have to hunt a while on the collector’s market for some or all of these.

THE FALCON’S ALIBI. (1946, RKO) Tom Conway, Elisha Cook, Jr.

THE FALCON’S ADVENTURE. (1946, RKO) Tom Conway.

THE DEVIL’S CARGO. (1948, Film Classics) John Calvert, Rochelle Hudson, Roscoe Karns, Lyle Talbot, Tom Kennedy, Theodore Van Eltz, Paul Regan

APPOINTMENT WITH MURDER. (1948, Film Classics) John Calvert, Catherine Craig, Lyle Talbot, Jack Reitzzen, Peter Brocco

SEARCH FOR DANGER. (1949, Film Classics) John Calvert, Albert Dekker, Myrna Dell, Douglas Fowley, Ben Welden

DIPLOMAT – Murder in the State Department. Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, US, hardcover, 1930.

   John Franklin Carter wrote books on a variety of subjects under several pen names, including Unofficial Observer and Jay Franklin. But when in 1930 he began a series of detective novels about a diplomat-detective, Dennis Tyler, he chose his pen name, Diplomat, with malice aforethought.

   Many of the titles of his books about Tyler suggest a political setting — for example, in addition to the above, Carter wrote Murder in the Embassy, The Corpse on the White House Lawn, Death in the Senate, and Slow Death at Geneva.

   Carter’s interest in politics and diplomacy is also apparent in his nonfiction books under the Jay Franklin pseudonym — for example, he wrote a biography of La Guardia.

   A recent reading of Murder in the State Department suggested that Carter’s detective fiction might be worthy of rediscovery. Undersecretary Harrison Howard is found with a steel filing spike in his chest, and Dennis Tyler, Chief of the Bureau of Current Political Intelligence, jauntily arrives on the scene. Tyler, who affects a Harvard accent and abundant sassy repartee (for which I must confess a weakness), puts his career on the line in his effort to solve the crime.

   The case involves, among other things, an undersecretary seen flying down the nocturnal halls of the State Department with no visible means of support, the latest discovery by the Chemical Warfare Service, and finally a sinister plot by a national pacifist leader to take over the country (shades of Fu Manchu!).

   The book is weakened by an unsatisfying ending, but the author’s style is brisk and the action incessant.

   As long as credibility is not required, Murder in the State Department makes very entertaining reading and I look forward to investigating other Diplomat books in my library.

[UPDATE] 08-12-09.   From the second issue of TAD [January 1968] is the following News Note, signed by AJH  [Al Hubin] —

    In the first issue of The Armchair Detective a novel by John Franklin Carter was reviewed, and it was suggested that Carter’s detective fiction, written in the 1930′ s under the pseudonym Diplomat, was worthy of rediscovery. Mr. Carter died November 27 at the age of 70, and thanks to Charles Shibuk I am in possession of obituary notices from the New York Times and the New York Post.

   Mr. Carter was born in 1897, one of a family of 7 children of Rev. John Franklin Carter, an Episcopal clergyman, and his wite. Weakened health due to a serious childhood infection caused him to learn to write “in self-defense against a world which is, among children at least, thoroughly contemptuous of weaklings.”

   He was occupied in various phases of newspaper work during his twenties, and then, beginning in 1928 when he moved to Washington, concerned himself with politics and government service for the rest of his lite. He held posts in the Departments of State and Agriculture, and commented on political life on radio programs and in newspaper columns for many years. Most of his more than 30 books dealt with politics, but it is interesting to note that although considerable space was devoted in the newspapers (especially the Times, on whose staff Carter served for some 5 years) and in Time Magazine to his obituary none of these publications said one word about his detective fiction.

WHITMAN CHAMBERS – Dead Men Leave No Fingerprints.

Doubleday, hardcover, 1935. Hardcover reprint: Caxton House, 1939. Paperback reprint: Detective Novel Classic #28, circa 1943.

   Danish film star and sexpot Hilda Haan hires private detective Stanton Lake to get her out of the clutches of a man who threatens to tell her studio about her “moral turpitude” unless she marries him. Lake says he’ll get her out of the mess if he has to kill the man to do it.

   That turns out to be unnecessary. Someone else does the job for him while preparations are being made for a seance at the residence of Rufus Raybourne, a real-estate magnate now suffering hard times. The victim is killed with a poker that has on it the fingerprints of an enemy of Raybourne’s.

   Yet this enemy died more than a year earlier in prison. Or did he? Lake plays ghoul and finds an empty grave. Two more murders take place. After each one, the same fingerprints are found.

   An unusual motive, a cunning — well, he or she would have been if the killings hadn’t continued once Lake’s identity was revealed — murderer, and an interesting character in Lake.

   The writing level is the ’30s standard: Passable.

R. D. ROSEN – Strike Three, You’re Dead. Walker, 1984. Signet, pb, 1986. Walker, trade pb, 2001.

   Harvey Blissberg, the hero of Strike Three, You’re Dead, is a baseball player recently traded from the Boston Red Sox to a new American League expansion team, the Providence Jewels.

   Called “Professor” by his younger teammates for his reading habits and off-diamond attire, Blissberg is stumped for a motive to the murder of his roommate, Rudy, and begins looking for the murderer out of a combination of curiosity and guilt.

   Discouraged by management, teammates, and police, Blissberg gets support from his girlfriend, a local TV sportscaster, and his brother, a baseball fanatic, as he tries to determine why his best friend on the team wound up drowned in the team whirlpool. His quest for the murderer takes on a new urgency when he, too, becomes a target.

   Baseball statisticians will have a very slight edge in solving the murder, but such avidity is not needed. Rosen’s clever plotting, quick wit, and subtle understatement makes this book both entertaining and easy to read.

   In the second book in this series, Fadeaway (1985), Blissberg has retired to become a professional detective and is called in to solve the murder of two NBA basketball stars.

   Strike Three, You’re Dead was named one of the seven best mysteries of the year by the New York Times, and won a Best First Novel Edgar. Rosen is also the author of two nonfiction books and numerous essays, criticisms, and articles on sports and humor.

         ———
   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.