DAVID WILLIAM MEREDITH – The Christmas Card Murders. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1951. No paperback edition.

   Four men living close together in Stelton, New Jersey, receive Christmas cards with Happy New Year struck out and an added message reading, “You will die before the old year ends.” A practical joke by a child in the neighborhood, Douglas Martin concludes. And then one of the four men is stabbed to death on Christmas Eve.

   Murder and attempted murder follow as Martin, a reporter who is recovering from polio, investigates in an effort to keep himself and others alive.

   Quite a Christmasy novel, with not only murder after a carol singing but chapter titles taken from Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Martin is a well-drawn character, as are his family and neighbors, with all their strengths and weaknesses. My only complaint would be that the author unnecessarily repeats the major clue, and that repetition immediately put me on to the murderer. Highly recommended.

Bio-Bibliographical Notes:  David William Meredith was the pen name of Earl Schenck Miers (1910-1972). This as his only mystery novel, under either name. According to Wikipedia, Miers was “an American historian. He wrote over 100 published books, mostly about the history of the American Civil War. Some of them were intended for children, including three historic novels in the We Were There series.”

   Lamb was a San Francisco-based rock group who appeared at the famed Fillmore Auditorium several times in the early 70s. The band was formed by Texan singer Barbara Mauritz and guitarist Bob Swanson.

   Says Wikipedia: “Their debut album on the Fillmore label, A Sign of Change, was perhaps their most uncompromising and experimental, relying largely on jazz-folk acoustic arrangements and spotlighting Mauritz’s impressive voice on impressionistic, dream-like lyrics.”

   The album has been released on CD but is out of print. Be prepared to pay $40 and up.

NERO BLANC – Two Down. Berkley, trade paperback original, 2000; mass market paperback; August 2001.

   This is number two in a series of twelve crossword-related mysteries tackled together by Newcastle MA-based PI Rosco Polycrates and the newfound love of his life, Belle Graham, crossword editor of the Evening Crier. A big attraction for readers of the series was always the inclusion of six or so crossword puzzles that, when solved, contribute greatly to the solving of whatever case they happen to be working on at the time.

   Missing in Two Down are the wife of a local and very wealthy businessman and a close actress friend trying to escape Hollywood and all that too much fame entails. They set sail together for Nantucket Island and never made it. Rosco is hired by the husband first to hurry up the Coast Guard search, then to discover what went wrong.

   The overlap between readers of detective puzzle readers and crossword solvers must be sizable, but in spite of the longevity of the series, on the basis of this first sample on my part, I don’t think the two authors (Cordelia Frances Biddle and Steve Zettler) got the two ideas to mesh as well as I thought they should. The crossword puzzles themselves are very well constructed, but the whole concept of anonymous puzzles sent to Belle on the part of a person unknown for some mysterious purpose never rose beyond the totally artificial stage.

   It does not help that the story is very predictable and that the characters themselves are only gossamer thin, never coming to life for me. Nor was I pleased with the act of horrific violence toward the end, a death that seems glossed over far too soon — in the very next chapter, in fact, in true cozy fashion.

DEBORAH CROMBIE – A Share in Death. Duncan Kincaid #1. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1993. Berkley, paperback, 1994. Avon, paperback, 2003.

   This is a first novel set in England, by an ex-resident of Scotland now living in Texas; an intriguing mix. Newly promoted Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard is on a well-earned vacation at a cousin’s timeshare in the north of England.

   As oft seems to happen to vacationing cops, he has scarcely unpacked his bags when murder is committed — the assistant manager is electrocuted in the spa. The overbearing local head cop wants to call it suicide (for no good reason that I could see) but Duncan knows better. Sure enough it wasn’t, and sure enough there’s another murder, and sure enough Duncan lands right in the middle of it — which the local hates.

   This is a good, solid British village mystery. It breaks no new ground, but is well written, and for a first novel, exceptionally so. Kincaid is an engaging protagonist, and his Sergeant, Gemma James, shows promise as well. I found all of the characters believable for the most part, and sharply delineated.

   Crombie had Kincaid semi-yearning after every good-looking woman in the story, which I thought was a bit of an unnecessary tease, but that was my only kvetch. The plot was probably the weakest link in the chain, but even that was no worse than average. All told, I read few first novels that show this much promise.

Bibliographic Notes:   Barry’s judgment was very much correct. A Share in Death was given Agatha and Macavity nominations for Best First Novel of 1993. With publication of The Garden of Lamentations next year, there will be 17 books in the Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James series.

   Beth Hart is one of those singers you wonder why she is not more famous. There seems to be an endless number of her songs on YouTube. It is hard to pick just one to play. Her range and genres of music is as wide as her voice is impressive, from her Janis Joplin-like rock (“Am I the One”) to the pop of “My California,” from soul songs such as “Halfway to Heaven” to the Tom Waits cover “Chocolate Jesus,” from blues (“Baddest Blues”) to jazz (“Jazz Man”). But this is what I picked, from her album Screaming for My Supper:

“Skin.” Composed by Beth Hart (vocals and piano).

   You can read the lyrics at her website:

http://preview.bethhart.com/track/skin/

THE BLACK WHIP. 20th Century Fox, 1956. Hugh Marlowe, Coleen Gray, Adele Mara, Angie Dickinson, Paul Richards, Richard Gilden, Sheb Wooley, Strother Martin. Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

   One reviewer on IMDb says, as someone there so often does, that this is a movie that is so bad, it’s enjoyable. Well, no. It’s mediocre — not bad — and it’s dull, ill-conceived, indifferently directed, and if those are your criteria for enjoying a movie, then maybe it is.

   There is the potential. Oops, make that the past tense. It’s too late now. A veiled lady in black helps one of the “black legs,” a gang of ex-confederate raiders, escape from jail. Her face is covered, but she must be one of four local dance hall girls, all of whom are summarily shipped out of town on a wagon to a town where no one else wants them, either.

   Staying temporarily at a remote transfer station for the local stagecoach line, they and the two brothers who run it are taken prisoner by the black leg gang, led by a suitably villainous Paul Richards, the man with a whip, not a gun.

   But the bad guys do not have a plan, only a goal, and that is to kidnap the governor coming in by stage, force him to grant them pardons, and make their getaway. Nothing else they do makes more sense than pouring water in your boot, as my granddaddy used to say, especially when it comes down to the final confrontation.

   The two brothers have their issues, the four dance house ladies are pretty, but other than Coleen Gray, who has fallen in love with one of the brothers (Hugh Marlowe), apparently at first sight, they have little to do. The younger brother (Richard Gilden) is as green as all get out, and not very interesting. Perhaps there was some potential here, but what what appears on the screen is strictly sub-standard stuff. See paragraph one.

Here’s a track from this Bay Area jazz-rock band’s second, self-titled album from Epic in 1971. Lots of horns in this group:

MARCIA MULLER & BILL PRONZINI – Double. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1984. Mysterious Press, paperback, September 1995.

   I think that this may be the first novel co-authored by two MWA Grand Masters, but even so, my next thought was that perhaps it doesn’t count, since they weren’t Grand Masters when they wrote it. No, that’s nitpicking, I told myself. Of course it counts.

   Double is told in alternating chapters by their best known series characters, Bill’s “Nameless” PI and Marcia’s Sharon McCone. They’re both attending a private investigators’ convention in San Diego, when (of course) they come across several suspicious events, including the supposed suicide (by jumping) of a former mentor of McCone’s.

   Neither of them has a client, but neither can either of them sit back and let the police have all the fun. And reading this book is fun, with many a chapter ending as a cliffhanger, with the other character immediately taking over, totally unaware of what straits the previous author had left his or her fellow investigator.

   This must have a book that was fun to write as well, but even I as a reader can tell what challenges the authors had to face and overcome to make it work as well as it does. Incidentally, while neither character spends much time at the PI convention, they do see in passing there a female PI based in Santa Teresa, plus a couple of gents named Brock Callahan and Miles Jacoby, among others.

BETTY ROWLANDS – Exhaustive Enquiries. Walker, US, hardcover, 1994. Berkley, paperback, April 1995. First published in the UK: Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1993.

   This is the fourth of twelve books in Berry Rowlands’ series of real life cases of murder solved by mystery writer Melissa Craig. The first appeared in 1990 when the author was 67; the final one in 2004. By that time, however, the sixth in her series of novels featuring police photographer Sukey Reynolds had appeared. There are now thirteen in that series, the most recent appearing in 2014.

   I wonder what she eats for breakfast.

   This the first I’ve read of any of her work. It falls into what I call the classical British cozy category, which is to say it is set in the beautiful English countryside, complete with a large manor house converted to a public inn — with ghosts reportedly residing in the cellar — and a protagonist (female) with just enough reason to get involved with mysteries — she writes them — plus a boy friend of sorts who is a member of the local police force, and a good friend (also female) next door to bounce ideas off of, if not share adventures with.

   All well and good, but what this particular sample of her work also is is a good old-fashioned thriller, complete with a gang of thieves who are busy smuggling something in or out of the country in the phony exhaust systems of automobiles. (Hence the title.)

   All in all, it’s minor affair, but it gets rougher and tougher than American cozies tend to do, albeit in a semi-sanitized way. Enjoyable enough to read, but in a couple of hours, you’ll be hungry again.

JOHN BRUNNER – Wear the Butchers’ Medal. Pocket 50129, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1965. Film: How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Made for TV. Universal/NBC-TV; telecast 07 Jan 1967. Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright, Walter Pidgeon, Michael Ansara. Teleplay: Gene R. Kearney. Director: William Hale.

   Before he became a major writer in the Science Fiction and Fantasy field with books such as The Sheep Look Up, The Complete Traveler in Black, and his masterwork, Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner tried his hand at many genres, not the least the thriller, not surprising since thriller elements appear in many of his works, especially those with a near future setting. Wear the Butchers’ Medal appeared in this country first in 1965 as a Pocket Book original, with a nice Harry Bennett cover.

   It opens with a brief note that the murder of a man selling guns to the Algerian FLN, who was found with a Swastika painted on the wall of a Gasthof near the body in Switzerland, inspired the book. It seems a bit strange that should make it pertinent now in the 21st century, but with the rise of European nationalism and Middle Eastern terrorism, it is.

   Our hero is Phil Burns, an American student on a walking holiday in Europe, who accepts a ride to DÈ•sseldorf from a stranger at a gas station. Before he can think, he is offered a large sum of money by the man, Max Moritz, to deliver a wristwatch to his brother in England, and then as they pass a workman in the road flame shoots out, the car wrecks and his benefactor is dead.

   There’s an attempt on Burns’ life in London, a macabre adventure in a German nightclub, and finally a quaint village in Bavaria where long buried secrets are rising to the surface, bearing strange fruit including a threat to the world at large.

   Of course, there is a pretty girl, Angela, who is a Cypriot fleeing the trouble there who works in London for Moritz and his partner, good and bad men, not always who they seem to be, plenty of near misses, escapes, confusion, and all the other standard fare of the thriller, sub genus Nazi revival variety, are present. The writing is assured, the characters attractive or frightening as called for, and the descriptions of the countryside and settings masterful. The suspense is well maintained and the set-pieces all pay off, so there are no complaints.

   It’s a solid well written thriller of the era made more interesting by who wrote it, modern European politics, and the film it inspired.

   I reviewed How I Spent My Summer Vacation here earlier on this blog. I won’t go into it, save I was surprised to find it was based on a novel by John Brunner or that I missed that all these years.

   Outside of the basic set up of an American student on a European vacation becoming involved in a budding fascist plot, there isn’t a lot of similarity between the rather dark novel and the much more lighthearted made for television movie. The hero of the novel is much more self-assured than the character played by Robert Wagner in the film.

   If you like Brunner’s work, or the genre, the book is well worth reading. If not in the first rank of thrillers of the period, it shows where Brunner might have gone in another genre had we not lost him to science fiction, and, if you like the film, it is an interesting sidelight on that.