GIL BREWER – A Killer Is Loose. Gold Medal 380, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1954.

   In the 1950s and 1960s, Gil Brewer occupied a major stall in the stable of writers of Gold Medal paperback originals, along with John D. MacDonald, Richard S. Prather, and Charles Williams.

   Brewer’s work was uneven but usually interesting and evocative, and quite popular from 1951 to 1958; his first novel, 13 French Street (1951), sold more than a million copies. Much of his fiction is built around the theme of a man corrupted by an evil, designing woman; but his two best novels, this one and The Red Scarf, are departures from that theme.

   Set in Florida, as is most of Brewer’s fiction, A Killer Is Loose is a truly harrowing portrait of a psychotic personality that comes close to rivaling the nightmare portraits in the novels of Jim Thompson.

   It tells the story of Ralph Angers, a deranged surgeon and Korean War veteran obsessed with building a hospital, and his devastating effect on the lives of several citizens. One of those citizens is the narrator, Steve Logan, a down-on-his-luck ex-cop whose wife is about to have a baby and who makes the mistake of saving Angers’s life, thus becoming his “pal.”

   As Logan says on page one, by way of prologue, “There was nothing simple about Angers, except maybe the Godlike way he had of doing things.”

   Brewer maintains a pervading sense of terror and an acute level of tension throughout. The novel is flawed by a slow beginning and a couple of improbable occurrences, as well as by an ending that is a little abrupt — all of which are the probable result of hasty writing. (Brewer once said that he wrote most of his early novels in a white heat of seven to ten days.)

   But its strengths far outnumber its weaknesses. Two aspects in particular stand out: One is the curious and frightening relationship that develops between Logan and Angers; the other is a five-page scene in which Angers, with Logan looking on helplessly, forces a scared little girl to play the piano for him — a scene Woolrich might have written and Hitchcock should have filmed.

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   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.

MIDNIGHT MAN.   ITV1 (UK), May 2008. James Nesbitt, Reece Dinsdale, Rupert Graves, Catherine McCormack, Ian Puleston-Davies, Alan Dale. Screenwriter: David Kane; director: David Drury.

   This was a conspiracy story set in three one-hour parts, less adverts. The ubiquitous James Nesbitt starred as Max Raban, a journalist whose career took such a tumble when he revealed a source, a female friend who went on to commit suicide, that he is now resorting to raiding the bins of celebrities looking for anything he can turn into a story.

   Worse, he suffers from phengophobia, a psychological fear of daylight, so he only operates at night, hence the title.

   When his former editor sends him on a routine dustbin mission, it leads to a hit squad who are assassinating terror suspects, possibly on behalf of the government. Soon Raban is framed for a murder and he is desperately trying to stay at large long enough to find evidence of the conspiracy, while uncertain as to whom he can trust.

   The news I read of this were negative so I was in two minds as to whether to watch it or not but I’m a sucker for a conspiracy story, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it.

   Sure, at the end, you rack your brain to see if it all makes sense and it doesn’t always, but in general it built up a head of steam, had several of those moments when you gasp in amazement (well, you’re slightly amused by the plot twists) and, despite a rather perfunctory ending, it managed to hold the attention.

THE McKENZIE BREAK. United Artists, 1970. Brian Keith (Captain Jack Connor), Helmut Griem (Kapitan Willi Schleuter), Ian Hendry (Major Perry), Jack Watson (General Kerr), Patrick O’Connell (Sergeant Major Cox). Based on the novel Bowmanville Break by Sidney Shelley. Director: Lamont Johnson.

   Here’s the funny thing. The novel this movie is based on takes place in Canada, where there really was a semi-successful escape of Nazis from a prisoner of war camp in 1943.

   The McKenzie Break takes place in Scotland, another venue altogether, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, is totally fictional. It’s a film that boils down to a battle of wits between two men, Captain Jack O’Connor, an Irish journalist pressed into intelligence by the British, and Kapitan Willi Schleuter, a U-Boat Commander who’s become the spokesman for the German prisoners under circumstances that can only be called suspicious.

   Unorthodox means, in other words, are what O’Connor is expected to use, first to quash the continual defiance and uproar caused by the prisoners, which Major Perry is quite unable to handle, and to learn what it is that’s behind it.

   A tunnel, that is, and escape. O’Connor is a wily old bird, but the Germans are even wilier, and far more ruthless. Willi Schleuter, handsome and blond, also has an ever-present and wicked gleam in his eye.

   If you’re ever inclined to root for the underdog, you might even find yourself hoping that he’ll actually pull it off — escape, that is. It’s the only thing on his mind, and no person or other obstacle dare not stand in his way.

   Perhaps I was too used to seeing Brian Keith in situation comedy on TV. I did not expect to see a big, gruff, burly man with a strong rolling Irish accent with a way with the ladies. (There is a short bedroom scene with one of perhaps the only two women who appear in this movie, and both are discreetly and quite adequately covered at all times.)

   Major Perry’s problem is that he outranks O’Connor, but O’Connor is the one with the authority (and the pull) to do as he wishes — not that all of his plans work out as successfully as he so confidently expects they will.

   If I were to reveal that an escape does take place, I hope I am not revealing too much, one that leaves a lot of chaos — shall we say? — behind.

   But it’s here that the story line begins to sag a little. Make that a lot. There seems to be only one airplane that’s capable of tracking down the escapees, and who do you think is riding along? Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

   There is otherwise a lot of enjoyment that can be gotten from watching this movie, one that I didn’t even know existed until it showed up on cable TV the other day. Watch it if you can.

MASQUERADE. United Artists, 1964. Cliff Robertson, Jack Hawkins, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Charles Gray, John Le Mesurier, Felix Aylmer. Screenplay: Michael Relph & William Goldman, based on the novel Castle Minerva by Victor Canning. Directed by Basil Deardon.

   It’s the early sixties, and the British Lion’s bite isn’t what it once was. In the Arab state of Ramault, once liberated by the Brits in WW II, that means the treacherous leader has plans to rid himself of his nephew, the twelve year old heir to the throne, and sell out to the Russians, depriving England of those precious oil concessions.

   That’s why the Brits have called in Colonel Drexel (Jack Hawkins), the man who liberated Ramault and assigned him to kidnap and protect the young prince. Drexel, a latter day T.E. Lawrence, does things his own way, and he insists on his wartime ally American David Fraser (Cliff Robertson) as his aide in protecting the prince. The government isn’t sure. Fraser has a history of financial problems and a tendency to trouble.

    “Yes, David always was an Errol Flynn fan,” Drexel dryly observes, but he’ll have Fraser or no one, and Fraser needs the work. Currently he’s been reduced to posing as a male model for magazine ads.

   Still, Fraser is no happier about it than the government: “Drexel, I never worked with you. I always worked for you.” But when he faces the realities he agrees to follow Drexel one more time.

   But no sooner than they are set up in a villa where they bring the prince than Robertson finds himself seduced by lovely Marissa Mell and menaced by her boyfriend (Michel Piccoli) and the prince kidnapped from under his nose — all the Machiavellian work of his buddy Drexel, who after a lifetime of service to the Empire finds he is growing older and has nothing but a few ex-wives and no money to show for it. The ransom he gets for the boy will take care of that — and if that means setting up his old friend as the fall guy — well, Fraser is the adaptable sort. He’ll find a way out of it.

   Now Fraser is labeled a traitor and forced to rescue the boy, who still thinks Drexel is a hero and believes Fraser set him up to save himself, but that’s not his only problem, which include Mell and her circus folk in Drexel’s employ, a pet vulture, a phony private eye, and the one question he doesn’t want answered, how far will Drexel go? To kill the boy — or him?

   This clever spy spoof mixes humor with action and an unusually intelligent and quip-filled script handled by an expert cast who know their way around a dry line or a raised eyebrow. The scenery is handsome, the direction crisp, and the plot keeps twisting right up to the final scene. Robertson was born to play this sort of whimsical hero and Hawkins plays Drexel with some of the same style he brought to his role in The League of Gentleman, reviewed earlier by Steve here.

   It’s based on a novel by Victor Canning, a major British thriller writer who rivaled Eric Ambler, Geoffrey Household, and Hammond Innes in his day and whose works were frequently adapted to the big and small screen, including his most famous, and atypical book, The Rainbird Pattern, which became Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot.

   Canning’s books veered from adventure to Cold War dramas, from taut suspense to picaresque humor. Panther’s Moon, Queen’s Pawn, The House of Turkish Flies, His Bones Are Coral, The Great Affair, and Finger of Saturn are some of his better known titles.

   From the catchy title tune and the animated titles, to the little twist at the end, this is a too little seen spy parody from its era, directed with a light but sure hand by Deardon and acted with wit and tongue in cheek by the entire cast.

   If you’ve never seen this one and you like the better spy spoofs of the era — the best of which always seemed to be British — catch this clever and entertaining film. But don’t listen too closely to the title tune the first time you watch it. It gives away a few plot points, however unintentionally.

ROBERT EDMOND ALTER – Carny Kill. Gold Medal d1611, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Reprints: Black Lizard/Creative Arts, pb, May 1986; Vintage/Black Lizard, trade pb, March 1993.

   Let me state at the beginning that a novel of this type is not my customary reading of choice. Still, I was glad I read it. Alter has presented an absorbing setting and an engrossing albeit not wholly admirable main character.

   Leslie M. Thaxton, who prefers to be called Thax, seeks employment at Neverland in Florida, a borrowing of the Disneyland idea. This was, of course, before the construction of Disney World. One of the attractions is an old-fashioned carnival, and Thaxton, who has been a barker and prestidigitator, fits right in at the shell-game stand.

   Unfortunately, the owner of Neverland has married Thaxton’s former wife, a beautiful but unpleasant woman with a “cold, sensual, calculating look” who is a former knife thrower and has used Thax as an unwitting target. Even more unfortunately, the morning after Thaxton’s arrival his new boss is found among the alligators where the Swamp Ride is located, with one of his wife’s knives in his back.

   Thaxton is a suspect, along with his former wife. The evidence that she did it is so overwhelming that it is obvious that she didn’t do it. Luckily for her, a policeman with imagination is in charge and recognizes a frame-up.

   As pointed out previously, Thaxton is a most interesting character, with both depths and shallows. Well-read in the earlier adventure-type literature — particularly Robert Louis Stevenson — and intelligent, he also has a considerable chip on his shoulder and, whether the author intended it or not, is obviously a loser.

   He’s something of a philosopher, too, yet cannot see the parallel between his observations, “She smiled at both of us — a real earthy we-know-what-god-put-it-there-for-don’t-we-boys smile. She was about as tarty as they come,” and “I like bed. I like the female form. I damn well like the lust of female flesh — in bed, out of bed, anywhere.”

   Fawcett Gold Medal published this novel in those more innocent days when the “f” word was still being blanked out — presumably Black Lizard restores the missing letters — and the sex is suggested rather than explicit.

   (I will spare you my lecture as to how a useful word like “f—ing” has been so abused both orally and in print that it has become ,merely a weak and undefinable intensifier like “very.”)

   If you can accept Thaxton’s double standard, and even if you can’t, you should find this gripping reading.

Editorial Comment.   Following an article by Peter Enfantino on the primary M*F website, entitled “The AHMM Stories of Robert Edmond Alter,” is a nearly complete bibliography for the author. Follow the link, and tell the man behind the door that Steve sent you.

W. R. BURNETT – Romelle. Alfred A. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1946. Wm. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1947. Reprint paperback: Bantam #942, US, 1951. French reprint: Rivages Noir n° 36, 1987.

   In a surprising turn from a hard-boiled writer, W. R. Burnett’s Romelle sits firmly in that sub-genre of Romantic Suspense about a pretty young thing swept into marriage by some guy with a dark secret: there’s the requisite mansion, the obligatory hints of some sinister past, the mandatory mid-night rambles in her nightie and all the other standard features of the Gothic.

   Of course, since this is a book by the author of Little Caesar, the heroine is a nightclub chantoosie on the skids and the Byronic hero hides a dark past that includes robbery, blackmail, and a neat bit of kinkiness you don’t often see in gothics or hard-boiled, all served up very ably, thank you, by a writer who knew how to get it down on paper.

   Romelle will never be anyone’s idea of a classic, but it’s a fun read, and if you’re in the mood for off-beat Had-I-but-known’s, this will do nicely.

BAYNARD KENDRICK – The Whistling Hangman. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1937. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1959. Reprint paperback: Dell #113, US, mapback edition, 1946.

   The staff of a large hotel in New York City is preparing for the arrival of an Australian millionaire who hasn’t seen his American family for twenty years. Murder swiftly ensues. Although this is a similar premise to A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery (1922), Kendrick’s novel has nothing else in common with Milne’s.

   Baynard Kendrick’s The Whistling Hangman is a largely straightforward whodunit, with a mysterious murder solved by a detective. This pure whodunit structure makes it different from some of Kendrick’s other works, which can combine mystery with thriller elements. The detective here is Kendrick’s famous blind private investigator, Captain Duncan Maclain.

   The murder method in The Whistling Hangman is itself a mystery. It is an example of the howdunit: a crime committed by a mysterious method, one that has to be figured out by the sleuth. Making it more complex than most howdunits: the crime is actually partly witnessed, by two different people. What they see and hear is itself baffling, and does not explain the killing.

   Like several other howdunits, the murder in The Whistling Hangman is a borderline impossible crime. It does not seem to have any plausible explanation.

   Like other Golden Age novels, Kendrick includes several subsidiary mysteries along the way. The focus is kept steadily on the unraveling of these mysteries. The book never stops dead in its tracks for soap opera passages or other filler. Each chapter usually brings new revelations about the tale’s mysterious events. We do learn a lot about the suspects’ personal lives — but this is all carefully interwoven with attempts to uncover those characters’ mysterious pasts.

   I was able to figure out whodunit. But this is because I noticed some (but not all) of the numerous fair play clues to the killer Kendrick sprinkled through the book.

   As in Kendrick’s later The Odor of Violets (1941), there are some Had I But Known (HIBK) elements:

       ● A viewpoint character through much of the novel is a woman, the hotel’s housekeeper.

       ● She has to enter some dark and frightening rooms.

       ● There are secrets about the characters’ past personal lives: also a HIBK staple.

   It is rare for a male author like Kendrick to employ HIBK features. The book is not pure HIBK — the HIBK elements are mixed in with other tones and approaches.

   The Whistling Hangman resembles in its settings Helen Reilly’s The Line-Up (1934). Both are principally set at lavish New York City residential hotels, occupied by wealthy families.

   Both novels also have a secondary setting, which is similar in both books. That setting is a surprise, sprung in later chapters. I have no idea if these common settings are just a coincidence, or a sign of influence. The Whistling Hangman differs in that it concentrates on the hotel and its staff as a whole, while The Line-Up mainly looks at one family’s domicile within the hotel.

   The luxury hotel in The Whistling Hangman and its elite staff anticipate Hugh Pentecost’s Pierre Chambrun series.

   We learn a fair amount about the architecture of the hotel: an example of the Golden Age interest in architecture.

   There are some technological ideas in The Whistling Hangman. Oddly, these involve not so much the murder or mystery plot, as some suspense passages in the finale. In these last chapters, Kendrick explores some of the technological features of a 1937 hotel.

GIL BREWER – The Red Scarf.

Crest 310; paperback reprint, July 1959. Cover art: Robert McGinnis. Hardcover: Mystery House, 1958. First published in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1955 (quite likely in shortened form).

   Gil Brewer was a prolific paperback writer in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as well as the author of many stories in Manhunt, Trapped, Guilty, Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine and other magazines in the same time period, including some western pulps. Only two of his books ever came out in hardcover, and this is one of them. (The other was The Angry Dream, also by Mystery House in 1957; reprinted in paperback by Zenith Books in 1958 as The Girl from Hateville.)

   The paperback edition from Crest is only 128 pages long, and even though the print is small, you can read it in less than a couple of hours, easily. In fact, there are times when — I challenge you — your eyes will be going as fast as they can and you’ll be swallowing up whole paragraphs in single gulps — the pace will be that intense.

   There were loads of paperbacks in the 50s in which the male lead falls completely under the spell of a tempting woman and/or a briefcase full of money, and that’s the kind of book this is, exactly. Roy Nichols is the guy who needs the money for his failing Florida motel. Vivian is the girl with a bag full of mob money, tied up with a lucky red scarf. Bess is Roy’s wife, anxious to help, but with Roy not talking and Vivian holed up in cabin number six, she doesn’t know what to think.

   Vivian’s partner in crime, thought dead, isn’t. And the mob is not about to chalk off the missing money as operating expenses, nor can Gant, the local police detective, figure out why Roy seems to be making up answers as he goes along.

   Those are the ingredients. I’m sure you’re thinking you could put a pretty good story together and take over from here, and you probably could. Brewer does an ace-high job of it, though, and you can relax: he beat you to it, and you don’t have to.

   I think the following excerpt, taken from pages 66-67, sums things up very nicely:

   You might start wondering about some of the more unlikely aspects of the story afterward, but I’ll bet you’ll never think of a single one of them while the pages are going. For the price of a mere quarter — then, at the time, a copy of the book will set you back a whole lot more now — what you got was your money’s worth. I kid you not.

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER. Alllied Artists, 1962. Vincent Price, Linda Ho, Richard Loo, June Kim, Philip Ahn, Victor Sen Yung. Screenplay: Robert Hill, based on the novel Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincy. Director: Albert Zugsmith.

   De Quincy was Thomas de Quincy, an English decadent who is best remembered for his books Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, and Confessions of an Opium Eater, works that graced many a Victorian library shelf and were read under many a blanket by young boys. Not very promising material for a film of high adventure.

   The place is mid-nineteenth century San Francisco’s Chinatown, that dark haven of mystery and low adventure celebrated in a thousand pulp tales (and little relation to the the real thing).

   Into this cauldron of the exotic and erotic swaggers our two-fisted sailor hero, Gilbert de Quincy, a man who knows his way around a brawl, a broad, and a bottle — Vincent Price.

   Did I mention this is a very odd little film?

   Vincent is in Chinatown to find his old friend Richard Loo, but before you can say Kung Pao Chicken, he is up to his neck in the sex-slavery racket of Chinese girls imported from the mainland and sold as concubines and prostitutes to wealthy and ruthless men. Loo is out to smash the racket, and Vincent finds himself reluctantly part of the crusade when a few innocent inquiries nearly get him killed. He’s walked right into a hornet’s nest.

   And what a hornet’s nest. Pretty girls in chains, exotic dances, Oriental finery, secret passages, trap doors, a collection of S&M gear that would make de Sade salivate, a mouthy Chinese midget concubine in a golden cage, and a full blown sex auction beneath the dark and narrow streets of old Chinatown — just a few of the elements of this one. The scenes of Price imprisoned in a bamboo cage suspended off the floor are worth the price of admission alone.

   There are also innocent young women thrown overboard in chains whenever another ship gets too close to the smugglers, bodies washed up on the beach, tong hatchet men, and of course the obligatory psychedelic trip for Vincent on the ‘smoke of dreams.’

   This is sheer melodrama, a barn-burner as the Brits used to call them, with hammy performances, fortune cookie dialogue, and enough angst for a dozen soap operas. It’s nice to see Loo get to play a hero for once, and if you ever wondered how Vincent Price would do in a role better suited to John Wayne, now you know.

   The movie does at times have a nice claustrophobic feel of the alien and the strange about it, and the cheap sets and curious camera work sometimes manage to convey the feeling you are watching this entire movie in someone else’s opium-fevered dream. During one or two of the fights you half expect the entire place to come down like the great earthquake, and whether deliberately or not, Price’s sheer size gives his character a bull in a China shop feel that adds to the alienation and foreignness of his surroundings.

   Confessions is only a little less politically incorrect than say, a Fu Manchu movie, but at least there is some effort made to present some of the Asian characters as people and not just stereotypes. Not much, but some.

   Silly, stupid, and ridiculous as this one is, it is also undeniably fun to watch in the same guilty pleasure way of reading or watching old “Yellow Peril” pulp fiction from yesteryear.

   Price clearly knows the level of material he has to work with here, but to his credit he has some fun with it, and seems to enjoy playing the two-fisted adventurer while fully aware how miscast he is in the role.

   No one embarrasses themselves or their careers in this movie, and in one like this one, that’s almost the best they can hope for.

   That said, after watching this one you might want to go out for Italian or Mexican instead. Too much MSG can give you an awful headache.

   Note:  It’s been a while since I read de Quincy, but I don’t think his opium dreams yielded anything quite like this. Just as well Coleridge, Poe, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire never smoked what this movie is selling.

GIL BREWER – The Girl from Hateville. Zenith ZB-7, paperback reprint, 1958. Originally published in hardcover as The Angry Dream: Mystery House, 1957.

   Originally one of the star-crossed Brewer’s few hardcovers, this one is not set in Florida but rather in a rural community at the cusp of winter. A young man whose father committed suicide after embezzling all the money from the local bank returns home to make some kind of peace.

   He’s threatened by the locals who go so far as to literally nail a dog to the wall to run him out of town, but he perseveres in his attempts to learn the truth. There are several women, an antagonistic father figure, an ambiguous cop, excellent atmosphere and the nagging question of whatever happened to all that money.

   Brewer’s pacing is more measured than usual for a good chunk of the book, but then he speeds up things at the end — did he have a tight deadline? — and he mashes together an ending featuring three elements every Brewer aficionado will recognize: insanity, a bagful of money and fire.