A. A. FAIR – Bats Fly At Dusk. Bertha Cool & Donald Lam #6. William Morrow, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times, including Dell D348, paperback, April 1960; cover art by Bob McGinnis.

   I mention this particular paperback edition because it has my signature written inside on the back of the front cover, suggesting that I bought the book new at the time it was published. I assume I read it back then, but since it’s now over 60 years later, you will understand when I say I remembered nothing from any previous reading.

   This book also has some significance in a totally different way. At the end of my recent review of All Grass Isn’t Green, I asked somewhat rhetorically whether Bertha Cool ever had any cases she had to tackle on her own. It turns out that the answer was yes, as David Vineyard quickly replied in a comment, and this is one of perhaps two in which Donald Lam is off fighting the war, having recently signed up to join the Navy.

   This doesn’t mean he doesn’t take part in the case. When Bertha finds herself over her head in solving it, she fires off telegrams to her new partner in the firm, and he replies with several cogent suggestions, of course by means of collect messages throughout the second half of the book.

   The cases begins innocuously enough. Bertha is hired by a blind man who “witnessed” a traffic accident to a girl who had befriended him while selling pencils on the street. He does not know her name and would like to know if she’s OK.

   From here things get … complicated, as complicated as an Erle Stanley Gardner/A. A, Fair story ever gets, and that is very. I don’t think Bertha Cool was strong enough as a character to carry a whole novel on her own, but as a puzzle story, the tale itself is certainly top of the line. There are plenty of clues to be scrutinized carefully, and if put together properly, the discerning reader may (!) be able to piece it all together. (That particular statement does not apply to me.)

   Even the title is a clue.

   But as for Bertha Cool as a solo leading character, I fear she’s too one-dimensional as a living being (her sole motive is her love for money) to be that interesting for as long a time as a full-length novel. Read this one for the puzzle only. It’s a good one.

JACK LISTON – Man Bait. Dell First Edition B-158, 1960. Cover art by Robert Maguire.

   Not to be confused with the 1952 Hammer film I reviewed here earlier. This is the goods.

   Bill Madden starts out the book as a sailor on extended shore leave in New York City. Extended because he contracted a nasty social disease that got complicated by a nastier dose of bad penicillin. A couple chapters later he’s close to recovered and at loose ends, so he hooks up with Marcia, a bar waitress who provides him with companionship and convenient sex.

   As Bill waits for an “all-clear” report from his doctor so he can go back to sea, his relationship with Marcia evolves from convenient to committed, marred considerably by her insecurity and his immaturity, a nasty concoction that leads Marcia to take petty revenge when Bill gets spectacularly unfaithful to her.

   I’ll warn potential readers from the outset that this relationship business takes up three-fourths of Man Bait. But I’ll add that author Liston (more on him later) makes it a compelling thing, with hints of danger like movement in the shadows, never quite clear or explicit, but out there.

   And when the action comes, Liston handles it quite nicely thank you, with bursts of terse conflict and inventive bits of business. And with some surprising and very effective moments as characters we’ve seen amiably chatting just a few pages ago suddenly show a whole ’nother side of themselves.

   According to the Paperback Warrior website, “Jack Liston“ was a pseudonym employed by writer Ralph Maloney — a Harvard man, author of “highbrow” novels (whatever those are) and classy stories printed in the slicks — for Man Bait, his one and only paperback original. I assume that he used some influence with publishers to land at the top of the pulp-paper heap at Dell, but looking at that eye-catching cover, I’m glad if he did.

M. SCOTT MICHEL – The Black Key. Alexander Cordell #1. Mystery House, hardcover, 1946. Handi-Book Mystery #61, paperback, 1947.

   A pretty victim of hysterical amnesia calls for help on forty-three-year-old Dr. Alexander Cornell after finding herself standing over the body of a young woman with a knife in her throat in a New York City playground. She is unaware that Cornell is a special advisor to the D.A., functioning in the Bureau of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine.

   Cornell lets his new patient stay overnight until he can decide bow to proceed. In the meanwhile, she has a nightmare in which an ugly man’s· scolding finger is a Black Key. With the strange dream as a starting point, rather than narco-synthesis. Cornell tries to produce a clue to the woman’s identity and perhaps even the name of the murderer, whom she may have seen and known.

   Cornell is eventually led to the household of the semi-invalid Dudley Briggs as well as two more murders, a near fourth, and blackmail with roots in the distant past.

   Alexander Cornell is a very blunt individual, saying exactly what he thinks in order to test reactions. The final dream interpretation is rather clever, even if ,the method by which it is achieved is medically questionable. There are a couple of surprises in store as well.

   While the culprit is fairly obvious early on, the plot twist and motivation are good. Characterization and pacing,  however, are not as well done as in the author’s Wood Jaxon novels, and I found Alexander Cornell less interesting and convincing as a detective.

Bibliographic Update: The second case Dr. Cornell solved was recorded in Dear, Dead Harry (Phoenix, 1949) under the author’s pen name Milton Scott. As Jim pointed out in his review, Michel wrote two books with Wood Jaxon as the leading character, both from Coward-McCann in the early 40s. He also wrote one standalone mystery

WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM – Pretty Boy. Vanguard, hardcover, 1936. Mongrel Empire Press, softcover, 2014.

   William Cunningham was director of the Federal Writers Project in Oklahoma under the WPA. Working under him were Jim Thompson and Louis L’Amour. Then when he quit, he recommended Jim Thompson as the next director. Which was granted.

   This is the fictionalized story of Pretty Boy Floyd. Childhood is skipped, the story beginning with Pretty Boy already debauched and criminous, forsaking the life of a bankrupt tenant farmer for that of a small-time bank robber.

   Floyd has no desire to live in the world into which he was thrown, that of starving Depression-era Midwest. “You can’t beat the system, and you might as well be dead, so why worry about anything?”

   The banks are robbing the farmers. The farmers are foreclosed. Seems like the only honest way to make a living is by robbing the banks. Parole officers make it so hard to go straight it’s easier to go underground, back into the degeneracy and crime, than not to.

   Pretty Boy is a hero of the backwoods tenant farmer, generous with his plunder to those in need. Never killing anybody unless he had to. Never robbing anybody but the bank.

   He’s able to survive much longer than most because none of the locals will give him up, and local law enforcement leaves him be.

   And then he doesn’t. But he’s alright with it. He’s ready to go. Just so long as he doesn’t have to get arrested. So long as they don’t stick him in the chair, electrodes to his head and a metal hat. Dying’s okay. Just not like that.

   The book’s fine, if you want to hang out with Pretty Boy Floyd for a bit, hiding out in the backseat watching him rob a few banks, be charitable with some sad sack wretches, and hide out. Til the next time. And the next. And the one after that. And then stop.

   A bit on the depressing side. Like if Parker was more like Robin Hood and got killed by the Sheriff of Nottingham. And unlike Parker, Pretty Boy doesn’t really enjoy it — not the action nor the plunder. He’s reluctant and he’s sad and he doesn’t want to live. But then again, Parker’s not real, and Pretty Boy was.

ZODIAC. “The Cool Aquarian.” Thames Television, UK, 04 March 1974. Anouska Hempel (Esther Jones), Anton Rodgers (David Gradley). Guest Cast: Michael Gambon, Trevor Baxter. Directed by Don Leaver. Currently available on YouTube here.

   The gimmick in this 1970s British mystery TV series, if one be needed, and there always is, is the teaming up of a stolid police inspector with a young lady astrologer, who is also quite pretty. The idea is that she is to use the horoscopes of the possible suspects to gauge their involvement, while he goes by traditional police work.

   The fellow who’s posted this one on YouTube has included five of the six episodes that comprise the entire series, but for some unknown reason the first one, which introduced the characters and the whole setup, is not one of them.

   In this, the second of the series, they’re already well settled in their roles, which a little surprisingly does not include a lot of conflict between them. The case consists of locating an elderly couple’s niece, a young woman who lives with them but who has gone missing. She is a secretary to a high-powered businessman, the kind of fellow who thinks (for example) of burning one of two extremely rare postage stamps he owns so that the remaining one is all that much more valuable. (See the second photo down.)

   It’s mostly a routine affair, one which plays out in a light almost-but-not-quite comedic fashion. In the latter vein, however, is the byplay between Grad (the inspector) and Esther’s new temporary butler Neville (Trevor Baxter) whose nose for what makes people tick comes in very useful. It’s too bad this was his only appearance in the show. (See the photo to the right.)

   The chemistry between the two stars is fine. More than fine. Based on this very small sample of size one, it’s a shame there were only the six episodes.

MARGARET SCHERF – The Elk and the Evidence. Rev. Martin Buell #4. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1952.

   Reverend Martin Buell is an Episcopal rector in Farrington, Montana, but some how or another, he always seems to find himself caught up in yet another murder case, The Elk and the Evidence appearing right in the middle of his crime-solving career. Margaret Scherf, the teller of his adventures, as well as those of her other series characters, Grace Severance (4 books), Emily & Henry Bryce (4 books), Lt. Ryan (2 books), as well as a sizable number of standalones, is known for her light humorous approach to writing detective fiction, and the example at hand is no exception.

   The case is threefold. (1) A package of elk meat given to Buell as a gift unaccountably contains a man’s toe. (2) A hunter who was a member of a large hunting party has gone missing. And (3) a girl coming to Montana to vet out a wealthy man as possible marriage material encounters two men in hunting clothes leaving a third man overnight in a lower train berth while on her way home.

   Are the three incidents connected? You bet they are.

   The humor comes quietly in almost every page of the first half of the book – only a smile perhaps, but most detective novels have none. The smiles don’t come from wacky behavior, but largely from Buell’s observation of people and the natural order of things in a small town in which everybody knows everybody else. The girl, a natural redhead, has to be put up in a widower’s spare bedroom, for example, which causes a lot of curiosity.

   This is a lot of fun to read, as you can imagine, but unfortunately the detective end of things is, to coin a word,  disappointing. Reverend Buell tries, but as as a man of the cloth, nothing more, he has no way to conduct any kind of proper investigation. The conclusion tries to tie all the preceding events together, but where all of the facts relevant to a motive came from, it is hard to say. And why the man’s toe was removed is even harder to explain. I didn’t even try to follow.
   

      The Rev. Martin Buell series –

Always Murder a Friend. Doubleday 1948.
Gilbert’s Last Toothache. Doubleday 1949.
The Curious Custard Pie. Doubleday 1950.
The Elk and the Evidence. Doubleday 1952.
The Cautious Overshoes. Doubleday 1956.
Never Turn Your Back. Doubleday 1959.
The Corpse in the Flannel Nightgown. Doubleday 1965.

DARRYLE PURCELL – The Mystery of the Stuntman’s Ghost: A Hollywood Cowboy Detective Mystery. Sean “Curly” Woods #?. Illustrated by Darryle Purcell. Kindle edition only, 2014.

   
   Enter our hero and his buddy, Fox Studios chauffeur Nick Danby ,who together are the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives with sometime help from Western star Hoot Gibson. Curly and Nick find they have their hands full doing things like clearing a drunken Ken Maynard from a murder he was framed for, battling sabotage on the film set, or uncovering German and Japanese fifth columnists the Viper and the Dragon threatening the good old USA.

   Written in a breezy pulp style these books (as far as I know they only exist in e-book form) in novella length adventures (116 pages in the longest one I’ve seen running some four to five chapters) involve the boys with mostly Western stars (though the adventure before this had the boys working on a Warner Oland – Charlie Chan movie set on a dude ranch) as ex-reporter and former stuntman Curly finds himself up and down in the business moving from one studio to another in much the same role of Bill Lennox in W. T. Ballard’s stories (though Lennox stayed at one studio and became a producer) or L. J. Washburn’s Lucas Hallam books.

   The Lennox and Hallam books are serious mysteries and both fun and well written. This is somewhat closer to a less extreme Robert Leslie Bellem – Dan Turner Hollywood Detective or Michael Morgan’s Bill Ryan books.

   That’s not a knock, both those are great fun. In fact they are written to be fun and playful, an appetizer and not a main course.

   Here Curly has only just returned from Arizona on the Chan case where they got a hand from regular Hoot Gibson, Warner Oland, Keye Luke, and another regular Fed, Big Jim Webber battling a Japanese saboteur known as the Dragon when he gets a telegram from stuntwoman Tootsie working for Paramount filming action scenes for Hopalong Cassidy (*) films in the famous Lone Pine location that she needs help.

   As Tootsie and Bill Boyd fill Curly in after he calls on Hoot Gibson on the way to Lone Pine, it turns out the film set is being haunted. Wally Stanhope, a stuntman who died filming Charge of the Light Brigade, is appearing as a ghostly specter on a horse frightening cast and crew and causing budget overruns.

   
   The mystery is at best serviceable, a basic revenge plot based on the first and third books in the series and the detective work about the level of Gene or Roy in a Republic oater (okay screenwriters Eric Taylor and John K. Butler were Black Mask boys and did a bit better there), but somehow that’s appropriate and fits the playful approach of these entertainments. That B movie plotting is part of the fun with these.

   A cross between a hero pulp, comic book, B-movie series, and episodic television, these are written in a straightforward manner with some feeling for the actual making of those great B-features and a nod to the stars who made them. While not on the level of Stuart Kaminsky’s Toby Peters books they are still fun, fast, harmless reads with a nice nostalgic feel for those of us who grew up on those films.

   As a kind of palate cleanser between more serious fare, they are inexpensive fun reads that move almost as fast as the films they are dedicated to, and Purcell’s cartoony illustrations are fun and not intrusive.

(*) I am anal retentive enough to know that despite Purcell’s description Boyd was not wearing black in the early Hoppy films. He wore a dark red shirt, and jeans tucked in his boot, but fans saw it as black in the films and soon that black outfit on a white horse became iconic, but for dedicated Hoppy fans like me, just seeing Boyd in action is another bonus.

   
                           HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

ANNE HOCKING – Poison Is a Bitter Brew. Chief Inspector William Austen #6. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1942. Originally published in the UK as Miss Milverton (Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1941).

   Two heirs to a fortune and a landed estate die of poison, one after the other. The first is passed off by an elderly friend of the family doctor as food poiscn1ing; the second; handled by his locum, is examined more carefully. The verdict in both: murder.

   Miss Milverton, sixthy-ish proprietor of the estate until her death, is shocked. The final heir, her nephew Charles Temple, was on the scene both times and has an excellent motive, but he doesn’t act like a murderer. Chief Inspector Austen and Sergeant Pendarvis investigate.

   This is a good, old-fashioned between the-wars British mystery. Why would a genteel, well-brougbt-up, upper class Englishman or woman commit murder? Not only for wealth, we find. A good read.

PRIVATE DETECTIVE. Warner Brothers, 1939. Jane Wyman (Myrna “Jinx” Winslow), Dick Foran, Gloria Dickson, Maxie Rosenbloom, John Ridgely, Morgan Conway, John Eldredge. Based on the short story “Invitation to Murder” by Kay Krausse in Pocket Detective Magazine, May 1937. Directed by Noel M. Smith. Available for viewing online at https://archive.org/details/private-detective-1939-

   In my recent review of the 1947 film Exposed, I suggested that private detective Belinda Prentice (played quite capably by Adele Mara) may have been the first female PI to have the leading role in an American movie. Not so, as David Vineyard remarked in the comment he left soon after that post appeared:

   â€œWorth seeing Mara in anything, but I don’t think she’s the first female eye, that would be Jane Wyman as Myrna “Jynx” Winslow in 1939’s Private Detective where she works against her police boyfriend Dick Foran to solve a case.”

   True, true, true. In particular, Jinx works for the Nation-Wide Detective Agency, and the case she’s working on is that of a battle in court between a married couple over custody of their young son. When the husband is found murdered, the stakes immediately go a lot higher, with Jinx still on the case with the fellow she is engaged to marry (Dick Foran) being the police detective assigned to it.

   As it turns out, the boy is the heir to a sizable fortune, and it’s no wonder that there are several suspects for the murder who are worth investigating.

   The pace is quick, Jane Wyman bright, witty and appropriately sassy, and the story largely logical, with a bit of humor as well, the latter provided largely by the lovable lunk du jour Maxie Rosenblum as Foran’s assistant on the force. The story is based on a story from a detective pulp magazine, which is clearly the glue that holds everything together as well as it does, making the film one I can easily recommend. This one’s a good one.