BART PAUL – Under Tower Peak. Tommy Smith #1. Arcade, hardcover, April 2013; paperback, November 2014.

   It isn’t often when reading a mystery, Western, thriller, or combination of the three I find myself thinking in terms of writers like Ernest Hemingway, Tom Lea, Cormac McCarthy, and Jim Harrison, and at the same time hearing echoes of Craig Johnson, Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, and Stephen Hunter, but Bart Paul’s Under Tower Peak evokes all those and in the best way possible, and manages a sense of humor to boot, as hero Tommy Smith and his pal Lester lie under the stars in California’s Sierra Nevadas.

   Loosely suggested by the crash of businessman adventurer Steve Fossett’s plane in 2008, the novel finds former sniper Tommy Smith and his friend Lester in the high country where they discover the crashed plane of a missing billionaire adventurer. That’s a seemingly harmless enough fact, but it soon turns complicated when Lester takes an expensive Rolex off the dead man and some of the money carried in a bag on the plane. Once back in civilization his less than ethical sometime girlfriend Callie Dean, local tramp with a not quite heart of gold, contacts the family lawyers about a reward and when she shows up dead after talking to a man in a fancy car the stops are out.

   Lester’s moment of greed has let loose the hell hounds as the dead man’s trophy wife and drug lord son, and their legal and illegal cadre of backers are soon threatening Tommy and Lester, and crawling all over the Sierra Nevada’s willing to kill for something related to the dead man and the crash that Tommy has no clue to. Innocent people are dying and Tommy’s one time friend idiot Sheriff Mitch isn’t up to handling the mess he has on his hands.

   As the wife’s attractive lawyer Nora explains why Gerald, the son needs the father to be alive or he could lose a fortune she warns Tommy:

   That’s setup enough for a solid tale of adventure, violence, and the hard won values of uncorrupted but not scrupulously honest men vs corrupt and ruthlessly violent ones, but Paul ups the ante not only by his evocative writing, but in his character of his reluctant but all too proficient hero who turns out to be equal parts John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and James Bond.

   Even the gun-lore here, which in some writers’ hands is little more than gun porn, is part of the plot and the nature of the protagonist, never overdone, or less than vital to the story at hand.

   It doesn’t take much to guess Smith and Lester are going to find themselves out numbered and out gunned against a small army of dangerous and violent people, but the fact that Paul makes that pay off again and again in ways that evoke the best writers of this kind of tale, James Lee Burke is another name that comes to mind, is remarkable.

   After Gerald’s Cuban friends blow up his cabin Tommy lies in wait on a bridge for them.

   Naturally at some point Tommy and Lester decide the law isn’t going to take its course in time to save their lives or avenge Callie, who was trying her hand at extortion, and decide to take things in their own hands against the advice of Deputy Sarah Cathcart who tries to protect them both.

   This isn’t just an action suspense piece either, there is a decent mystery and noirish plot and some good detective work along the way putting the complicated ends of the story together with billions of dollars at stake, and something else Tommy can’t guess at drawing all the firepower, legal and not.

   Paul is a writers’ writer, literate and literary without beating it over the readers head. Reading this book is not only a pleasure as escapist literature, but in watching a capable and gifted writer practice his craft with precision and style. His work invokes not just the obvious names, but writers like Edward Abbey, Oliver Lange, Newton Thornberg, Will Bryant, A. B. Guthrie, and Clair Huffaker, and that is notable company for any writer, in the genre or out.

      The Tommy Smith series —

1. Under Tower Peak (2013)
2. Cheatgrass (2016)
3. See That My Grave is Kept Clean (2019)

ROBERT LESLIE BELLEM “Suicide Scenario.” Novelette. Nick Ransom #6 (*). First published in Thrilling Detective, February 1948. Collected in Nick Ransom, Confidential Investigator (UPDproductions, Kindle edition, 2018).

   If you thought this was going to be a review of one of Bellem’s “Dan Turner” stories, I can hardly blame you. After all, one source I found says that he wrote over 300 of them. But that’s only a small percentage of Bellem’s output, estimated by that same source to be in the 3000 range, almost all of it in the form of short fiction.

   After appearing in a run of five stories in the early 40s, Nick Ransom took up shop in the pages of Thrilling Detective in 1948 for a run of nine more tales, beginning with “Suicide Scenario” in the February 1948 issue. Previously a Hollywood stunt man with is own business called “Risks Incorporated,” Ransom has decided that business wasn’t good enough and has changed the sign on he door to “Nick Ransom, Investigations.” Hollywood being the town it is, not only have bit players come calling, but so have producers, directors, stars, and “assorted geniuses of every size and gender.

   He doesn’t have a client in this tale, however. While driving back to his office through the streets of Los Angeles, he stopped by a frantic woman who needs him to stop her husband from committing suicide. Which he does, cleanly and efficiently. It turns out (not surprisingly) that there’s more to the story. The man whom he stopped from shooting himself turns out to have been hired to play the part, and then the real husband is found, his face blown away.

   This is not all. There are more twists and turns ahead. This is a real detective story, with lots of clues and red herrings to follow and be sorted out. Plus Bellem’s usual skill with the English language, somewhat toned down from the Dan Turner stories, and no emphasis at all on various parts of the female anatomy which took up a lot of space to describe back in Turner’s Spicy Detective days.

   Well, not completely. Quoting from the first page:

   —

       The Nick Ransom series —

Peril for Sale (ss) Detective Dime Novels Apr 1940
Danger’s Delegate (ss) Red Star Detective Jun 1940
Hazard’s Harvest (ss) Red Star Detective Aug 1940
Jeopardy’s Jackpot (ss) Red Star Detective Oct 1940
Risks Redoubled (nv) Double Detective Aug 1941
Suicide Scenario (nv) Thrilling Detective Feb 1948
Mahatma of Mayhem (nv) Thrilling Detective Apr 1948
The 9th Doll (nv) Thrilling Detective Aug 1948
Serenade with Slugs (nv) Thrilling Detective Dec 1948
Homicide Shaft (nv) Thrilling Detective Apr 1949
Preview of Murder (nv) Thrilling Detective Jun 1949
Puzzle in Peril (nv) Thrilling Detective Oct 1949
Blind Man’s Fluff (nv) Thrilling Detective Feb 1950
Murder Steals the Scene (nv) Thrilling Detective Aug 1950

(*) There is a Nick Ransom in the story “Short Cut to Vengeance” in the December 1939 issue of Variety Detective as by John Gregory, but the latter is known to be a house name and no one seems to have connected it up with Bellem.

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Last Coyote. Harry Bosch #4. Little Brown, hardcover, 1995. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1996.

   Connelly is without question one of the most highly regarded crime writers of the nineties. That his 1994’s The Concrete Blonde was not shortlisted for an Edgar tells you all you need to know about the MWA’s awards process.

   He wouldn’t be Harry if he didn’t have troubles. His house has been condemned because of earthquake damage, his lover has left him, he’s drinking too much,and he’s been suspended and forced to see the Department psychiatrist because he shoved a superior officer’s face through a window. A closed one.

   His remedy? To investigate the murder of his mother, unsolved (covered up?) when she was killed over 30 years ago. Old bones, buried secrets, and a road that could lead either to redemption of or the bottom of the long slide.

   Connelly’s strengths are to me a little harder to analyze than those of some. There’s no one facet of his writing that says, “Here’s a Connelly book.” The primary appeal is the character of Harry himself, I guess, but Connelly is the complete package — his prose is excellent, his pacing outstanding, and the characters other than Harry quite go.

   His only weakness for me has been his plotting, but that has improved with each book. And this is a particularly good book, deepening the characterization and conveying a sustained mood of darkness and desperation. But then, Harry and his tales never were rays of sunshine, were they?

   Connelly is one of the better.

I’LL BE SEEING YOU. Selznick/Unired Artists, 1944. Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Spring Byington and Tom Tully. Adapted by Marion Parsonnet from a radio play by Charles Martin. Directed by William Diertele and George Cukor.

   Among the oddest of Christmas films, I’ll Be Seeing You offers a deceptively simple tale and makes it resonate with surprising counter-rhythms and a touch of noir.

   The plot in brief: It’s the Holidays, and Ginger Rogers is visiting relatives in a small town, but after New Year’s Day she has to go back to Prison, where she’s serving a six-year stretch for Manslaughter.

   On the train, she meets Zach Morgan (Joseph Cotten) a soldier who impulsively decides to get off at her stop and get to know her. But after the Holidays, he too must return — to a VA hospital where he’s being treated for what we now call PTSD.

   The romance that follows is built like a fragile house of cards as we see them start to build trust in each other, confidence in themselves and tentative plans for a future that just ain’t gonna happen; he’s got to go back to the Hospital (she doesn’t know it) and she must return to Prison (he doesn’t know it) and even as love grows in the holiday climate, tension builds as we wonder what will happen when they find out….

   Director Diertele heightens the drama by stressing the small town atmosphere and the loving cohesion of Ginger’s family (Tom Tully, Spring Byington and Shirly Temple at that awkward adolescent age.) Her furlough has been hard fought-for, and the depth of feeling when she reunites with her family is.. well it’s one of those moments we watch Movies for. Joseph Cotten is welcomed by her family…

   â€¦.And then it hit me: This is the reverse side of Shadow of a Doubt (Universal, 1944 – just a year earlier!). We have Joseph Cotten once again as a man with a secret coming to a small town and ingratiating himself with an All-American Family. Only this time, Ginger is the killer, and the flashback to her crime has a haunting Woolrichesque quality to it that matches anything in Shadow.

   As I watched both films I saw how Cotten incorporated elements of one character into the other and differentiated them at the same time. Both men are charming, but Zach ‘s charm is a clumsy, off-hand thing, while Uncle Charlie’s is a practiced act. Both men wear masks, but Cotten lets Uncle Charlie’s mask slip to chilling effect, while Zach’s mask crumbles heart-wrenchingly. Watching both films back to back I gained a new appreciation of Joseph Cotten’s talent, all too rarely used and too often wasted.

   But all this is a sidebar at best. I’ll Be Seeing You is a moving if modest triumph of off-beat movie-making. A film of genuine charm and feeling. And perfect for the Christmas Season.

SHOOT TO KILL. Screen Arts Pictures, 1947. Also released as Police Reporter. Russell Wade, Luana Walters [as Susan Walters], Edmond MacDonald, Robert Kent [as Douglas Blackley], Nestor Paiva. Director: William Berke.

   This tough-minded B-programmer from 1947 was included in a box set of Noir films, and in that category, it’s certainly marginal, if not a full-fledged entry. It’s told in flashback form, with at least one flashback within the first one, but not confusingly. I don’t think anyone will any problems following the story.

   It begins with the current acting D. A. (Edmond MacDonald) being found dead in a car, having gone over one of those cliffs that are always on the outskirts of town in B-movies like this one. In this case, though, what makes the headline of the day is that also in the car is Dixie Logan (Douglas Blackley), one of the town’s most notorious gangsters, also dead. Surviving the crash is the D.A.’s recently wedded wife (Susan Walters).

   The flashback begins as the latter tells her story to the sympathetic ear of reporter ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, played by extremely soft-spoken Russell Wade. None of the players in this picture ever made it big in Hollywood, as I’m sure you’ve realized already, but most of them had long careers in movies very much like this one — speaking budget-wise, of course.

   Susan Walters, most often billed in her many movie appearances as Luana Walters — many of them westerns — was making a bit of a comeback in Shoot to Kill , her first film in several years, but to little avail, making only five more after this one (including a short role as Superman’s mother in the 1948 serial). Still very beautiful at the age of 35, she also shows more weariness than the role calls for, caused, one imagines, by tragedy and other problems in her personal life.

   I’m not a big fan of movies told in flashback format, but I have to admit that in this case what it does is to introduce an element of mystery to the entire proceedings, producing a puzzle that would have been harder to create if the tale had to build up to it in purely linear fashion.

   More. There are plenty of dark shadows in this one, along with a dash of dark-edged violence as a double-edged bonus. Add plenty of mysterious goings-on and some better than average plot twists along the way, making the 64 minutes of running time just the right length for more than your money’s worth of entertainment.

Note: This is a slightly revised version of a review first posted on this blog in August 2009.

   I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to see both of these:

ANNE PERRY – Death in Focus. Elana Stanford #1. Ballantine, hardcover, September 2019. Setting: Europe, 1933.

First Sentence:   Elena narrowed her eyes against the dazzling sunlight reflected off the sea.

   On a vacation in Italy with her sister Margot, Elena Stanford meets Walter Mann and Ian Newton. An immediate attraction causes Elena to go with Ian to Berlin after a message compels him there. A shocking event and a request from Ian sends Elena on to Berlin, and into a danger from which she may not escape.

   Anne Perry masterfully sets the stage, lulling one into a sense of elegance, music and possible romance. How effectively she dispels one of that notion. She describes the emotional environment of the time, –“Fifteen years after the war, everyone still had their griefs: loss of someone, something, a hope or an innocence, if not more. And fear of the future.” –conveying the almost frenetic gaiety and desperation for emotional connection so well.

   Perry is such an evocative writer, and her characters are dimensional and interesting, but it’s her perspective which causes one to pause, consider and want to share what one has read with others. She also understands pacing; taking one seamlessly from tranquility into the threat of danger.

   The story is told from several POVs. One may smile at the timelessness and dismissiveness with which the younger generation considers the older one, and of Elena’s brother’s view of her talent and ambition. Elena’s resourcefulness, strength, and determination; a hallmark of Perry’s female characters, is impressive even though one may question the suddenness of Elena’s decisions.

   There is great lyricism to Perry’s writing, particularly in her descriptions of nature, yet there is also a touch of pathos. In 1933, one is witnessing the rise of Hitler, Mussolini’s move toward fascism. It is somewhat painful to realize how much of the 1930s are reflected in that which is happening today. The book does have a strong historical and political message. While some may object and possibly be offended, others may decide to learn from it –”Hitler is either assuming more power for himself or appointing bloody awful men to do it for him.”

   It is Perry’s description of those who have been in a war and suffer from what we now know as PTSD, and her portrait of the time’s events—”The violence is increasing, and the oppression. They’re building camps to put prisoners in, not people who’ve committed crimes, but people who are born guilty of being …” that truly brings to bear the reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

   When Perry switches gears, it is sudden, surprising, and very effective. She triggers our suspicions and then makes us question them.

   The plot isn’t perfect. There are points of repetitiveness, a lack of focus, and what feels to be plot holes. The female characters are occasionally too trusting, but that’s part of the plot. On the other hand, there is excellent suspense and a very effective sense of danger. One has a real sense of the fear people experienced during this time. Elena’s determination to photograph the events she witnesses, and then to keep the film safe, were a strong element one hope to see continued. One must give Perry credit for making this time in Berlin painfully real and for teaching us details of history we’ve not known.

   Death in Focus is a somewhat painful, but highly relevant read. It does contain a well-done red herring, and a wicked twist leading to a very good ending.

Rating: Good Plus.

   The dictionary definition of “serendipity” describes it as the happy quality of finding desirable objects quite by accident. To give an example, here, reviewed below. are two works of detective fiction which I accidentally read back to back, a chance occurrence which may stretch the definition only a small amount, is as fine a double introduction into the parallel worlds of fine arts and antiques as you could find anywhere.

   As in most endeavors, involved here are levels of expertise and familiarity that those of us on the lower echelons are only vaguely aware of. It always comes with no little satisfaction, not to mention fascination, whenever we’re given the chance like this to pick the brains of even a fictional expert, no matter what field.

EDWIN LEATHER – The Duveen Letter. Robert Conway #3. Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover, 1980. Pinnacle, paperback, 1981. Originally published in the UK by Macmillan London, hardcover, 1980.

   Take this book. In it the renown Viennese art dealer Robert Conway is flown all the way to New York City to assist in authenticating a priceless collection of Renaissance oils. Minute details, such as a given artist’s technique in painting ears and hands, or the texture of such objects in the background as trees are said to have exposed more forgeries than any ultra-modern laboratory technician has ever done.

   There is another puzzle for Conway to decipher, however, and that is why an apparently genuine painting should come with an entirely phony letter of authentication. The trail leads him back to Paris, where his diligence is responsible for uncovering yet another of those so many tragic tales still the European legacy of World War II.

   Another strand of the plot concerns the attempted defection of an East German SSD officer to the West. On a purely story level, the two halves of the tale run headlong together and are intermeshed only with a noticeably strong dose of coincidence. Too much of too little action seems also to occur offstage. The urbane Mr. Conway, who has appeared in both of Mr. Leather’s previous mysteries, gets his feathers ruffled only just a little this time.

  JONATHAN GASH – The Grail Tree. Lovejoy #3. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1980. Dell/Scene of the Crime, paperback, 1982. Originally published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1979.

   In absolute contrast, there is Lovejoy, of Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., the scruffy hero of sorts of two previous detective novels written by Jonathan Gash. Here he is again, and somehow still managing to scrape by, both in business and his many and varied love affairs.

   Lovejoy has, nevertheless, an inborn instinct for the authentic antique — a little bell rings somewhere at the merest sniff of one — a handy knack to have, too, since England is apparently awash with myriads of fine imitations being merrily produced every minute of the day by scores of skilled, industrious craftsmen.

   In the guise of guiding a young apprentice-assistant named Lydia into the many intricacies of his profession, Lovejoyy casually tells us in passing all there is to know, and certainly more than we are ever likely appreciate, about Seraton wine tables, Hepplewhite elbow chairs, Regency silverware, and (as the ads would say) much, much more.

   Unfortunately, some endless hugger-mugger about some not-so-splendid Satsuma vases slows the tempo down considerably, and keeping track of our hero’s motley group of fellow dealers is a requirement that gradually becomes more and more of a chore.

   Lovejoy is a character of no great outward appeal, but he knows his business, and his zealous devotion to it is all but enough to make acceptable the rest of his warted personality. It should be noted, however, that it will strictly those of the male chauvinistic persuasion whom the ending, a mildly happy fantasy of sort, will please the most.

Steve, From the videos you choose to show us on your blog, you and I seem to have a lot of the same tastes in music. I wanted to know if you have ever listened to Kirsty Maccoll, and mainly her Tropical Brainstorm album. She’s an English girl singing Spanish tunes, and for some reason the whole album works. The most famous song from it is “In These Shoes.”

   Sad story, this album was released to great reviews and she ended up dying in a boating accident several months later.

   I just had a friend borrow my CD and tell me how much he enjoyed her music, so when I was listening to the Marianne Faithfull song you posted, I thought of you, and hope you enjoy it. The rest of the album is great, but I’m not sure if any or all of the other songs are online.

   I’ve not seen a James Bond movie since Casino Royale, the first one in which Daniel Craig had the starring role. I don’t see anything in this one that appeals to me, either, but there’s plenty of time for me to change my mind about that.