First three episodes available today or tonight, or so they say:

EMMA LATHEN – Brewing Up a Storm. John Putnam Thatcher #23. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1996. Harper, paperback, 1998.

   Just in case there is anyone left who doesn’t now that Emma Lathen is really Mary Latsis and Martha Henissart, now you do.

   Thatcher, Senior VP of Sloan Guaranty & Trust, finds himself in the middle of trouble again when one of the bank’s clients, a brewer of beer both alcoholic and non-, finds itself targeted by an organization against youthful drinking which seems to feel that the brewer is deliberately trying to lead the youth of America from one of its products to the other.

   The leader of the organization is a lady who is something of a loose cannon who is in the process of alienating everyone she comes in contact with, friend or foe. The campaign attracts the attention of politicians, special interest groups, and all sorts of other people, and feelings run high. Then there’s a murder.

   I like Emma Lathen’s books. Always have. They are predictable in their format, but they are well and smoothly written, and the business backgrounds are always well researched and interesting. Thatcher is not a Great Detective, and indeed is probably not on stage over half the time, if that. After having lurked around the edges for most of the book, though, he usually has a flash of insight that helps bring the case to an end. Good, dependable stuff, and this is one of the better.

ROBERT SILVERBERG – The Time Hoppers. Doubleday & Co., hardcover, 1967. Avon S372, paperback, October 1968; cover art by Don Punchatz. Belmont Tower, paperback, 1974. Ace, paperback, 1982. Expansion of the story “Hopper,” which first appeared in Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956, and was collected in Next Stop the Stars (Ace Double F-145, 1962).

   Quellen, a minor bureaucrat in the Secretariat of Crime, found his own solution to the overcrowded conditions of the world in the year 2490: a secret illegal hideaway in Africa. But others have resorted to time travel as an answer to their problems, and Quellen is assigned the job of stopping the hoppers without disturbing the stability of the present time.

   There are the usual paradoxes which are brought out, [and] the obvious course of action occurs soon enough, but there is more. Mankind is becoming dehumanized with the intolerable masses of people. Unspeakable crimes and customs are common, sore of a preliminary interlude before the world of Archexecutive Shale in “Pity about Earth” (Report 93), but here they are more forcefully realized. Time travel has this time become the background to an excellent picture of despair.

Rating: ****½

JOSEPH MONCURE – The Wild Party. [Narrative poem.] Pascal Covici, Inc. hardcover, 1926/1928, banned in Boston. Covici Friede, hardcover, 1929. Citadel Prss, hardcover, 1949. Award, paperback, 1975 (novelization by Terence O’Neill of film produced that same year based on the book). Pantheon, hardcover. 1994 (drawings by Art Spiegelman.) Many/most/all? reprint editions as by Joseph Moncure March. Film: AIP, 1975 (director: James Ivory; starring James Coco, Raquel Welch, Perry King). Two stage musicals, NYC, 1999-2000.

   Queenie and Burrs are a couple. A sodden, soiled couple of handsome gutter rats, dressed to the nines.

   Burrs, most folks agreed “in language without much lace

   They’d like to break his god-damned face”

   â€œOh, yes—Burrs was a charming fellow:

   Brutal with women, and proportionately yellow”

   â€œ[One victim’s] brother had great fun

   Looking for Burrs with a snub-nosed gun”

   Queenie, hungover, pleads:

   â€œBurrsie! pour out a cup for me!

   Said she”

   Burrs, ever the gentleman:

   â€œThe hell I will, you lazy slut!

   Do you think you’re the prince of wales, or what?

   â€¦You rotten bitch!

   I’ll fix you yet!

   She grabbed a knife from the kitchenette

   Her face was white as through newly plastered.

   You touch me—

   I’ll kill you, you filthy bastard!”

   They decide what they need is a wild party to cure the doldrums.

   â€œA grand piano stood in the corner

   With the air of a coffin waiting for a mourner”

   Queenie gets all dolled up:

   â€œMy god, Queenie; you’re looking swell!

   Quoth Queenie:

   I’m feeling slick as hell!”

   Queenie decides to find a replacement man at the party. And finds a suitable suitor, named Mr. Black.

   â€œBlack said nothing, but he thought hard…

   So she lived with Burrs!

   He was somewhat jarred

   He looked Burrs over, and he liked his looks

   About as well as a fish likes hooks…

   His smile grew knowing:

   His drink grew small:

   Just a good-looking harlot, after all!”

   Burrs gets a bit jealous of Queenie and Black:

   â€œYou’re jealous!

   Jealous?

   He gave her a glittering stare:

   You’re crazy!

   What the hell do I care!”

   â€œThe bed was a slowly moving tangle

   Of legs and bodies at every angle”

   â€œWho yer laughin’ at, you tart!

   I’ll break yer god-damned face apart!”

   â€œHis face began to twitch:

   I’ll fix you plenty, you son of a bitch!”

“Some love is fire: some love is rust

   But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.”

   Burrs catches Queenie and Black in In flagrante delicto.

   â€œThe gun flashed—

   Crashed!

   Staccato, and vicious it spoke.

   Silence.

   Darkness.

   The air smelled sharp with smoke.”

   â€œJes’s Christ!—I’ve hurt my shin—

   The door sprang open

   And the cops rushed in.”
         —-

   It’s alright. No need to run out and get a copy or anything. But it is an interesting document of its times and shows that the hardboiled style knows no bounds, poetry being a perfectly fine setting for a street vernacular told tale of alcohol, sex and vengeance.

   A copy of the book is currently available online here:

      https://musicalstagecompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-Wild-Party-March.pdf/
   

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE – A Study in Scarlet. Ward, Lock & Co., July 1888. Lippincott, US, 1890. First appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887 (eleven copies are known to still exist). Reprinted numerous times. Adapted to radio, TV and the movies perhaps even more countless times.

   The question must be asked at once: Would A Study in Scarlet be remembered and read today if there had been no other Sherlock Holmes novels or stories to follow it? Certainly it would be read, to the extent that Doyle’s White Company and Lost World are read, but it’s doubtful the book would have anything approaching its present popularity. A Study in Scarlet owes its status as a cornerstone to the fact that it introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes.

   However, the book is not without merit of its own. Doyle’s clear achievement in creating the character of Sherlock Holmes,complete and full-blown, is nothing short of masterful. The case he investigates certainly has its points of interest, and the surprising arrest of the killer at the end of part one is a scene that would not be matched in mystery fiction until the equally surprising arrest at the conclusion of Ellery Queen’s Tragedy of X.

   The first half of the novel deals with the meeting of Holmes and Watson, their taking rooms together in Baker Street, and Holmes’s investigation of the Lauriston Garden mystery, in which two men named Drebber and Stangerson are found murdered. each with the German word for revenge written in blood on the wall above the bodies. Holmes traps the killer at the book’s halfway point. and part two is devoted to a lengthy flashback to the early Mormon settlement of Utah, and the crimes that prompted the revenge slayings half a world away.

   Though the Mormon portion of the book is interesting enough on its own. one longs to return to Holmes, and this same sort of flaw marks The Valley of Fear and to some extent The Sign of the Four. Only in The Hound of the Baskervilles is the narrative maintained without the final flashback. Still. no study of Holmes is complete without A Study in Scarlet.

   Of the other novels, The Valley of Fear (1915) is far superior to The Sign of he Four (1890), in part because its flashback portion tells a fascinating story of labor unrest in the Pennsylvania coal fields of a secret society called the Scowrers, obviously patterned after the Molly Maguires. The other three short-story collections — The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), His Last Bow (1917), and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) — all have their high spots, and all should be explored by the dedicated mystery reader.

         ———
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.
   

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – July 1967. Overall rating: ***½

CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG “The Second Commandment.” Short novel. A minister’s wife falls to her death while answering a “call of nature” along the highway. Afterward the minister discovers he can no longer love all his neighbors. Fine personal point of view, but fails as a mystery story. (4)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “At the Stroke of Twelve.” First appeared in The Sketch, 10 OctobeR 1923, as “The Kidnapping of Johnnie Waverly.” Poirot deduces a man has kidnapped his own son, but then he has all the clues. (3)

JOHN DICKSON CARR “The Lion’s Paw.” First appeared in The Strand Magazine. July 1938, as “Error at Daybreak” by Carter Dickson. Colonel March. A fake suicide attempt is mistaken for a mysterious murder on a deserted hearth. (3)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Divorce – New York Style.” Serial, part 2 of 2. The girl in a staged hotel room bit dies in the bed, end of Part 1. Scene two in the police station is disappointing. (3)

DENNIS M. DUBIN “Elroy Quinn’s Last Case.” First story. Elroy stops a plot designed to disrupt international relations. Clever! (5) [Note: the author’s only work of short crime fiction.]

ELLERY QUEEN “The President Regrets.” Puzzle story with presidential names. (2)

SHIRLEY WALLACE “The Tiger’s Cub. First story. A man defends his son. (3) [Note: The author’s only work of short crime fiction.]

CELIA FREMLIN “The Special Gift.” An amateur authors’ club meets a man with a strange deadly dream (3)

GUY CULLINGFORD “Something to Get at Quick.” Juvenile delinquency and a stabbing in London. (4)

MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD “The Impersonation Murder Case.” An actor discovers that he is the fall guy in a murder investigation. Sorry, I don’t Believe It. (3)

JOAN RICHTER “Intruder in the Maize.” An arrogant man in Africa should not deal with poison. One bad flaw. (2)

BRIAN HAYES “Security Risk.” First appeared in The (London) Evening News, 19 April 1961. A test works beautifully. (4)

LAWRENCE TREAT “B As in Burglary.” Bankhart of the Homicide Squad is led to the stolen jewels by the murderer’s daughter, and the romance is over. (4)

PAUL CAIN – Fast One. Doubleday Doran, hardcover, 1933. Originally published serially in Black Mask magazine. Reprint editions include: Bonded Mystery #10, 1946. Avon #178, paperback, 1948. Southern Illinois University Press, hardcover, 1978. Popular Library, paperback, 1978. Black Lizard, paperback, 1987.

   Gerry Kells is a retired gunman living in L.A. He’s now a gentleman gambler. Or at least a gambler. Whose bets are rarely gambles at all, since the fix is almost always in. That’s what he thinks.

   L.A. is wide open, and various gangs are battling for control. Kells wants none of it. He thinks he can stay out of the fray by staying neutral.

   But one by one, each of the mob bosses arrange a meeting, to hire his gun, to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

   I’m quits, he repeats. Time and time again. I’m done. I don’t even carry a gun.

   But no one believes him. They figure if he’s not with them, he’s against them. And they try to take him out.

   And one by one, they lose. Yes, he’s just one man. But he’s plenty tough and a fast one with a piece.

   The mobs keep pulling fast ones on him, only he’s faster. And before he knows it, he finds himself in a pretty good spot to take over L.A. himself. With a little luck, and some help from his moll Granquist and a couple of friends, he gives it a shot. Or however many shots he can, ’til the ammo runs out.

   It reminds me a fair bit of Red Harvest — another open city Poisonville, but from a gunman’s perspective. And like the Continental OP, Kells is constrained in his violence by a sense of justice and fair play missing from his adversaries. So while he’s no knight errant, he’s motivated as much by greed as revenge in the service of justice. Which he extracts, exactingly.

   The prose is Hammer-like. But don’t be fooled into reading it quickly. While my edition was under 150 pages, the action is dense. He doesn’t belabor the action. With spartan description: Double and triple crosses occur in an eye’s wink, and if you don’t take your time in reading and re-reading the lines as they come at you, you’ll find yourself lost. There’s lots of players and more action than you can shake a gat at. No time to flick off the safety. Be ready. It’s coming at you at the speed of birdshot.

   This is my third time reading it in the span of maybe twenty-five years. There’s so much action that I remembered very few of the details going into it. The sheer amount and speed of the action gives the book a level of re-readability seldom found. And I enjoyed it more and understood it better this time than ever before.

   I’d put it in the pre-1933 hardboiled canon, with the other cannonballs being Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, Glass Key, Green Ice, Death in a Bowl, You Can’t Win, Louis Beretti, Young Lonigan, Sanctuary, Daughter of Earth, Georgia Nigger, the writings of Jim Tully and Hemingway, Life in the Iron Mills, and precious little else.

   Highest possible praise for this groundbreaking hardboiled novel.

ZELDA POPKIN – Death Wears a White Gardenia. Mary Carner #1. J.B. Lippincott Co, hardcover, 1938. Dell #13, paperback (mapback edition), circa 1943.

   Although she may come close to being a PI (see comment #1), when it comes down to it, Mary Carner probably shouldn’t really be tagged as one. As Death ears a Gardenia begins, she’s the assistant to the on-staff detective at a major department store in the center of Manhattan, and her expertise is not wayward spouses nor missing heirs. It is instead shoplifters and shoplifting, a profession and occupation that’s been around as long as there have been department stores.

   But when murder occurs during a giant anniversary sale, she’s on hand throughout, offering opinions and interviewing suspects right along with the police. She’s slim and pretty, but tough-minded, and her opinions and questions are right on target, as if she’s been doing it all her life.

   Dead is the store’s credit manager, and Zelda Popkin, the author, must have had some experience working behind the scenes in such an establishment is described in picturesque detail, and is a solid part of the tale’s background. Personal relationships, and the secrets the employees have from each other and (they hope) the world as well are revealed to all in the course of the investigation.

   Popkin was a very good writer, with good insight as to how real people think and behave, but in this first book in the series, she doesn’t seem to have gotten the hang of portraying a book-length investigation and keeping things moving. The middle portion of the book deals with the ups and downs of the building’s elevators the night before, details of which are, well, boring. More attention should have been spent on the gardenia in the dead man’s hand. (Not a floor manager’s carnation.) This is what’s really important, and if they’d only asked the poor flower seller outside the store what she knew a lot earlier, the book would have been over in a third of the time, if not less.

Rating (on my well-tested HB Hardboiled scale): 2.5 (out of 10).
   

      The Mary Carner series —

Death Wears a White Gardenia (1938)
Time Off for Murder (1940)
Murder in the Mist (1940)
Dead Man’s Gift (1941)
No Crime for a Lady (1942)

WILLIAM L. DeANDREA – Killed in the Fog.  Matt Cobb #8. Simon & Schuster,  hardcover, 1996. No paperback edition.

   DeAndrea is really cranking them out lately. He’s got three series going {Cobb, Niccolo Beneditti, and the new one set in the Wild West with Quinn Booker & Lobo Blacke), plus odds and ends like the Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. I don’t think any of his fiction will make anyone’s “100 Best” list, but he’s been consistently smooth and entertaining, imho.

   Matt Cobb, network v-p in charge of special projects, is on a sabbatical in London with his true love, who also happens to be the network’s biggest stockholder. He stops by the headquarters of one of the network’s subsidiaries just to be visiting, agrees to do the manager a favor, and finds himself involved in a murder and slapped in jail. Different country, business as usual,

   This, like the last Cobb I read, is a lesser effort by De.Andrea. Cobb is still a likable lead, and DeAndrea’s prose still reads effortlessly, but the story simply didn’t engage me. I’m not sure why, and that makes me think that the problem might be with me rather than with the author.

   Whoever’s problem it was, though,  I didn’t get a hell of a lot out of this one.

GLENDON SWARTHOUT – The Shootist. Doubleday, hardcover, 1975. Bantam, paperback, 1976. Signet, paperback, 1986. Berkley Books, paperback, 1998. University of Nebraska Press, softcover, 2011. Film: 1976. Directed by Don Siegel; starring John Wayne (his last movie) and Lauren Bacall.

   J. B. Books, 51 years old, of Creede, Colorado, is the last of the legendary gunfighters. It’s 1901. John Wesley Hardin? Dead. Billy the Kidd? Dead. The James brothers? Dead. Wild Bill Hickok? Same. The time of the gunfighters is gone. But Books remains, a dinosaur that survived the asteroid.

   He’s been feeling pretty run down lately, so he sees a doctor. The doctor tells him he’s dying of prostate cancer. But he doesn’t believe him.

   There’s only one doctor he’ll believe: Dr. Hostetler of El Paso, Texas, who saved Books’s life 11 years prior, expertly extracting a bullet from his liver and sewing him up before he could bleed out.

   So he rides horseback 10 days straight to El Paso on his bloated, contorted underside, comforted only by “a soft pillow of crimson velvet trimmed with golden tassels” he’d stolen from a whorehouse.

   Dr. Hostetler confirms the worst. He’s got about 6 weeks to live — if he wants to die in bed, screeching in pain, unable to move, soiled in filth and wretched incapacity. But, Dr. Hostetler suggests, perhaps that’s not the way he’d prefer to go out.

   The e.e. cummings epigraph is the best summary of the story:

            We doctors know
            a hopeless case if — listen: there’s a hell
            of a good universe next door: let’s go

   So Books decides to go. But go his own way.

   Books asks the town Marshall for the names of the baddest gunmen in town. The Marshall gives him 3:

   1: Jack Pulford: “Runs the faro layout at Keating’s….straightest shot I’ve ever seen, and cool as a cucumber. Couple years back he got off one round here, under fire, through the heart, and they measured. Eighty-four feet. Through the heart.”

   2: Serrano: “El Tuerto they call him, ‘Cross-eye.’ He’ll rustle a bunch of cattle over the river, sell ’em on this side, then rustle ’em back and sell ’em to the same outfit he rustled ’em from in the first place. A real cutthroat. I wouldn’t turn my back on him in church.”

   3: Jay Cobb: “Cobb’s only twenty or so, but I’ll hang him before he’s thirty, or somebody will. Gun crazy–been toting one since he was big enough to lift it.”

   Books invites all three to meet him at 4:00 p.m. at the nicest tavern in town. May the best man win.

   “They were like actors on an empty stage….The curtain had risen, the hour come. But they had no audience, save for one another, and even more bewildering, they had no play. They were assembled to take roles for which no lines had yet been written, to participate in a tragedy behind which there was no clear creative intent, to impose upon senselessness some sort of deadly order.”

   The deadly order comes, but comes too pat for my tastes. It’ll smack you right between your thousand-yard stare.

   It’s a good concept for a story. But at the end of the day, it didn’t do anything for me. You can tell by the last line that Swarthout thinks he’s written a freaking masterpiece. A tour de force of the first magnitude. Self-congratulations are clearly in order. Just no congratulations from me.