SUE GRAFTON “Full Circle.” PI Kinsey Millhone. First appeared in A Woman’s Eye, edited by Sara Paretsky (Delacorte Press, 1991). An audio reading is available on You Tube (see below).

   According to the brief introduction to this story in the Sara Paretsky anthology, this story appeared just after G Is for Gumshoe, or early towards the middle of Sue Grafton’s lengthy A to Y series of book-length adventures of PI Kinsey Millhone, based in invariably sunny Santa Teresa California.

   “Full Circle” begins with Kinsey being involved in a multi-can accident on the freeway, but she leaves, hours later, without realizing that one young woman is dead. She assumes her death was of course caused by her injuries in the accident, and she is surprised to learn later that the girl actually died from bullet wounds.

   She is soon hired by the girl’s mother who believes the police are not working hard enough on the case, which is where the story begins in earnest – meaning the usual footwork a PI has to do on a case such as this, investigating family and friends, as well as any other suspects, all the while keeping on the right side of the law.

   I wish, though, that while it turns out not to be essential to the story, that as well as the footwork described above, Kinsey had followed up more on how the shooting was done. Given the lack of focus on the physical evidence, this left me a lot more puzzled than I think I should have been. And yet, after some consideration, I finally decided that the ending made up for it.

   At least in part. I’d like to say more, but I’ve decided not to. I’ll just use the word “karma” and say that the title of the story is all I will do to give you a hint. It’s an ending that a woman writing a story about a female PI is more likely to have written that a male author might have. Or at least I think so.

   To sum up, though, it’s an above average story, but for me, it’s one that just doesn’t come together as well as Grafton intended it to. I’ll leave it at that.

JEAN DUTOURD – The Horrors of Love. Doubleday, hardcover, 1967. First published in France in as Les Horreurs de l’amour (Gallimard, 1963)

   I spent most of this week making a voodoo hoodoo out of some stuff I had lying around the house: Some books, an old shelf, top hat, playing cards, manacles, a skull… that sort of thing. Hung it in my basement to attract nightmares.

   Anyway, when I was putting this thing together, I had an enjoyable time digging out just the right books, and one of them was the book discussed below. And though I doubt I’ll ever revisit that book, I felt a glow of remembered pleasure when I revisited the review:

   Back in the 60s when I worked as a page at the local library, I found myself strangely drawn to a thickish book that was never checked out, one that squatted stolidly in its allotted space, motionless and impassive, on the Fiction Shelf all the years I was there. I was intrigued by the title The Horrors of Love  (Doubleday, 1967) and I’d seen the author’s name, Jean Dutourd, in seedy used bookstores, so I was tempted to read it — but in those days I had no time or patience for six-hundred-and-sixty-odd pages of densely — and I mean densely — written prose with no spies in it. Only now, when I’m approaching early pre-middle age and have more time and patience, I thought to give it a try.

   Reading The Horrors of Love  is like going through Boot Camp: tough work and not always much fun, but when it’s over you feel you’ve accomplished something. The story is set in Paris in the late 50s and concerns two men who stroll through the city discussing a mutual acquaintance.

   And that’s what it’s about.

   Two guys.

   Walking and talking.

   And talking. And talking.

   For more than six hundred close-packed pages.

   Well, Harry Stephen Keeler constructed some fine books that were nothing more than conversation, so why not Jean Dutourd? And in fact, I found Horrors compelling, if a bit obscure at times, because the lengthy discussion is developed with a novelist’s imagination and a philosopher‘s intellect: it seems the subject of all this conversation is a mutual acquaintance. a successful middle-aged man — shallow, untalented, lacking any insight — and how this man is destroyed by love.

   It’s a sobering tale, and to Dutourd’s credit, the reader never loses sight of the point, even as the narrators digress about art, philosophy, literature, the sexes, politics, Parisian geography, history, women, writing, food, men, Algeria…. well let’s just say they fill over six hundred pages to just shy of bursting.

   Which may be a problem: Good Writing is like any other commodity; when you get too much of it in one place it becomes devalued, and Horrors of Love  is an awful lot of writing, mostly good, I think, but still a damnlot of writing. Some of the writers and philosophers discussed here are just names to me, and some not even that. Withal, even in the densest passages, I never felt like putting this thing down, and I turned the last page, as I said, feeling the few weeks of my time had not been wasted.

   While hardly unexpected, this is sad news indeed. To learn more, please follow the link below to Martin Edwards’ very personal post on the loss of a longtime friend:

https://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2025/04/peter-lovesey-rip.html.

   I am way behind on reading all of Lovesey’s books and stories. Way behind. I started well by reading his first mystery novel when it first came out, but I have lost considerable ground since then. I can only blame myself.

THE CARABOO TRAIL. 20th Century Fox, 1950. Randolph Scott. George ‘Gabby’ Haye, Bill Williams, Karin Booth. Victor Jory. Douglas Kennedy, Jim Davis, Dale Robertson. Screenplay: Frank Gruber. Director: Edwin L. Marin.

   A relatively mediocre oater, The Cariboo Trail is a “northwestern” that is nominally about the founding and settling of British Columbia. Directed by Edwin L. Marin, the movie stars Randolph Scott as Jim Redfern, a Montana rancher who decides to relocate north in order to find a better place for raising cattle. Joining him in this bold endeavor are Mike Evans (Bill Williams), who is far more interested in prospecting for gold than in cattle, and Ling (Lee Tung Foo), a Chinese-American from San Francisco.

   Among the challenges Redfern  faces are hostile Indians and the machinations of Frank Walsh (Victor Jory) and his men, local ruffians hell bent on running the area purely for their own benefit. When Redfern’s former patner Mike  decides to switch sides and work for Walsh, things get even more heated.

   After watching The Cariboo Trail, I realized that I kind of enjoyed it. But while I was watching, I found Frank Gruber’s script somewhat dry and without a core. The last fifteen minutes or so, however, make up for some of the movie’s weaknesses. Altogether, not one of Scott’s best films – not by a long shot. But decent enough for a casual watch. Just don’t expect too much. This is not a Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott collaboration by any means. Final note: this was apparently Gabby Hayes’s last movie.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “–All You Zombies–” First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1959 (after having been rejected by Playboy). Reprinted a number of times, including The Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Robert P. Mills (Paperback Library, 1965), and Time Troopers, edited by Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio (Baen Books, 2022), among others. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, 1969) and 6 x H (Pyramid, 1961), again among many others. Film: As Predestination (Australia, 2014, starring Ethan Hawke). [See Comment #6.]

   The story begins in a bar, for no better reason that is where any story of its kind should begin, with a fellow who calls himself an Unmarried Mother (actually a writer for true confession magazines) telling his life story to the other fellow, the one on the other side of the bar. It’s a lengthy tale, and it includes the fact that the fellow telling the story was born as a girl.

   And this is the point in my telling you the story is exactly where I knew I was going to get stuck, as while I know many of you have read the story, I’m sure there still are several of you who haven’t, and by telling you anything more in any kind of detail, I’m going to end up telling you the entire story.

   There is no way I’m going to do that. Robert Heinlein did it a whole lot better back in 1959, and it’s still the best time travel story that I’ve ever read. It takes the fellow from the bar through a well charted trip across time and space and (in fact) his entire life It’s clean and smooth, and I can’t find a single flaw in it. What more can I tell you?

   I don’t rate many stories 10 stars out of 10, but this one deserves it.

JOHN LUTZ “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” PI Alo Nudger. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1982. Reprinted in Home Sweet Homicide, edited by Cathleen Jordan (Walker, 1991), The Eyes Still Have It, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Dutton, 1995). Also released individually on audio cassette (1997). Winner of the Shamus Award for Best Short Story.

   Alo Nudger’s day begins with two lugs beating him up in his office, followed by a moon-faced female doctor asking him a series of questions after injecting him with truth serum. Problem is, Nudger doesn’t know any of the answers. After the troupe leaves, a client comes in with a wad of money to offer him. After some thought, Nudger turns him down.

   But what, he wonders, is going on?

   Lutz must have had a lot of fun writing his stories about Nudger, because they’re sure a lot of fun to read, with lots of light sarcastic touches. This most certainly includes the St. Louis-based PI’s predilection for antacid tablets whenever the going gets tough – a circumstance that occurs frequently in all of his recorded adventures.

   In one sense the plot of this tale is rather skimpy, but it certainly fulfills its duty of covering the ground as well as it needs to have been done. Stories such as this one are highly addictive.

“Lucky Dip.” First appeared in A Woman’s Eye, edited by Sara Paretsky (Delacorte Press, 1991). Reprinted in Bad Behavior, edited by Mary Higgins Clark (Gulliver Books, 1995). Collected in Lucky Dip and Other Stories (Crippen & Landru, 2003). Winner of an Anthony for Best Short Story of the Year.

   As the leading protagonist of “Lucky Dip,” Crystal, who is merely eighteen, lives as much on the street and using her wits as anywhere else. But when she robs a dead man she finds in a bad section of town called the Trenches, she learns that fortune may actually have turned against her as quickly as her new gains have boosted her spirits.

   But only for the moment. Someone was responsible for the man’s death, and what she has taken from him they want very badly. And of course, on the other side are the police, and she knows better to take any chances with them.

   She is caught in a trap, in other words, one of her own making. But she is only eighteen and while the trap is truly and honestly a desperate one, she — who tells her own story — is not one to despair.

   She comes close, though.

   What struck me the most after finishing this one was not that the ending was not yet paved out for her, but that the story as it was told rang true all the way through. Crystal’s world is not an easy world to live in, but she’s used to it, and she’s a survivor.

DAVID FROME – Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue.   Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1936. Popular Library #26, paperback, 1944; Popular Library 60-2234,  paperback, date?

   David Frome is a pseudonym of Zenith Brown, who also wrote under the name Leslie Ford. As with her Ford novels, the Frome books deal with polite middle-class people to whom bloodless murder is an unwelcome but speedily dealt-with intrusion. Unlike the Ford novels, which are distinctly American, the Frome stories are distinctly British; many readers have no inkling that the author was not English but an American living in Great Britain who had great ability at adopting the English idiom.

   Mr. Evan Pinkerton would be a pathetic character were it not for his deductive abilities. He is described mainly as “little” and “grey” — “little grey forehead,” “little grey man,” even “grey little spine.” His life has been “mostly drab and often miserable,” and now that he has inherited a substantial sum from his wife, he has trouble believing he really has money and continues to live parsimoniously.

   As this novel opens, Mr. Pinkerton is going on a holiday to Bath, England. Before very long he has violated his parsimony by engaging a room in an expensive hotel, led there by his curiosity about Dame Ellen Crosby, a famed actress.

   Mr. Pinkerton observes quarrels and tensions developing among Dame Crosby’s crippled brother, Major Peyton; the major’s beautiful daughter, Cecily; Cecily’s plain and envious sister, Gillian; Cecily’s fianc6, the arrogant Vardon Crosby; Mrs. Fullaway, landlady at the hotel; and the mysterious Miss Rosa Margolious, a guest who seems always to materialize at the wrong moment.

   When Dame Ellen is found murdered in her bed. it is no surprise — largely due to the author’s unfortunate “had-I-but-known” approach. Pinkerton, who has often assisted Scotland Yard, is called in on the case by Chief Constable Thicknesse (who investigates along with his spaniel, the macabrely named Dr. Crippen). And detect Pinkerton does, in his mild-mannered and affable way, with the usual satisfactory results.

   This novel and the others in the Pinkerton series — The Hammersmith Murders (1930), Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard ( 1934), and Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel (1939), among others — will probably not suit the reader who likes his heroes larger than life. It is possible, however, to identify with Evan Pinkerton’s frequent embarrassment and bumbling ways; and the plots and settings are vintage British mystery.

     ———
   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.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/greenwichtime/name/robert-mcginnis-obituary?id=58019815.

   Thanks to Tony Baer for leaving a message with the link above on Yahoo’s Rara-Avis group.

DINNER RUSH. Access Motion Picture Group, US, 2001. Danny Aiello, John Rothman, Frank Bongiorno, Lexie Sperduto, Zainab Jah, Alex Corrado. Director: Bob Giraldi.

   Dinner Rush isn’t your typical Hollywood fare; in fact, this independent feature is fairly unorthodox in its style and presentation. Set almost exclusively over the course of one night at a trendy downtown Italian restaurant in Manhattan, the movie follows a coterie of employees and customers as they navigate a series of challenges.

   Central to the story is the chef’s father and restaurant owner, bookmaker Louis Cropa (Danny Aiello). Cropa, after years of taking bets, wants out of the illicit trade. But it’s not going to be so easy. Not only does he have to look after Duncan (Kirk Acevedo), restaurant’s sous-chef and a compulsive gambler who’s up to his neck in debt. He also has to face down a squeeze play by two Queens mobsters who have shown up at his restaurant for the evening.

   Bookmarking the film are two killings, one at the very beginning when Cropa’s partner is murdered and a second one at the end, when the entire point of the evening is finally revealed. In between, the viewer is treated to both the petty dramas that unfold in a high-stakes kitchen and to an almost anthropological study of the types of patrons who frequent expensive, well-reviewed eateries. As I said, unorthodox.

   The film benefits tremendously from a very talented cast, including Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad) as an art critic; Walt MacPherson (Homicide: Life on the Street) as a detective; and Summer Phoenix as a waitress whose art adorns the wall of the restaurant.

   Even though there were times when I questioned what exactly it was I was watching, overall I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s different, to be sure and reminded me to some extent of David Mamet’s work.