VINCENT STARRETT “Footsteps of Fear.” First published in The Black Mask, April 1920. Collected in The Quick and the Dead (Arkham House, hardcover, 1965). Reprinted in The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, edited by Otto Penzler (Black Lizard, softcover, 2017).

   Dr. Loxley has it made, or so he thinks. He has killed his wife Lora, but the police are not on his trail – not as the killer, that is. He made his plans well in advance, and to all intents and purposes is considered dead as well, as he (under his own name) has completely vanished. But under a new name and a new profession, he is doing quite well: as the frosted glass door outside his outer office says, he is now William Drayham, Rare Books, Hours by Appointment.

   He is friends with his neighbors on the same floor, and he does not need to leave his building. It has all the amenities he needs: restaurants, barber shops, and so on. And as a big plus, the sign on the door was “formidable enough to frighten away casual visitors.”

   This may have been an inside joke included here on the part of the author, a well known bookman of his era. Stories in this very first issue of Black Mask were far from the hardboiled fare for which it later became famous.

   It is, however, reminiscent of one that magazine’s better known writers, Cornell Woolrich, with a twist in the ending that brings a severe comeuppance to the former Dr. Loxley. In spite of the new name and facial features, he becomes more and more convinced that his plans have fallen short, and a zinger of an ending worthy of a story on Alfred Hitchcock’s television show ensues, well thirty or forty years ahead of its time.

   Here below is a list of the other stories in that same issue of Black Mask, taken from the online Crime Fiction Index. Only Harold Ward’s name, he being a long time pulpster, is vaguely familiar to me. I’m going out on a limb here, without reading any of the other tales, but I suspect none of the others have anything very much to offer modern day readers. This one by Starrett may be the only one that’s ever been reprinted.
   

      The Black Mask [Vol. I No. 1, April 1920]

Who and Why? · J. Frederic Thorne
The Stolen Soul · Harold Ward
The House Across the Way · Sarah Harbine Weaver
The Peculiar Affair at the Axminster · Julian Kilman
The Puzzle of the Hand · Stewart Wells
Piracy · Harry C. Hervey, Jr.
The Mysterious Package · David E. Harriman & John I. Pearce, Jr.
A Small Blister · David Morrison
Hands Up! · Ray St. Vrain
Footsteps of Fear · Vincent Starrett
The Dead and the Quick · Gertrude Brooke Hamilton
The Long Arm of Malfero · Edgar Daniel Kramer

BREAKDOWN. Paramount Pictures, 1997. Kurt Russell, J. T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, M.C. Gainey, Jack Noseworthy, Rex Linn. Director: Jonathan Mostow.

   Movies have changed since this picture was made. I don’t pay much attention to new films, so if I’ve speaking from ignorance, you don’t need to tell me. What I think is happening is that new movies are either Marvel/DC/etc superhero pictures or what I’ll call agenda flicks. Yawn on both. Movies are meant to be fun to watch, ones like this one. Breakdown is its title, and there’s the short review, right there.

   Here’s a longer one, though. An attractive but rather brainless couple (when you think about it) are driving from Boston to San Diego, and once they hit the desert, they decide to take the scenic route. Two lanes of highway, one each way, straight through nothingness. You take the Interstates, and yes, it’s still nothingness, for miles on end, but you’re not alone. Your car breaks down, help is not far away. Alone in the desert, the friendly driver of an 18-wheeler (J. T. Walsh) offers you a lift, do you hop in? The wife does, the husband decides to stay with the car.

   The truck driver says he’ll take her to the next town – really only a truck stop and a bar – where he’ll leave her. When the husband gets there, no wife. No one’s seen her. A cop offers to help, but there’s no sign of her. What would you do, if this were to happen to you?

   An unfair question. The worst is yet to come. And that’s where the fun comes in. The action and the predicament the husband gets into is way over the top, ending with the 18-wheeler hanging off over a bridge, creaking precipitously with the wind. I suppose none of the story line makes any sense, if you start to think about it, but why put yourself to the effort?

   In any case, I’m glad Jon suggested we watch this after our 3000 mile ride from CA to CT together, not before.

DANA STABENOW – No Fixed Line. Kate Shugak #22. Head Of Zeus, hardcover, January 2020; paperback, February 2021. Setting: Contemporary Alaska.

First Sentence: Anna was a warm, heavy weight against his side, her eyes closed, her breathing deep, her tears drying in faint silvery streaks on her cheeks.

   Matt Grosdidier and Laurel Meganack are spending New Year’s’ Eve at Kate Shugak’s cabin bolt hole at Canyon Hot Springs. Their romantic interlude is interrupted by the sound of an engine, and the crash of a plane. What they didn’t expect to find was two young children, belted together in a seat. Further investigation reveals a body buried in the snow, and a whole lot of drugs. Meanwhile, Erland Bannister, who tried to have Kate killed more than once, has died. But why did he make her the trustee of his estate and the head of his foundation?

   Stabenow captures one’s interest from the very first sentence. Her writing is evocative and visual. It captivates, involves, and becomes real. And it moves, no long narratives here; just writing which keeps one turning the page. One also realizes just how timely are the themes of her story. But it’s the details of dealing with Alaska that make one’s eyes widen. For those who follow the series, this is an Alaska very different from the state as it was in the beginning, which only adds to the interest.

   The story is perfectly balanced between the action, the pastoral, and the wonderfully normal, human moments. The transition between these elements segues perfectly, one to the next. It’s fascinating to see how Kate’s mind works; how she walks through the possible scenarios of traps Bannister may have set for her. Her comparison of a modern minimalist office lobby, using the term “dead perfection” from a Tennyson poem and comparing it to a columbarium is identifiable.

   One can’t but love the references to other writers: Dick Francis, Ellis Peters, Damien Boyd, Adrian McGinty, John Sandford, and even Tennyson. Such things make the character seem real– “To quote the late, great Dick Francis, life keeps getting steadily weirder.” —along with references to food– “…caribou steak with loaded baked potatoes and canned green beans fried with bacon and onions.”

   Stabenow weaves the issues of poverty, drugs and government cutbacks seamlessly into the story through the conversations of the characters. She offsets that by observing the way people in the park care for one another. The plot meanders a bit between the characters and the mystery involving the children, but doesn’t life?

   There is romance and a bit of erotic heat, but it then stops before becoming too graphic. Quite satisfying is Kate’s justifiable anger at law enforcement not having gone after someone they knew was a criminal. Valid and significant points are made about the status of things without being preachy, and the suggestion of a future threat is intriguing without being an end-destroying cliffhanger.

   No Fixed Line is a great pleasure to read. It has everything a really good book should: well-developed characters, a compelling plot that keeps one turning the pages, excellent dialogue, a touch of humor, well-done suspense, well-placed twists, and a perfectly executed ending. Thank you, Dana Stabenow.

Rating: Excellent.

PETER CORRIS – White Meat. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback, 1st Ballantine edition, September 1986. Originally published in Australia: Pan, 1981.

   On a recent visit to the Yale Co-op bookstore, I picked up a large stack of mystery paperbacks with Pl Cliff Hardy starring in them, and this is one of them. I hadn’t bought them when they first came out, and while the reason is kind of silly, I’m going to tell you anyway: Both Peter Corris and his creation are Australians, and I was temporarily working under the delusion that PI novels are strictly an American form.

   Of the 10 books with Hardy in them that I know about, this is the second. I’m missing three of them. There may be more, either ones that were never published here, or ones published later that I just haven’t caught up with yet. I haven’t seen any in a while, although as I say, l hadn’t been looking. What’s remarkable, in retrospect, is that two of the books (Heroin Annie and The Big Drop) are collections of short stories, and what other PI character in recent memory has had a collection of short stories published about him?

   On the basis of this limited sample of size one, I’ll be looking for the ones I’ve missed, but I’d also have to add that I’m not yet a full-fledged Hardy fanatic yet. The case he’s involved with here is a good one, and it even comes close to being great. So close, as a matter of fact, that it put my teeth on edge when it wasn’t.

   It involves the missing daughter of a well-to-do bookie, and why he wants her back, the trouble she’s been in all her life, only blood could say. Bank robbery, blackmail, and boxing are also involved, along with a few dead bodies along the way, If you’d thought that Australia was a nice peaceful land, this book would greatly disillusion you.

   Australia’s cities have their own rundown section, their own squalor, their own hopeless despair of some of the people who live there. The country is also wracked with racial tensions between the whites and the mostly black Aborigines as well, and this has a good deal to do with the story that Cliff Hardy finds himself digging into.

   Corris has a nice descriptive flair for the various parts of the countryside Hardy travels through, as well as for all the inhabitants of it. Where he fails – or where he did as far as I was concerned — is in, umm, for lack of a better word, let’s call it “logistics” — getting people from one spot to another, locating them· precisely in the story, and just generally answering any questions that are raised in doing so. (I’d gladly go into details, but this review has probably gone on too long already.)

   There are two threads to the tale, and unfortunately, I thought the more interesting one was wrapped up first. It might also be my own built-in bias against boxing,) Otherwise, the book has a nice solid feeling to it, and as for me, I’m certainly game for another.

   
      The Cliff Hardy series —

1. The Dying Trade (1980)
2. White Meat (1981)
3. The Marvellous Boy (1982)
4. The Empty Beach (1985)
5. Heroin Annie (1984)
6. Make Me Rich (1985)
7. The Big Drop (1985)
8. The Greenwich Apartments (1986)
9. Deal Me Out (1986)
10. The January Zone (1987)
11. The Man in the Shadows (1988)
12. O’Fear (1990)
13. Wet Graves (1991)
14. Aftershock (1991)
15. Beware of the Dog (1992)
16. Burn (1993)
17. Matrimonial Causes (1993)
18. Casino (1994)
19. The Washington Club (1997)
20. Forget Me If You Can (1997)
21. The Reward (1997)
22. The Black Prince (1998)
23. The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)
24. Lugarno (2001)
25. Salt and Blood (2002)
26. Master’s Mates (2003)
27. The Coast Road (2004)
28. Taking Care of Business (2004)
29. Saving Billie (2005)
30. The Undertow (2006)
31. Appeal Denied (2007)
32. The Big Score (2007)
33. Open File (2009)
34. Deep Water (2009)
35. Torn Apart (2010)
36. Follow the Money (2012)
37. Comeback (2012)
38. The Dunbar Case (2013)
39. Silent Kill (2014)
40. Gun Control (2015)
41. That Empty Feeling (2016)
42. Win, Lose or Draw (2017)

T-MEN. Eagle-Lion Films, 1947. Dennis O’Keefe, Mary Meade, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart, Charles McGraw, Jane Randolph. Narrated by Reed Hadley (uncredited). Director of Photography: John Alton. Directed by Anthony Mann.

   Although the continual narration turns off some viewers, or so I’ve been told, T-Men is one of the better semi-documentary noir films of all time. It’s the US Treasury Department which takes its place in the spotlight, with gang of counterfeiter the target of the agents working there. The story may be a little long in the telling, as the two men working undercover work their way through the world of the underground by starting in Detroit to establish their “credentials” before heading to the West Coast to match their superior plates with the gang’s top-notch paper, imported from China.

   Both Dennis O’Keefe (as one of the agents) and Wallace Ford (an aging hanger-on with the gang) turn in fine performances, but the star of the show is John Alton, as head cinematographer, along with director Anthony Mann. Between them they came up with a film perfectly shot in pristine black-and-white, using lot of unusual angles and closeups that add immensely to the story, not distract from it.

   I do not know why Mary Meade, playing a nightclub photographer received second billing. She was on the screen only for a few minutes total. It’s mostly a men’s affair. On the other hand, June Lockhart makes the most of her very short appearance, while Jane Randolph makes a even greater impression as a villainess close to the top of California gang’s hierarchy.

   If you are a fan of film noir and have not yet seen this, please do. You can thank me later.

GIDEON’S DAY. Columbia Pictures, UK, 1958; US, 1959, as Gideon of Scotland Yard. Jack Hawkins (Chief Inspector George Gideon), Anna Lee, Anna Massey, Andrew Ray, Howard Marion-Crawford, John Loder. Based on the novel by John Creasey. Director: John Ford.

   I don’t always enjoy police procedurals. To me, they’re either grim or boring. I was interested, though, in seeing this offering from the late ‘50s, as such slice-of-life films can lend us a window into another era. Sure enough, we get to see a lot of London in the year of Britain’s first motorway, the launch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and – most importantly, of course – Cliff Richard’s debut single.

   It’s a very English film, full of military types with stiff moustaches and even stiffer upper-lips. Despite all the red buses and clear class divisions, however, it was actually directed by the American Oscar-winning director John Ford. After all those gunfights, this must have been quite the change of pace.

   The excellent Jack Hawkins plays the stolid and dependable Detective Chief Inspector George Gideon, known as Gee-Gee to his colleagues. A middle-aged, middle-class family man, Gideon struggles to balance his home life with the demands of a high-ranking man of the met. We follow him through a single day, as he discovers that a colleague has been accepting bribes, an escaped mental patient is at large and that a violent gang are stealing payrolls.

   Throughout the film, Gideon is reminded that he must return home in time to enjoy tea with his wife’s aunt and uncle and accompany them to a concert in which his daughter will be giving a violin recital. In a recurring gag, Gideon is frustrated with a young, officious constable who fines him for running a red light. Such humour is needed, as the mental patient kills a young woman in a sexually-motivated attack and the colleague with the bribes is murdered by the gang.

   Based on a novel by John Creasey, one of Britain’s most prolific writers, but now forgotten, Gideon’s Day is a fairly grim, mundane affair with an episodic structure and a day-in-the-life gimmick which isn’t always plausible and often contrived. The situations are clearly harrowing for the Chief Inspector, but his wife doesn’t seem to understand. Frustratingly, the film doesn’t deal with this and Gideon only ever apologises.

   There are some decent actors on the bill: Anna Massey, in her first film, and Cyril Cusack and Laurence Naismith, and a brief role for John Le Mesurier and erstwhile Holmes and Watson Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford, appearing separately.

   It’s good to see 1950s London in colour, but there’s little else to recommend this one.

Rating: **

WILLIAM JOHNSTON – The Affair in Duplex 9B.  George H, Doran, hardcover, 1927. Previously serialized as “Duplex Nine” in six installments in Flynn’s Weekly between January 8 and February 5, 1927. Also published in the Sunday newspaper supplement for the Philadelphia Inquirer Public Ledger, dated Sunday, December 16, 1934.

   According to Hubin, William Johnston wrote a, total of nine mystery-novels published between 1910 and 1928 (he died in 1929), but if I were to say he is unknown today, it would be the understatement of the year. Pulp collectors might like to note that this particular novel was previously serialized in Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly in early 1927, however, and this is probably the only reason I picked this one up when found it in a used bookshop not too long ago.

   Johnston is no Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, though, and you needn’t go out of your way to find any of his other books, either. (Still, he also wrote a book called The Fun of Being Fat Man, and while it’s not one of his mysteries it does sound interesting.)

   His hero in this book is Hugh Chilton, a young assistant district attorney who is on the scene when a famous diplomat mysteriously collapses and dies at a party, It is there that Chilton also falls in love (at first sight) with the equally young (and pretty) singer who otherwise should have been the chief suspect in the case. Hard as nails, he’s not.

   And he’s no detective, either. Every so often the action stops as he (and the author) go over the case and clues that have been gathered up to that point, and no matter how he shifts them around, he never does come up with a satisfactory theory for the affair. Only a grizzled old reporter named Taylor seems to be actively pursuing the case, as he keeps coming up with stories for his paper, using facts that the police have just gotten to themselves.

   The underworld in the late 20s was a glitzy sort of place that the rich and famous flocked to in droves, and dope smugglers are  eventually  discovered to be the key to the crime. If it weren’t for the only slightly stilted way of telling the story, it would be nearly as up-to-date as today’s newspapers.

   But as a detective story, it lacks a strong finale. Chilton is outwitted by Taylor at nearly every turn, and he’s not likely to ever have been given such a big case again — but on the other hand, he does end up with the girl. More than that, maybe it’s impolite to ask.

STEVEN FRIMMER – Dead Matter. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1982. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 reprint edition.

   The beginning writer is often admonished to “write what you know,” sometimes over and over again. Steven Frimmer is an editor at a New York publishing house, and he’s probably had occasion to give this same advice to a good many fledgling authors over the, years — and all of them more or less receptive, I’m sure!

   But if it’s so, he certainly practices what he preaches, as he most capably demonstrates here.

   This is Frimmer’s first venture into mystery fiction. Involved in this tale is a senior editor at a small New York publishing house (surprise!) and lots of dastardly doings in the world of books: in-fighting, back-stabbing, and love-making, plus a totally unexpected spy trip to Istanbul, courtesy of the CIA.

   All the makings, in fact, of a truly funny and engaging little thriller.

   Back in New York a murder is also committed, and a new detective emerges on the scene: British personality-host Hartley Dobbs — sort of a David Frost with an affinity for crime.

   For those who pride themselves on their armchair detecting ability, too much of what happens is forced to take place offstage, and the reader is left to learn about it too late to do any good.

   The fascinating world of editing and publishing offers more than mere background, however. Tied up and neatly integrated into both the crime and its solution is the psychology of the people who work with books — and the way they think. It’s a plus, and it’s nicely done.

Rating: B

   
Bibliographic Update: This was, alas, Steven Frimmer’s only venture into the world of detective fiction.

TWILIGHT. Paramount Pictures, 1998. Paul Newman (PI Harry Ross), Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing, James Garner, Giancarlo Esposito, Liev Schreiber, Margo Martindale. Written by Robert Benton & Richard Russo. Director: Robert Benton.

   After an unfortunate incident in picking up a runaway daughter in Mexico (he is shot in the upper thigh, but rumor has is that the shot was higher), PI Harry Ross goes into semi-retirement working exclusively with the girl’s parents as a live-in troubleshooter and jack of all trades. The parents (Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon) are (or were) movie stars of an earlier era, and the most recent job Harry must do for Jack Ames smells lot like a blackmail payment to him.

   Which of course it is, and Harry suspects – and rightly so – that it has something to do with the disappearance of Catherine Ames husband just before she married Jack. It turns out that a lot of water assumed to have gone under bridge has not. It has been backed up for nearly twenty years, and Harry is right in the way when the dam finally bursts.

   In spite of the super superb cast, the movie did not do well at the box office. (Wikipedia describes it as a bomb.) This may be because it’s somewhat derivative of a lot of other PI movies you may yourself have seen, and it’s slow moving without a lot of action. What it does have, is nudity, swear words, smoking, gunplay, dead bodies, terrific dialogue, beautiful photography, and of course Paul Newman, and on the basis of the last three (and in spite of the first three) I have no hesitation in recommending the movie to you.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE – The City and the Stars. Frederick Muller Ltd, UK, hardcover, 1956. Harcourt, Brace & Co, US, hardcover, 1956. Signet S1464, US, paperback, December 1957. Collected in From the Ocean, from the Stars (Harcourt, Brace & World, US, hardcover, 1961). Note: This novel is a revised and extended version of Against the Fall of Night (first published in Startling Stories, November 1948; then in book form from Gnome Press, hardcover, 1953).

   The city of Diaspar, a tremendous achievement of social engineering, stood isolated from the world for billions of years. Machines maintained mankind in a permanent environment, protected from their fears of invaders.

   Alvin, a Unique, the first child to be born in ten billion of those years, was designed for the welfare of the race and to return humanity to its place in the universe. He leaves the city for the community of Lys, and then to the stars. There he finds a mental being once created by man, and which has memories that will free Earth from the myths and legends of the past.

   The story has as a basic flaw the lack of any suspense, for in spite of the quite poetic style, there is little to persuade the reader to keep turning the pages. It is not a struggle to read, but a matter of indifference. One scene is rather sappy, that of Alvin’s first view of Lys, but the feeling of loneliness and smallness when he reaches the stars is overwhelming. Toward the end there is a most appropriate description of what makes an explorer.

Rating: 3½ stars.