LURE OF THE SWAMP. Regal Films/20th Century Fox, 1957. Marshall Thompson, Willard Parker, Joan Vohs, Jack Elam, Leo Gordon, and Joan Lora. Screenplay by William George, from the novel Hell’s Our Destination, by Gil Brewer (Gold Medal, paperback original, 1953). Directed by Hubert Cornfield.

   No great shakes, but a solid bit of pulp from a director with a feel for two-bit paperbacks.

   Marshall Thompson stars as Simon Lewt, a good ol’ boy making a meager living on the Florida bayou. As the film, opens, he’s approached by a furtive-looking city-slicker (Willard Parker) with a heavy suitcase, who wants a guide into the swamp — only so far and no farther. The stranger goes on ahead a short distance, and when he returns his suitcase is noticeably lighter.

   Hmmmm…

   The plot quickly thickens when Simon goes into town a few days later and sees the stranger’s face on the front page of a newspaper, above the headline BANK ROBBERY SUSPECT MURDERED. About the same time, strangers hit town: A businessman on vacation, looking for good fishing (Burly Leo Gordon) a mysterious blonde (Joan Vohs) and ratty-looking Jack Elam, who just wanders out of the swamp and moves in with Simon. All three are obviously at odds with each other, all three know Simon can lead them to the stashed loot, and Simon finds himself holding low cards in a game that makes its own rules.

   There are no surprises here, but Director Cornfield moves it right along, and evokes a real sense of claustrophobic angst out of Marshall Thompson (never the most electrifying of actors) finding himself mired in a crime that just seems to go on and on.

   The ending is entirely too pat, but here, as in The Third Voice, and whatever he did of Night of the Following Day, Hubert Cornfield showed a feel for the essence of the classic paperback that was decades ahead of fashion.

CANDACE M. ROBB – The Nun’s Tale. Lucie and Owen Archer #3. St Martin’s, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996. First published in the UK by William Heinemann Ltd, hardcover, 1995.

   I think this is one of the best of the plethora of British historical series to come out in the last few years, Robb knows her period, and writes well about interesting times and people.

   In the year 1365 a nun runs away, then returns, in poor health and suffering from delusions, and speaking of miracles. Her story is intertwined with political intrigues involving the throne of Spain, and the Archbishop of York (also Lord Chancellor) has great interest in both aspects of the story. He calls upon Owen Archer, once Captain of Archers for the Duke of Lancaster before losing an eye in his service, now an apprentice apothecary to his wife Lucie and occasional spy for the Archbishop, to see if he can find his way along the strange paths the nun followed while she was gone.

   I’m a little more impressed by Candace Robb with each book, and I was quite impressed by her first (The Apothecary Rose, 1993). In my opinion the two best writers of historical mysteries — though differing greatly in approach and subject — are Ellis Peters and Ann Perry; but Robb is gaining ground fast. She, as they, has the dual knacks of creating and sustaining believable and intriguing characters, and bringing the historical milieu thoroughly to life as she does so. She combines these with an enviable skill in using the storyteller’s tools of pacing and narration, switching back and forth between the viewpoints of Owen and Lucie.

   Her prose is storyteller’s prose — straightforward, never drawing attention away from the narrative. The line between a good read and an exceptionally good one is hard to pinpoint, but there’s no doubt in my mind which side of it Robb’s books fall.

GEORGE HARMON COXE – Fenner. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1971. Manor Books, paperback, 1974.

   George Harmon Coxe was an extremely prolific writer whose early work appeared in such pulp magazines as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly. His news-photographer hero, Flash Casey, first appeared in Black Mask in the early  1930s, and later Coxe used him in a number of novels, among them Silent Are the Dead (1942) and Error in Judgment (1961).

   His other news-photographer sleuth, Kent Murdock, appears in many more novels than Casey, and is a more fully realized character than the creation of Coxe’s pulp-writing days. Coxe also created series characters Paul Standish (a medical examiner), Sam Crombie (a plodding detective), Max Hale (a reluctant detective), and Jack Fenner (Kent Murdock’s private-eye sidekick who starred in several novels of his own).

   Many consider Fenner the most entertaining of Coxc’s later novels. Although published in 1971, it has the feel of the Forties. (Indeed, the hippie reference seems an anachronism.) Coxe has a simple formal style; he describes his characters but seldom invites the reader to identify with them. Action-oriented readers may find Coxe’s work dull; there is virtually no violence, but rather a charming concern for decorum (another hint of bygone days).

   In Fenner, Coxe begins with heiress Carol Browning’s escape from a state mental institution. (Her husband committed her.) The scene shifts to Fenner’s office, where the husband, George Browning, hires the detective to find his wife. Why, with all her money, did he send her to a state hospital rather than a more tolerable private one? Fenner asks. Browning’s answer is unconvincing. Before Fenner can get to the bottom of this, Browning is murdered-in his wife’s apartment. There’s the hook; expect some good twists and a plausible conclusion. No more, no less.

   Jack Fenner reappears in The Silent Witness (1973) and No Place for Murder ( 1975), as well as playing a role in many of the Kent Murdock novels.

     ———
   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.

THE DANCE OF DEATH. 1960. Originally released as Le Saint mène la danse (The Saint leads the Dance); also known as  Le Saint conduit le bal (The Saint leads the Ball). Felix Marten, Michèle Mercier, Jean Desailly Screenplay. Albert Simonin, Jacques Nahum, Yvon Auduard. Based on the story “Palm Springs” by Leslie Charteris. Directed by Jacques Nahum.

   It will come as a surprise to no one that actor Felix Marten (Elevator to the Gallows), a singer and composer, capable as he was at playing action heroes and suave tough guys, is exactly no one’s idea of Leslie Charteris’s Brighter Buccaneer Simon Templar, the Saint. It will come as a greater surprise that he is damn good at it and easy to see as the Saint even in the English language version under another name.

   This unauthorized 1960 film, was the first Saint film since the Louis Hayward The Saint’s Girl Friday, was filmed, but after author and creator Leslie Charteris went to court to have any reference to Simon Templar expunged outside of France, the hero was given a new name.

   Ironically the film is a better adaptation of the original story than the George Sanders outing The Saint in Palm Springs previously filmed in the RKO series, and Marten’s much closer in style to Charteris’s hero than Sanders had been, at least to the tougher Post-War Saint.

   Curiously Marten does look a bit like the John Spangler/Doug Wildey version of the Saint in the long running comic strip though minus the spade beard.

   Marten is at least not diffident to women or violence in the Sanders manner and has a positively saintly smile in action. He even breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience at the end of the film,and whistles what I am willing to bet was the original Saint theme written by Charteris in the French version.

   Despite being unauthorized this is an expensive and well made production. It clearly wasn’t made hurriedly or on the cheap.

   A scene in a restaurant where he disposes of two punks bothering Gina (a sub-plot that complicates the action) is mindful of the well-staged fights from the Moore series and shows off Marten’s physicality. (I can find no reference to it at IMDb but I seem to recall he had served in the French Paratroops, the old Foreign Legion, before coming to the screen.)

   Stuart Thompson (Felix Marten who in some movies plays a character simply called Felix Marten), is a private eye hired in Paris by Fred Pellman, an avid hunter and millionaire who a year earlier helped in the capture of a public enemy in Boston. Now he’s receiving death threats and afraid the police can’t handle them. At a $1,000 a day Thompson agrees to take the job protecting Pellman at his villa where he lives with three beautiful women, his secretaries (late in the film it comes to light one of them may have a motive for killing their boss).

   And when the women are Norma (Françoise Brion), Gina (Nicole Mirel), and Dany (Michèle Mercier star of the five “Angelique” historical epics with Robert Hossein and one of the notable beauties of the era in an early role and a brunette here) that is pretty good company, even if the cat claws are out and any and all of them might be involved in the plot to kill Pellman which Thompson isn’t sure is tied to the Boston incident after all, at least not gangland revenge.

   Ten million dollars is a lot of motive for murder, even the servants are suspicious.

   A guard dog dies, a knife (meant for Pellman) nearly misses Dany (who proves to be a crack shot) while Gina is putting moves on Thompson, and Commissar Richard of the Surete supplies information casting doubt on Pellman’s chauffeur who ends up killed by the fan blades of a car.

   It is a solid Euro-Thriller, as much gothic horror as mystery, replete with Marten finding himself entombed, and more than worth catching. Handsomely and atmospherically shot it is a small gem of a mystery with more than enough horror if not supernatural elements to make it interesting, with the caveat that Euro-thrillers can be something of an acquired taste, and the dubbing is standard.

   The ending, a car chase through spooky woods and final reckoning in a hunting lodge puts a final and satisfying twist on the proceedings.

   This ranks with The Saint in New York and The Saint’s Girl Friday as probably one of the best Saint outings on film before the advent of the Roger Moore series. Like The Steel Key, another non Saint outing of the Saint, it is better than most of the previous Saint films with Sanders and Hugh Williams. Leslie Charteris could have done worse than to let this one be released in English as an exploit of the Saint, and if you want to watch the dubbed version and just ignore Marten’s new name you might enjoy it as a different kind of Saint movie.

   But enjoy it you likely will with an attractive cast, intelligent script, good direction, a jazzy score, and handsome cinematography it is a tasty mix of mystery and horror, and certainly one of the most offbeat interpretations of a Saint adventure ever attempted.

   You can usually find it on YouTube, and it is available from Sinister Cinema.
   

Jon and I are halfway home, driving from CA to CT. We’re now in Nebraska. Expected day of arrival Thursday. Will post as I can but can’t depend on motel Wifi connections. I am doing this from my phone. All is well.

THE SCARF. Gloria Productions, US, 1951. John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge, James Barton, Basil Ruysdale, Emlyn Williams, David Bauer (as David Wolfe) and King Donovan. Written by E A Dupont, Isadore Goldsmith, and Edwin Rolfe. Directed by E A Dupont.

   Robert Bloch contended that The Scarf was ripped off from his book of the same name, but the spirit of the thing comes closer to Goodis than Bloch, and aside from the title and a bit of 40s pop-psychology, it’s an original film — not a complete success, but strange enough to keep watching.

   John Ireland, a couple years after All the King’s Men and struggling to achieve leading-man status, stars as an amnesiac escapee from a state mental hospital who makes his way across the desert and onto the poultry farm of philosophical turkey-rancher James Barton, who asks him not so much about his crime as about his place in the universe.

   Okay, that caught me by surprise. As did a too-clever cop who turns up to trade quotations from the great thinkers with Barton. Later on we get David Wolfe (an actor who spent most of his career in uncredited bit parts) as Level Louie, a thoughtful bartender, and Mercedes McCambridge (also of …King’s Men) as “Cash ‘n’ Carry Connie” a torch singer in one of the seediest bars in the B-movies. The sight of McCambridge slinking awkwardly about this poverty-row dive trying to be Lizabeth Scott is hysterical in every sense of the word, but somehow it’s not without a certain desperate charm, as one studies the actress and the character and wonders how a woman could fall so low.

   All this is directed by E.A. Dupont, himself once a director of note, now fallen on harder times, who focuses more on the characters than the plot, which is a good thing because the story is a rather silly affair of murder supposedly committed by a mental patient but actually done in a moment of mad passion by the most obvious suspect in the film. I don’t mean to sound dismissive, though; The Scarf, for all its faults and pretensions, carries enough loopy appeal to keep lovers of strange movies happy enough for its brief running time.

ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF – Huntress Moon. Matthew Roarke #1. Thomas Mercer, paperback, November 2014.

First Sentence: FBI Special Agent Matthew Roarke is closing in on a bust of a major criminal organization in San Francisco when he witnesses an undercover member of his team killed right in front of him on a busy street, an accident Roarke can’t believe is coincidental.

   Waiting for his undercover agent to cross a busy street, Agent Matthew Roarke’s attention is captured by a woman standing behind the agent. Moments later, the agent is dead and the woman has disappeared. As he tracks the woman, he discovers several deaths at which she was present. Is she that most rare of killers: a female serial killer? She is canny, and always one step ahead leaving bodies behind as Roarke begins to piece together her motive and her objective.

   What an intriguing book, and one where readers are kept off-guard from start to end. It’s also a hard book to review without spoilers. Matthew Roarke is a driven character who we come to know in small bits. He is intuitive, yet logical; a perfect balance for someone in his job. But it’s the female character who keeps us going. Initially, we don’t know the identity of the killer until the “ah-ha” moment, and the tension builds from there.

   Information on the main characters is provided in bits as the story progresses. It is that information which then provides motive for their actions. Damien Epps, Roarke’s second, is the breath of fresh air.

   That the story is told in days heightens the suspense. The story alternatives between Roarke and the woman, and it works. The introduction of a man and his 14-year-old child raises the stakes even higher. The author has an ability not only to set the scene, but to convey the underlying emotions of it— “He steps through the open doorway, past the carved wooden door, into the entry hall with its white painted brick walls and tiled floor. … The terror has turned every cell in his body to ice; his feet can barely move him forward.”

   Just as Sokoloff has not given the investigators anything definite they can track, she leaves the reader directionless. It is clear the moon has significance, but what is unknown. However, evil, the sense of it, is a prevalent and effective theme.

   As the story progresses, the killer takes on the identity first as “Huntress,” and finally her name and background are revealed with a powerful twist. The author’s skill is clear in the killer’s progression. I don’t recall another author being able to transition one’s attitude toward a killer in the way Sokoloff does.

   This is not a perfect book. There are some plot holes and weaknesses such as the description of the Tenderloin, which is not nearly as grim as portrayed. The primary thing which did not ring true is Roarke, an FBI Agent, seemingly surprised by the idea of a female serial killer. He just couldn’t be that naïve. Another slight miss was the inference of a supernatural element which was not developed.

   Huntress Moon, the first in a series, is rather a first chapter in one long book with an arching theme: Evil. It is a page-turner and truly a popcorn book in that no one will be able to read just one. If you like the first, chances are you will want to continue.

Rating: VG Plus.
   

      The Huntress/FBI series —

1. Huntress Moon (2013)
2. Blood Moon (2015)
3. Cold Moon (2015)
4. Bitter Moon (2016)
5. Hunger Moon (2017)
6. Shadow Moon (2019)

WILLIAM G. TAPPLY – Client Privilege. Brady Coyne #9. Delacorte, hardcover, 1990. Dell, paperback, 1991.

   This is the ninth book to chronicle the adventures of Boston attorney Brady Coyne, and the first I’ve happened to read. Some general impressions in a minute, some favorable, some not, but let’s get to the story first.

   A long-time friend of Brady’s, about to be nominated to become a federal judge, asks him to act as his legal representative in a matter of blackmail. When the blackmailer turns up dead (no surprise), Brady is prevented by the doctrine of “client privilege” and his own stubborn sense of ethics from revealing to the police anything he knows about the case.

   And by refusing to talk, he quickly becomes suspect himself. This is all very predictable, so much so that it is greatly surprising that Brady Coyne doesn’t see it coming himself. This is not Brady’s first brush with a murder investigation, yet after the first interview he has with the police, he tells his client, “I feel so – so guilty. They asked me these questions, and I couldn’t answer them very well, and somehow they made me feel as if I had done something wrong.”

   Perry Mason was never such a wimp. Something is wrong here. Coyne has a lot of wealthy clients and he makes a lot of money, and I think I know more law than he does. [WARNING! From this point on, I’m going to be going over details of the story you might not want to know without having read the book first.]

   Case in point: He’s later moaning over the fact that he has all this information about the case, and he can’ tell anyone. Client privilege. My response, “Hire a lawyer yourself.” A while later, that’s exactly what he does. He tells the other guy everything.

   Second case in point: He’s trying to find the woman in the case, but he’s stumped when he discovers she has married in the meantime and he doesn’t know her new last name. After a while his ex-wife has a brilliant idea. “There are records, aren’t there? When someone takes out a marriage license?”

   Perry Mason was never as inept as this. And it never occurs to Brady Coyne that it may be that his client is guilty until some 100 pages have gone by, and it occurred to me as soon as the murder was announced. Well, all right, the guy is a friend of his, and who’s going to believe that of a friend? On the other hand, as soon as he does start to think it over, he’s convinced the guy is guilty, and right away he’s trying to find ways to get out from behind “client privilege” without actually saying anything to the cops himself.

   So he starts investigating on his own, but in doing so, leaving a trail behind him so wide that both the police and the media can follow without breaking a sweat. Is it any surprise that the girl in the case is soon found half beaten to death? It is to Brady Coyne.

   Perry Mason was never of such doubtful intellect as this. Or so disloyal to his friends. I certainly would not care to have him representing me, strong code of ethics or not.

   On the other hand, while the story is so nicely predictable, Tapply is a tremendously smooth writer, with ace-high dialogue throughout the book. Even though I took a moderately strong disaffection for his hero – maybe I don’t identify with yuppies very well – I found myself tearing through the book, caught up in the tale and the need to discover how it dame out.

   All in all, though, in summing it up, what I think I’ll remember most about this book is that it should have made a a lot more use of Tapply’s top-notch storytelling talent than it does.

HIDDEN VALLEY OUTLAWS. Republic Pictures, 1944. Wild Bill Elliott, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Anne Jeffreys, Roy Barcroft, Kenne Duncan. Story and co-screenwriter: John K. Butler. Director: Howard Bretherton.

   Right on the heels of Sundown in Santa Fe (reviewed here ), here is a review of another B-western, and if you don’t like them and if this happens to be one too many for you, you can ask for your money back. (Let me repeat that. You can ask.) This one’s a jim-dandy one, though, and I think maybe the key is one of the names up above in the credits.

   If you’re a long time reader of the detective pulp magazines of the 1930s and 40s, you may have spotted him already. John K. Butler. The story is what makes this one go. Butler made a living at writing, and what’s more he was awfully good at it. This one is as tightly plotted as it can get. You’ve got to watch the actions of everyone every minute, and listen to the dialogue, too. There’s humor (*), there’s action when it’s needed, and while there is a good-looking woman involved, not a bit of romance is even hinted at.

   The story concerns a rancher who’s murdered for his land, his son who tries his hand at revenge until his equally untimely death, and Wild Bill Elliott, who along with his friend Gabby, is framed for the murder in the slickest bit of trickery you can imagine. They escape, join up with ranchers, try to persuade them not to become vigilantes, and bring the crooked lawyer behind it all to justice.d b
   This review has gone on long enough, but one of these days I’m going to have to put in a word for comic sidekicks in western movies. B-variety detective movies had them, too, I know, but it was the westerns who couldn’t exist without them, and Gabby Hayes was surely the rootin’, tootin’ best of the lot of them.
      ___
   
(*) Here’s the line I liked best. A crooked actor has been hired to play several parts in the fraud being played against Wild Bill and his friends, and one of the other owlhoots has this to say about him: “I don’t like actors. My wife ran away with one, but I still don’t like actors.”

LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Burglar in the Closet. Bernie Rhodenbarr #2. Random House, hardcover, 1978. Pocket, paperback, August 1981. Film: Warner, 1987, as Burglar (starring Whoopi Goldberg).

   In close cahoots with his dentist, who somehow has discovered how Bernie makes a living, the latter attempts to burgle the former’s ex-wife. Intended target: a small fortune in jewelry. And all is going well until the lady comes home. What’s worse, she’s not alone. A man who is obviously one the lady’s lovers is with her, and Bernie is stuck – no, worse, locked – in the lady’s bedroom closet.

   And even worse, could that be possible, when the lover has left, there is another knock on her apartment door. This visitor, as it so happens, is a killer, with Bernie, you guessed it, still locked in the closet. It is a ticklish situation, to say the least.

   With the help of the dentist’s cuddly hygenist, Bernie decides that the only way to clear himself from being arrested for the crime is to find the killer himself. This of course he does, or there wouldn’t have been a whole series of additional murders to solve, there being to date nine more over the years.

   But what has made the series such a smashing success over all those years is Lawrence Block’s consistently witty and often irreverent way of telling Bernie’s tales, told by the latter in first person. But after such a smash of an opening act in this one, the detective work sags a little in the middle stanza, but in a “gather all the suspects together at the end” type of finale, both Block and Bernie demonstrate that the reader who hadn’t been paying attention really should have been. The biggest clue of all is right in front of your face as a reader, and mine is red, too.

   Even after reading quite a few of Bernie’s adventures, I still don’t know who I’d cast for the role, be it either TV or another movie. Not Robert Redford. Not Elliott Gould. Not Tom Cruise. But who? Certainly not Whoopi Goldberg.