P. D. JAMES – A Mind to Murder. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1963. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1967. Reprinted many times, both hardcover and soft, including Popular Library, paperback, US, 1976. (All shown.)

   Although mystery fiction has had more than its share of characters with psychiatric conditions, there have been few books set in psychiatric institutions.

   Coincidentally, two of these are currently available in paperback, and they are both worth seeking out. A Mind to Murder is P. D. James’s second novel and draws heavily on her own experience for its setting, a London psychiatric outpatient clinic.

   The victim is a hospital administrator, a position Miss James held in the British Civil Service System.

   Not only does the author know the workings of such a clinic, but she also knows the heartbreak of mental illness firsthand, since her husband, a physician, was hospitalized due to that condition for most of the twenty years before his death in 1964.

   Authenticity is the strong point of this book, along with the writing,which is civilized and perceptive; its plotting adequate, but it is not as good in that regard as the 1962 James debut novel, Cover Her Face.

   James is very adept at characterization, especially as regards Adam Dalgliesh, her series ,detective, who shows depths not often found in sleuths who solve the kind of classic puzzles James presents. Her skillful writing evokes considerable poignancy in describing his personal life.

   There is also a superbly written section about his searching the apartment of the victim, and Dalgliesh has enough empathy to realize that the necessary act is a violation of a dead person.

   If P. D. James seems to have received an inordinate amount of praise in recent years, do not begrudge it to her. She, more than most, combines the ability to plot interesting puzzles with the writing skill to observe society create real characters, and write with intelligence and sophistication.

Editorial Comment:  The review by Marv of the second of the two paperback mysteries he refers to will appear on this blog soon.

JACK FOXX – Wildfire.   Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1978. Reworked and republished as Firewind, as by Bill Pronzini: M. Evans, hardcover, 1989; paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   Very nice review of Wildfire, which I missed seeing when it first appeared; I’m pleased that you found it to be a suspenseful read. Firewind is a reworking of Wildfire, but not merely a reissue under a different title.

   Although the basic storyline and general progression are similar in both versions, Wildfire has a contemporary setting and Firewind a historical one, and the characters and their motives and interactions are different.

   I wasn’t satisfied with the way Wildfire turned out, but it wasn’t until a few years after it was published that I realized why: the story works better as a “western” and should have been written as such in the first place.

   So when Sara Ann Freed, who was editing M. Evans’ western line in the late 80s, asked me to do a second book for her (after The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran), it gave me an opportunity to transform Wildfire into Firewind. The latter is much the better of the two.

   As to the Jack Foxx name, which you also asked about, I chose it for two reasons. The minor is that it’s short and punchy, both surname and given name just four letters; the major is that I’ve always considered the letter “X” something of a lucky talisman.

   Long-time readers of my work might note that I often give characters names containing an “x”.

   Pronzini’s “X” file. One of my many quirks, on and off the printed page.

TWO SMART PEOPLE. MGM, 1946. John Hodiak, Lucille Ball, Lloyd Nolan, Elisha Cook Jr., Hugo Haas, Lloyd Corrigan, Vladimir Solokoff. Screenplay: Ethel Hill, Leslie Charteris. Director: Jules Dassin.

   Two Smart People is a charming little romantic crime caper often falsely identified as a comedy thanks to the presence of Ball and the byplay between her, Hodiak and Nolan. Instead it could easily be an adventure of the Saint, as it plays a good deal on the cat and mouse game between con man Ace Connors (Hodiak) and cop Bob Simms (Nolan), who is hot on his trail.

   Connors has stolen some valuable bonds and is planning to sell them. Nolan wants the bonds even more than he wants Connors and hopes to convince the charming con man to turn them in for a reduced sentence. Lucy is a con woman on the lam from a charge in Arkansas.

   Simms has caught up with Connors in California, but Connors talks him into traveling back east on the train that will take them through the Southwest and end up in New Orleans — where Connors plans to elude Simms and sell the bonds.

   Complicating things are the presence of Ball’s Ricki Woodner, and Elisha Cook Jr. as Fly Feletti, a murderous accomplice of Ace’s hot on the trail of him and the bonds. Simms plays along hoping to get Ace and the bonds.

   Suspense isn’t really what director Dassin is after here. The train trip is an excuse for the romance to develop between Ace and Ricki as Simms works on Ricki to help him convince Ace to go straight before it is too late.

   There is a brief twist when Ricki gets Ace across the border into Mexico when they stopover in El Paso, but Simms lures him back, and now Ricki’s only hope is to get Ace to hand over the bonds, but Ace has plans of his own — it’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans and amid the chaos and costumes he and Ricki can elude Simms, sell the bonds, and head for Cuba.

   But Ace hasn’t counted on Ricki’s conscience or Feletti’s obsession, and when he goes to sell the bonds to fence Vladimir Sokaloff in New Orleans he finds Ricki, himself, and Simms all in danger.

   Though there are comedy elements in the film and even a few noir elements (notably Cook’s Fellitti), Two Smart People is neither a comedy nor film noir. But it is a charming little romantic crime film with elements of both and an exceptional cast at the top of their form.

   It’s one of only a handful of screenplays by Charteris, and though it is impossible to know how much he contributed to it, the film has many elements of the Saint in Ace Connors character, although he is more a professional and less an adventurer.

   Watching it I couldn’t help but think in many ways this was closer to how Charteris would have liked to see Templar played on the big screen than the previous series entries he was so vocal a critic of.

   Two Smart People may not be for all tastes, and it is only a minor work of Dassin’s, but it plays well, and the triangle of conflicting interests between Ace, Ricki, and Simms within the confines of the train journey with stopovers for a little scenic.tour and romance play smoothly and keep your interest.

   Hodiak and Ball are well cast opposite each other, and Nolan was making a career of playing very human cops (ironically he played one opposite Hodiak’s amnesiac private eye in Joseph Mankiewicz’s film noir Somewhere In the Night the same year as People) in this period.

   Cook is good as the nervous killer, a bit of a throwback to Wilbur in The Maltese Falcon instead of the nervous cowards he became typecast as, and the rest of the cast are all in high gear.

   Two Smart People isn’t a lost masterpiece, or a major work from director Dassin, just a very good and entertaining film with more to offer than might at first be obvious. It’s not going to become your favorite film, but it might just become a surprising discovery, one of those little films you might otherwise have missed or skipped, but are glad you discovered, and sometimes those are as rare and prized as lost masterpieces.

   I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have a number of these minor films on my list that I turn to when I might not be in the mood for something more challenging. Sometimes you just want to watch a movie, not change your life. Watch it in that light, and it’s likely to surprise you. These days sheer competence and skill and a tale well told are rare enough to be applauded and even treasured.

PHILIP KERR – A German Requiem. Viking, UK/US, hardcover, 1991. Paperback edition: Penguin, 1993 (shown), with many later printings.

    I’ve already read the fourth and fifth books in Kerr’s series about German investigator Bernie Gunther. When I started to read the fourth I had thought that I had read the first three in the series but came to realise that I hadn’t read the third. I’ve now rectified this and I’m glad in did.

    It’s set in 1947 and Bernie, struggling with a rather bleak existence in Berlin, is hired by a Russian Colonel to go to Vienna to help one of his, Gunther’s, old police colleagues who is to be tried on charges of murdering an American officer.

    Bernie takes the case and finds a world of subterfuge where everyone has things to hide and where the Russians and Americans are vying for control and each are anxious to harness the abilities of ex-German military leaders, even if they are wanted for war crimes.

    The situation is bleak and the overwhelming emotion of many is despair, and the cynical, but moral, Gunther tries to work his way to a just conclusion to the case. This is an excellent series and I’m glad I took the time to fill in this gap in my reading of it.

The Bernard Gunther novels:

      1. March Violets (1989)

      2. The Pale Criminal (1990)
      3. A German Requiem (1991)
      4. The One from the Other (2006)

      5. A Quiet Flame (2008)
      6. If the Dead Rise Not (2009)

PHILIP CLARK – The Dark River.

Perennial Library; paperback reprint, 1985. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum, 1949. Hardcover reprints: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1949; Garland [50 Classics of Crime Fiction, 1950-1975], 1983.

   Do you believe in coincidence? Coincidences that occur in works of fiction are usually tough to swallow, at least for me. I remember one mystery in which a character defended the coincidences that made the plot come together by saying something like, If coincidences didn’t happen, why do we have a word for them?

   And yet, when they happen in the course of everyday living, as they invariably do, we have to accept them. But what are the odds, I ask, of picking up two books to read, at random, and have them start out with essentially the same plot? A husband and wife, he very jealous, she innocent. He strikes her, without warning, and very soon thereafter, he ends up dead.

   At which point the two books diverge, this one and Woman on the Roof, by Mignon G. Eberhart, reviewed here earlier on this blog, but the similarity was simply amazing. In The Dark River, the wife gradually begins to realize that her neighbors in Charleston, South Carolina, think she is responsible, and perhaps even her friends.

   On the back cover is a quote from Jacques Barzun praising this book as “Classical detection of the best period,” and except for one small matter, he’s right. The details of the motive for the killing are unfortunately withheld until the very end, but other than that, Judy Rossler’s attempt to defend her reputation by finding the killer herself poses an intellectual challenge that’s both gripping and (in the end) satisfying.

   Philip Clark wrote only one other earlier mystery besides this one (Flight into Darkness, 1948), which is surprising, since he’s a very perceptive writer. His characters ring absolutely true, and he has total control of this rather moody and introspective tale from beginning to end.

   In that regard, here’s a quote from page 62 that might be appropriate:

   Even though it falls an inch or so short of being a masterpiece, this rather obscure and old-fashioned detective novel is exactly the kind of book I read mysteries for.

THE GOOD BAD GIRL. Columbia, 1931. Mae Clarke, James Hall, Robert Ellis, Marie Prevost, Nance O’Neil, Edmund Breese, Paul Porcasi. Director: Roy William Neill.

   It’s purely a wild conjecture on my part, but was Mae Clarke’s role in The Public Enemy, in which she had her most famous scene in a long career in the movies – you know, the one with the grapefruit? – came out in April 1931. Was it only coincidence that here she is now in the lead role in The Good Bad Girl, which was released in May of the same year?

   I’ll concede that the time frame is way too tight for there to be a real connection, but it’s a nice thought. One thing that I never realized, though, is that Mae Clarke didn’t have a screen credit in The Public Enemy, but her scene in it is a bit of screen business that if you’ve ever seen it, you’ll never forget it.

   Except for Mae Clarke, all of the people involved in the making of The Good Bad Girl had long careers in the silents. She started in 1929, though, and ended up lasting the longest of all her co-players: her last movie was Godfrey Cambridge’s Watermelon Man in 1970.

   Among director Roy William Neill’s final films were the 1940s Sherlock Holmes movies and Black Angel (1946), based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.

   Normally I’d be mentioning the last couple of items to help substantiate a case for this movie to be covered here in a blog devoted to mystery fiction in all its various forms, but in this case it’s not needed, as the part that Mae Clarke plays is that of a hoodlum’s moll who wants to leave him and the rackets he’s in.

   She has a new lover, you see, the son of wealthy parents who doesn’t know who she is, not even her name. When Dan Tyler (Robert Ellis) commits a murder and expects her to stand by him and provide an alibi he desperately needs, she refuses and leaves him up the creek (and in the Big House).

   You might call the story line as a very close kin to a month’s worth of early soap opera, or maybe it’s just plain melodrama. Either way, I emphasized the silent era background of all the players for a reason, that being that movies in 1931 often displayed an unsureness in how acting should be done, now that actors could talk, and how scenes should be played – both often very slowly and stiffly, not knowing how easily audiences were going to follow and respond.

   That’s the main downfall of The Good Bad Girl, it’s often too slow and stationary. Nor do the weepy parts connect very well with someone watching it today, not that I think the movie made much of a mark in 1931 either.

   You should not get me wrong. Even though Mae Clarke seems swallowed up in a role that’s several sizes too large for her, the movie’s watchable, and there are parts — such as the continual comical byplay between Marie Prevost and Paul Porcasi, the latter as a night club owner who’s Prevost’s very close friend, about the diet she’s determined to keep him on – that are relaxed, natural and highly enjoyable.

JACK FOXX – Wildfire.   Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1978. Reworked and republished as Firewind, as by Bill Pronzini: M. Evans, hardcover, 1989; paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   A drought-stricken and dried up corner of northern California, an ultra-conservative logging baron with an illegal stockpile of guns and ammunition, and a marriage in trouble — all waiting for the right spark to set them off.

   There’s only one way out, and that’s by taking the most hair-raising train ride you’ve ever been on, traveling by antique steam locomotive through a countryside going up in flames.

   Even second-hand, this is without a doubt one trip you won’t want to be left behind on.

[UPDATE] 07-13-09.   The second version of this book puzzled me when I learned about it before posting this old review. I hadn’t known anything about it until I started looking up the publishing information about Wildfire, which as you see, I reviewed some 30 years ago. So I asked the author himself, Bill Pronzini. Read his reply, here in this later post.

BABY FACE. Warner Brothers, 1933. Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphonse Ethier, Henry Kolker, Margaret Lindsay, Arthur Hohl, John Wayne, Robert Barrat, Douglass Dumbrille. Director: Alfred E. Green. Shown at Cinevent 19, Columbus OH, May 1987.

   Barbara Stanwyck is the star of Baby Face, the sordid tale of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who rises to kept affluence in a series of bedroom maneuvers that redefine the term “permissible risque.”

   There’s a redemptive finale (which Stanwyck plays with a notable lack of conviction), but her hard-boiled, terse acting in this seventy minute film is riveting.

   There is a bit by John Wayne as one of the “Johns” she loves and dumps, while the other men in her life include Douglass Dumbrille, Donald Cook, and George Brent. Puzzle of the week: Who plays the man she finally really falls for and for whom she turns “good”?

   (This is like figuring out the murderer on the Angela Lansbury Murder, She Wrote series. Out of all the has-beens and never-were’s drafted for roles, who is the most unlikely and therefore most likely suspect?)

   Her role is tightly circumscribed, but within the assigned limits Stanwyck is superb. The more I see of her early work (and the American Movie Classics cable channel has shown several of her lesser thirties films), the more I am impressed by her.

   And then there is her unforgettable acting in Double Indemnity to crown a career that in recent years has shown all of the professionalism of this fine actress but with little of the distinctive beauty and intelligence of her early work.

[EDITORIAL UPDATE.]   Discovered in 2005 at the Library of Congress was a racier pre-release version of Baby Face that’s five minutes longer than the one seen by movie-going audiences in the 1930s. The unedited version is currently available on DVD.

SAFARI. Columbia, 1956. Victor Mature, Janet Leigh, John Justin, Roland Culver, Orlando Martins, Earl Cameron. Director: Terence Young.

   Pull out a chair and sit down a while. This movie is so filled with cliched situations and characters that if I were to list them all, you’d be here an awfully long time.

   On second thought, maybe I should only tell about the main ones, and in so doing, leave it to you decide how much time and effort you might want to spend in tracking down a copy:

    ? An expert African guide (Victor Mature) thirsts for revenge against the leader (Earl Cameron) of a gang of rebellious Mau Maus who killed his family while he was away.

    ? His license revoked for his own good, Ken Duffield is hired anyway by a wealthy hunter (Roland Culver) who is used to getting his own way and knows how to pull the right strings.

    ? Joining them on the hunt for a notorious lion is Sir Vincent’s fiancée (Janet Leigh) who used to be a showgirl but is now intent on bagging bigger game.

    ? Also on the safari is Sir Vincent’s personal assistant (John Justin), a man whose weaknesses his employer sadistically digs his knives into at every chance he gets, figuratively speaking.

   Dressed in tight-fitting jungle outfits during the day, and then in formal wear and the finest of negligees in the evening, Janet Leigh is present only as eye candy, for needing to be rescued when she wanders too far from camp, and for reawakening Victor Mature’s interest in life.

   Sir Vincent’s role is more complicated: to be an obnoxious boor of an employer whose every whim is to be obeyed, immediately, and of course you know exactly how far that’s going to get him.

   I think that about wraps it up. I hope not many animals were really shot and killed in the making of this rather mediocre movie, filmed in color on location in Kenya, or so I’m told. Quite possibly in its day it made a much greater impression.

GIL BREWER – The Red Scarf. Mystery House, hardcover, 1958. Paperback reprint: Crest 310; 1st printing, July 1959. First published in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1955 (quite likely in shortened form).

   Motel owner Ray Nichols, hitchhiking home in northern Florida after a futile trip up north to raise capital for his floundering auto court, is given a ride by a bickering and drunken couple named Vivian Rise and Noel Teece.

   An accident, the result of Teece’s drinking, leaves Teece bloody and unconscious. Unhurt, Nichols finds a suitcase full of money in the car. Vivian, also unhurt, urges that they leave with it together before the police come, saying it belongs to her and offering to pay Nichols for his help. Against his better judgment, he agrees.

   It is only later, back home in the town of Lakeview, that Nichols discovers Teece is a courier for an underworld gambling syndicate and that the money really belongs to them. While he struggles with his conscience, several groups begin vying for the loot, including a syndicate man named Wirt Radan, the police — and Teece. Nichols and his wife, Bess, soon become targets, and Brewer leads us through a couple of neat plot turns on the way to a volatile climax.

   There is considerable suspense here, some strong characterization, and the various components mesh smoothly. Brewer’s prose is leaner and more controlled than in any of his other novels.

   Anthony Boucher said in the New York Times that The Red Scarf is the “all-around best Gil Brewer … a full-packed story.” This reviewer agrees.

   Nearly all of Brewer’s thirty other novels (all but one of which, are paperback originals) are worth reading. Especially good are And the Girl Screamed (1956), which has some fine chase sequences; The Angry Dream (1957), the second of Brewer’s two hardcovers and a tale of hatred out of the past, in a wintry northern setting; and The Three-Way Split (1960), a well-done story of charter boats and sunken treasure in a style reminiscent of Hemingway’ s To Have and Have Not.

         ———
   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.