J. ALLAN DUNN “In the Grip of the Griffin.” Novelette. Gordon Manning vs. the Griffin #30. First published in Detective Fiction Weekly, May 18, 1935. Reprinted in In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 (Altus Press, 2015).

   The first of this long saga of 31 stories was, I believe, “The Crime Master,” which appeared in the November 30, 1929, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. IN this and stories yet to come, Gordon Manning remained continually on the trail of the notorious madman and supervillain known only as the Griffin, his real identity unknown.

   Readers of “In the Grip of the Griffin” were treated to more of same — capture, escape, capture again, rescue, and so on — but what they didn’t realize it at the time, but there was but one more to go: “The Seventh Griffin” (DFW, Oct 5, 1935). I haven’t read that one, but I have been told that the series did have a finale, and I kind of hope it was a good one.

   The Griffin was the key reason why the series lasted as long as it did. It is the evil villain who attracts readers, not the mild-mannered adventurer (in this case Gordon Manning) whose sworn duty is to bring the mad killere to well-deserved justice. (Who remembers the fellow who chased Fu Manchu all around the globe, back in the day? Almost nobody.)

   In this case the Griffin sends one of his henchmen to break into Manning’s home — object: eliminate him — not knowing that Manning is ready and waiting for such a contingency. Once the tables are turned, however — and I hope I’m not revealing too much — the tables are turned again, with Manning bands in the hands of the Griffin. And in what better place to be held captive than a mausoleum located below an abandoned cemetery.

   All ends well for Manning, though, have no doubts about that. Narrow escapes in these kinds of stories are only to be expected. On the other hand, the Griffin is shot and wounded as he makes his own escape one more time. You shouldn’t expect a lot of characterization in stories such as this one, and in fact, there isn’t any at all. But they are in fact a lot of fun to read. Not too many at once, though!

QUEENS OF MYSTERY. Acorn original TV series, available on Acorn streaming, April 2019. Sly Fox Production for Acorn Media Enterprises, produced in association with Ferncroft Media Limited. Cast: Olivia Vinall as Detective Sergeant Matilda Stone, Julie Graham as Cat Stone, Sarah Woodward as Beth Stone, Siobhan Redmond as Jane Stone, Martin Trenaman as Inspector Derek Thorne, Michael Elcock as P.C. Terry Foster, Andrew Leung as Daniel Lynch, and with the Voice of Juliet Stevenson. Created and Executive Produced by Julian Unthank. Produced by Linda James and Tim Vaughan.

   It is difficult to watch the opening of new British TV mystery series Queens of Mystery without thinking of one word – whimsical. With visions of Pushing Daisies dancing like sugar plums in my head I settled back and enjoyed this light contemporary murder mystery.

   Matilda Stone returns to Wildemarsh, the countryside village she grew up in and a place of many mysteries. Newly promoted to Detective Sergeant, Mattie is eager to reunite with her three mystery writing Aunts who raised her and to finally solve the mystery of her mother Eleanor Stone’s disappearance.

   As required in all typical British traditional TV mysteries Wildemarsh is a small village with beautiful scenery, odd characters and more than its share of murders. For whatever reason the citizens of Wildemarsh has a strong interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps that is why there is a raven that often appears during important moments in the stories. It is certain the raven is not telling all it knows.

   What makes Queens of Mystery so much fun is how it uses the tropes of the British TV traditional murder mystery and gives them a dry humorous twist.

   The use of the narrator is clever, adding a fairy tale feel to the stories. The series uses the narrator to go beyond just wittily adding exposition but to expose the secrets of the characters and town.

   Mattie’s boss is Inspector Thorne, a stereotype boss – rude, impossible to please, cold middle aged man. But whenever he is gruffly assigning Mattie the case, the narrator stops action and has the Inspector express his real sensitive and hidden feelings. In episode “Murder in the Dark” we learn the Inspector has been secretly in love with Aunt Jane and lives in fear he will say the wrong thing and ruin it all, but then we return to the scene where we hear what the Inspector decides to say instead – Mattie is to keep her meddling Aunts away.

   The fanciful style of the series works well with the traditional mystery genre that can normally push the limits of believability. Queens of Mystery playfully embraces the cliches of the form of mystery that has entertained readers and viewers for decades.

   In Murder in the Dark,” Beth is in jail on suspicion of murder. Her sisters Cat and Jane want to see her. P.C. Foster refuses to let them in. Jane hands him her phone. It is the Aunt’s friend and the Constable’s mother demanding her son let Cat and Jane in to see Beth,

   The plots are ancient and tired, something Queens of Mystery uses to its advantage. Scripts by creator and executive producer Julian Unthank as well as Matthew Stone offer a different spin on the expected tropes. While the writers have their fun with in-jokes and literary puns hiding in the background, the writing treats the genre with respect and never falls to parody. The mysteries are as full of clues and challenging mysteries as any episode of Midsomer Murders.

   Casting is hit and miss, but most of the regulars do well as their characters. Each of the three middle-aged Aunts is unique. Having spent their lives in the quaint village they know everyone, who to ask when they need help, and all the secrets of the village – including what happened to Mattie’s mother (and before that what happened to her father).

   Oddly the three women spend a great amount of effort and will do anything to prevent Mattie from discovering the answers to the mystery that still haunts her. They especially try to hide any mention of a long gone serial cat burglar named The Raven.

   Aunt Beth is the best cook, former midwife and most popular author of the three. Beth’s detective is intercity Reverend Iris Freeman. Tough, Aunt (“don’t call me Aunt”) Cat lives above an auto repair shop and ride a motorcycle. A former rock musician she does graphic novels featuring a kickass music industry femme fatale named Roxanne Parker. Smart, Aunt Jane owns a bookstore named Murder Ink and writes police novels featuring Henry Lambert iDI, an android police detective.

   Mattie is a shy single woman of 28, obsessed with mysteries, especially the one of her Mother’s disappearance. She is a good cop, from spotting clues to possessing the plodding determination of every good TV procedural cop.

   Another running theme of the series is “Love Hurts.” P.C. Foster has had a crush on Mattie since their school days. Mattie is oblivious to this. The Inspector has loved Aunt Jane secretly for 25 years. Aunt Jane was once left at the altar. Cat has a estrange daughter from a one night drunken fling that cost Cat her true love. Beth’s husband Doctor Robert Doyle died three years ago. Mattie has lost her parents.

   Mattie has fallen in love with the local Coroner Dr. Daniel Lynch who has a girlfriend. The Aunts keep setting Mattie up with bachelors while Mattie pines for the unavailable Daniel. This takes a predictable romantically tragic twist at the end of the final first season episode.

   This is just the damage love does to the regular cast. Love is just as cruel to the suspects and victims of the mysteries. It is the motive for murder in two cases and a weapon used in a third.

   The series featured three episodes each broken up in two parts of 45 minute each.

“Murder in the Dark” – Written by Julian Unthank – Directed by Ian Emes. – Guest Cast: David Bamber, Selina Cadell, Nancy Carroll and Chloe King. *** Murder at a book awards with many of the usual suspects but with a nice twist for the killer’s motive.

   Here is a video of director Ian Emes explaining how he used storyboarding to help him direct episode “Mirder in the Dark.”

“Death by Vinyl” – Written by Matthew Thomas – Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone – Guest Cast: Josette Simon, Michelle Collins, Con O’Neill and Bob Goody/ *** Cat’s old rock band Volcanic Youth from the 1980s decide to get back together, but a secret from the past leads to murder.

“Smoke & Mirrors” – Written by Justin Unthank – Directed by Ian Emes – Guest Cast: Ken Bones, Rebecca Scroggs, Carmen Du Sautoy and George Irving. *** One of Jane’s novels has been adapted for the stage and scheduled to debut at the local theatre, but the rehearsals are plagued with problems. However great thespian of the past and in his own mind Sir Lawrence Shaw believes the play “Macbeth Duality” will return him to fame.

   Modern British TV drama is getting darker and darker with series such as Luther, London Kills, Blood, Elizabeth Is Missing, and on and on. Reacting to the trend Julian Unthank decided to create a light mystery series. Queens of Mystery was originally to be about the three middle-aged sisters solving crimes but when Mattie was added the series came together.

   Some will compare Queens of Mystery to Agatha Raisin as they both belong to a very small group of new TV that is light-hearted mysteries. I found Queens of Mystery one of the best of this genre. Its is more witty and clever than Agatha Raisin. Agatha is more a comedy aiming for laughs (and not always succeeding).

   Queens of Mystery is an Acorn original and available only on Acorn’s streaming service. The DVD will be released in September 2019.

   There has been no official announcement about a possible second season, but hopefully there will be one.

   Originally recorded by rockabilly legend Jody Reynolds in 1958, “Endless Sleep” has been covered by numerous artists over the years. One of my favorite interpretations of this song is by Billy Idol, former frontman of the British punk band Generation X.

LAYNE LITTLEPAGE – Murder-by-the-Sea. – Murder-by-the-Sea. Doubleday, hardcover, 1987. Worldwide, paperback, 1989.

   Layne Littlepage is a singer, performer, voice coach and the author of one mystery novel, Murder-by-the-Sea, which is set in Carmel CA, which (not surprisingly) is also where Ms Littlepage’s voice studio is located.

   With that as a background, it is no surprise she set her mystery novel against a backdrop of a stock company theater, an enterprise for which she shows a deep knowledge and affection. The leading protagonist is still glamorous Vivienne Montrose, a former movie star who has found a home for herself in Carmel, but when one of the players in the town’s latest theatrical production is found drowned, she also finds herself playing detective, a role she finds she doesn’t mind at all.

   There is a list of all of the speaking characters before the story begins, and this is a detective story that most definitely needs one. Ms Littlepage not only knows the ins and outs of both being on the stage but behind the scenes as well. Even more importantly, perhaps, she also knows the kinds of people who invariably show up for xasting calls and rehearsals.

   This is fascinating stuff, but I also have to tell you that the detective end of things is far from the story’s strongest point. The dead woman was unliked, true, but for most of the book, there is no reason she was so unlikable as to be murdered. Some business about poisoned pen letters is finally brought up, but they come into play far too late to be as useful in solving the crime as they might have been.

   So read this, if ever you do, for the setting, that of the world of amateur theater and the town itself, the charming town of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

THE PRETENDER. Republic, 1947. Albert Dekker, Catherine Craig, Charles Drake, Alan Carney, Linda Stirling and Tom Kennedy. Written by Don Martin and Doris Miller. Photography by John Alton. Produced & directed by W. Lee Wilder.

   I read someplace that film noir was a genre in which even lesser talents could shine, a premise borne out convincingly by this film, because if ever there were a definitive Lesser Talent, it was surely Billy Wilder’s brother: William “W. Lee” Wilder.

   In fact, The Pretender isn’t bad at all, and in places it’s surprisingly good, coming from the auteur of Killers from Space and The Man Without a Body.

   Albert Dekker’s usual noir persona was as the Criminal Boss a little too intelligent for his own good, to be brought down by his less-mentally-encumbered underlings in films like Suspense, The Killers, and Kiss Me Deadly. Here he’s an investment broker who’s been pilfering from a client (Catherine Craig) and plots to cover the theft by marrying her.

   But it seems Ms Craig has marital plans of her own, and is about to be engaged to Charles Drake. Dekker doesn’t know the identity of her prospective fiancé, but figures if he can put whoever it is out of action, he can catch Craig on the rebound. And he knows a guy (Alan Carney, just split from his godawful comedy-team-up with Wally Brown at RKO) who knows a guy who can eliminate the inconvenient beau—if Dekker can tell him who it is.

   Here’s where Don Martin’s script gets tricky. Dekker arranges for Carney’s hit man to rub out the rival when his name and picture show up in the Society Column. Whereupon fickle Ms Craig has a change of heart and elopes with Dekker—who finds his name and picture in the papers!

   I’ve mentioned Screenwriter Don Martin before, in connection with the movie Arrow in the Dust (which, come to think of it, also deals with mistaken identity) and he does a fine job here of fleshing out the characters, laying the groundwork for plot twists, and papering over the implausibilities.

   When it comes to establishing mood, though, I must tip the hat to cinematographer John Alton, whose work includes The Big Combo, Reign of Terror, He Walked by Night, and big-budget things like Elmer Gantry and The Brothers Karamozov. Alton fills the screen with striking compositions, looming shadows and those just-slightly-strange lighting effects that can cast an eerie atmosphere over an otherwise mundane moment.

   This off-beat approach extends to the casting, with Dekker going from stodgy to desperate quite convincingly. Charles Drake projects his usual bluff nothingness, and he does it well, Christine Craig is really quite good as the middle-aged socialite bent on marriage, but the big surprise is Alan Carney, as the sleazy middle-man for murder. There’s just something about his performance here that makes you wonder how a fat man like him crawled out from under a rock. Add Serial Queen Linda Stirling in a showy part as a vengeful moll, and you have a colorful ensemble indeed.

   It’s a combination even a flat-footed director like Wilder can’t mess up, and The Pretender comes off as an enjoyable and even memorable noir worthy of your attention.

   This extended July 4th weekend, I decided to revisit one of the few horror movies set during this holiday season, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Based on the eponymous 1973 young adult novel written by Lois Duncan and with a screenplay penned by Kevin Williamson (Scream), the movie is a surprisingly effective, if somewhat vacuous, thriller.

   It’s perfect summer candy. Fun while you enjoy it, but nothing overly memorable. The trailer, with its voice-over narration, gives away the basic plot. Four friends accidentally run a man over and leave him for dead. But that’s not where their story ends. A year later, on Independence Day weekend, the man they thought had died returns with a vengeance.

   The vibe of the trailer is much like the movie: young and hip with a powerful soundtrack. My one complaint is that the trailer doesn’t fully capture how much Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) rather than Jennifer Love Hewitt carries the film. Without her, the movie really wouldn’t have worked.

   For NCIS fans, there is a special treat waiting for you in this one. Muse Watson, who portrayed the gruff Mike Franks on the show, plays the villain in this feature.

  WILLIAM E. BARRETT “Skeleton Key.” Novelette. First published in Ace-High Detective, August 1936. Probably never reprinted.

   To pulp readers of long standing, William E. Barrett is best known for his fifteen stories in Dime Detective Magazine about a chap nicknamed Needle Mike. As described in relation to all fifteen being reprinted in two volumes by Altus Press, Needle Mike was “[A] millionaire playboy with a yen for excitement, young Ken McNally disguises himself as the gray-haired, gold-toothed, jaundiced-looking proprietor of a seedy tattoo parlor in the ‘tenderloin’ district of St. Louis. His unusual occupation frequently brings him into contact with underworld denizens who, willingly or accidentally, embroil him in criminal activities.”

   Totally outrageous and totally unforgettable. William E. Barrett, the author, however, were no mere pulp writer. He later became a well-known bestselling novelist, with [according to Wikipedia] three of his books made into films:

      The Left Hand of God, starring Humphrey Bogart.

      Lilies of the Field based on his novel The Lilies of the Field, featuring Sidney Poitier.

      Pieces of Dreams, based on The Wine and the Music.

   “Skeleton Key” was never made into a film, but perhaps it could have been. It begins on a dark and stormy night (not Barrett’s words, but is true) as a young fellow named Jeff Madison is forced to stop at an isolated cabin for shelter and finds himself confronted with a very strange scene: a dead man with three knives in his chest sitting at a table across from a skeleton. On the table are a pair of dice.

   One man is there before him, and two more in separate automobiles soon stop, also forced to stop in the storm, or so they say. With no way to contact the authorities, all five go to bed for the night. Which of course is when the action begins.

   That’s the setup, and it’s a good one. The explanation is much more complicated, and after all the resulting gunfire ended, Jeff Madison finally learns what was behind it all. Did I forget to tell you that Madison has a secret of his own? On his way to the cabin he found a suitcase filled with $50,000 in cash. I’m afraid I did. How do you like that? Not surprisingly, it is the key to everything.

        —

Previously reviewed from this first issue of Ace-High Detective: FRED MacISAAC “The Corpse Goes East.’

JOHN CREASEY – Sons of Satan. Dr. Palfrey #11 (*). John Long, UK, hardcover, 1947. Arrow, UK, 1963, as Palfrey versus Sons of Satan (on cover). House of Stratus Ltd, UK, softcover, 2015, as The Sons of Satan. No US edition.

   The mission statement for Dr. Septimus Palfrey and Z5, the worldwide secret service he will soon command, as stated in one of Palfrey’s earliest adventures. The Sons of Satan is the eleventh novel in the thirty-four volume series that is notable for expressing Creasey’s Post-War political views and being his deepest venture into science fiction, if only the kind found in thrillers.

   This one opens with Bruce Mallen, an expatriate Brit returning from South America encountering the beautiful Lady Veronica Howell, who slips a strange object into his luggage to be smuggled into England. Soon Mallen has encountered the mysterious and wealthy Colonel George Wray who is tied to Lady Veronica and finds himself a suspected agent of something and someone called Abba and is soon confronted by Z5 agent Stefan Andromovich and Dr. “Sap” (Septimus Alexander) Palfrey himself.

   As in the earlier Gordon Craigie series, the Palfrey series often introduces an “innocent” protagonist or one of Palfrey’s agents who only appear in the single book. Here, Mallen, who proves a capable protagonist, finds himself over his head caught between Z5 and the dangerous Abba.

   Abba had been a code-word first discovered when a little group of reactionaries had been found in Haifa a few months earlier – neither Jews nor Arabs, but fostering unrest among the races. By devious means they had discovered that Abba was a code-word used elsewhere also; in Trieste for a while, in Milan, in Warsaw and in Prague. Agents had sent their reports in, and so Abba had become to them as Brett and Palfrey were to the world at large – a legendary figure. Who he was, exactly what he was trying to do, they did not yet know. They did know that he worked mostly through religious factions, creating fanaticism out of fervour and madness out of piety.

   These megalomaniacal madmen willing to kill millions to achieve their goals remain a staple of the Palfrey adventures rather than spies or agents of other nations. In Dark Harvest, the tenth book in the series, Palfrey and his agents had defeated a madman trying to starve the world through famine. That apocalyptic tone would continue and come to dominate the series with Palfrey battling deadly fogs, world wide forest fires, drought, flood, famine again, infertility, and even alien invasion, surely influencing wirters like John Christopher and J.G. Ballard and possibly even Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass.

   Read today in light of the current concerns of climate change the series seems more contemporary than when it was written.

   This is the last book to feature the Marquis of Brett as Palfrey’s boss, with Sap soon replacing him as head of Z5, an obvious decision, one that it seems curious it took Creasey eleven books to reach.

   Palfrey is a ruthless chief, and agents often sacrifice themselves to the greater good, sometimes at Palfrey’s reluctant but certain order.

   Palfrey, Mallen, and Lady Veronica track Abba to his lair in San Palino in Spain, in the Monastery of Azzen where Abba and his Golden Friars spread their religion of hate.

   The Palfrey books are formulaic, so you would not want to read many in a row. There is a mystery that gradually grows more horrible in its implications, the embattled agents of Z5 seem outnumbered and powerless, Palfrey doubts himself and almost gives up, and then at the last moment saves himself and the world, but not without consequence to his agents, the world, and his own conscience.

   Readers tend to either love or hate the Palfrey series, and admittedly they can show the best and the worst of Creasey as a writer with Palfrey far less attractive than the Baron, the Toff, Roger West, or George Gideon, but I have a soft place for this very pulp-like series and I suppose a taste for apocalypse, at least fictional ones.

   Sons of Satan is an early example of Palfrey at his best.

        —

(*) Editor’s Note: Different sources count this as either #9 pr #10, as well as #11.

FRITZ LEIBER “Lean Times in Lankhmar.” Published in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Book Four. Epic (Marvel) Comics, 1991. Adaptation & script: Howard Chaykin. Pencils & inks: Mike Mignola & Al Williamson. Also in this same issue: “When the Sea King’s Away.” Note: “Lean Times in Lankhmar” was first published in Fantastic SF, November 1959. Reprinted many times.

   Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are a pair of adventurous rogues living day by day if not moment by moment in the swords and sorcery setting of the city of Lankhmar on the world of Nehwon, just west of the Great Salt Marsh and east of the River Hlal. Fafhrd is a tall powerful barbarian, while the Gray Mouser is a small hotheaded thief extraordinarily good at swordsmanship.

   Their first story, “Two Sought Adventure”, appeared in the pulp magazine Unknown in August 1939, but the story of how they first met was “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” did not appear until the April 1970 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

   They usually team up well, but at the beginning of this story they have split up, perhaps arguing over the spelling of Fafhrd’s name. (I have trouble, too.) Fafhrd becomes an acolyte of Bwadres, the sole priest of Issek of the Jug, while the Gray Mouser goes to work for a local racketeer named Pulg, who offers protection to “priests of all godlets seeking to become gods — on pain of unpleasant, disturbing, and revolting things happening at future services of the defaulting godlet.”

   And of course in the course of their new occupations, the two heroes’ paths are about to cross. Many consider this story to be one of the funniest sword and sorcery stories ever, and you can count me as being one of them.

   I enjoyed the comic book version, and I do recommend it to you. The structure and setting of the stories, as well as the flashing charisma of the heroes themselves, are perfect for adaptation to graphic novel format, but I kept wondering whether I’d have enjoyed it as much if I didn’t already know the story itself ahead of time.

   The art is fine, but there was a day, back into the 1960s, where to get the story told, the captions and word balloons took almost all the space in the pages of the comic books of the day. No more. The art is now supposed to tell a lot more of the story, but it takes a lot of coordination between writer and artist to make it so. It may very well be the best that could have been done, but I don’t think it happened here. There were several times when if I hadn’t know what was supposed to be happening, I’d have had no clue.

   Or maybe I’m an old dog struggling with new tricks.

VOODOO ISLAND. United Artists, 1957. Boris Karloff, Beverly Tyler, Murvyn Vye, Elisha Cook, Rhodes Reason, Jean Engstrom. Screenwriter: Richard Landau. Director: Reginald LeBorg.

   There’s not a whole lot you can say about a horror movie that just isn’t scary, even with the presence of Boris Karloff at the top of the billing. But not only is Voodoo Island not scary, it’s boring.

   Boris plays a gent named Phillip Knight, one of those guys who debunks legendary ghosts and monsters on his TV show, and he’s hired in this film to go to a mysterious island in the South Seas by a real estate developer who’d like to build a luxury resort hotel there, if it weren’t for thefact that several others have gone there before, and only one has come back.

   And he’s in a walking catatonic trance.

   But this is the tamest voodoo island that you can ever imagine. True, there are natives lurking in the brush, and man-eating plants and other exotic flora, but most of the film is taken up by endless scenes of our intrepid explorers hacking their way across the island. I also don’t think there was ever much in the way of voodoo in the South Seas. From all I know about it, it’s a Caribbean sort of thing.

   To fill up the time, although it takes a while for them to warm up to it, there is the beginning of romance between two of the characters, and more than a hint of a lesbian overture by one of the female members of the expedition to another. I don’t think that Boris Karloff’s character knew that any of this was going on, but then again I’d like to think he was open-minded enough not to have cared.

   But to end this review where I began it, while Mr. Karloff is the only reason for anyone to see this movie, on any scale you can think of, it can’t possibly rank as among one of his better ones.