CAROLYN WESTON – Rouse the Demon. Casey Kellog & Al Krug #3. Random House, hardcover, 1976. Brash Books, softcover, 2015.

   A psychologist trying hypnotism as therapy for juvenile drug addicts is murdered. Cops Casey Kellog and Al Krug investigate and find Dr. Myrick more apprentice than sorcerer. No miracle cures for this encounter group.

   This is the third of the series of novels that inspired the TV show The Streets of San Francisco. It’s plagued by both spotty and shoddy police work, as far as I’m concerned, detracting greatly from a decent plot conception. It’s also very tempting to add that the television actors bring a great deal to their roles, and I would, if I watched it more than once a year.

Rating: C.

   
      The Casey Kellog & Al Krug series —

Poor, Poor Ophelia. Random House, 1972.
Susannah Screaming. Random House, 1975.
Rouse the Demon.  Random House, 1976.

THE WALKING DEAD. Warner Brothers, 1936. Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton MacLane, and Joe Sawyer. Written by Ewart Adamson, Peter Milne, Robert Hardy Andrews, Lillie Hayward, and Joseph Fields. Directed by Michael Curtiz.

   Formulaic but fun.

   Warners made a few Horror movies in the 1930s and 40s, some of them quite good, but even at their ghouliest, they never abandoned the tough-guy outlook that was the studio’s stock in trade. Mystery of the Wax Museum, Return of Dr X, The Smiling Ghost and even Beast with Five Fingers to some extent feature dense cops, detectives of varying competence, smart-ass reporters, hardened criminals, and underworld hangers-on. The Walking Dead is distinct from these only in that it features somewhat more organized crime, nicely reinforced by the stylish direction of Michael Curtiz.

   Karloff stars as John Elman, an ex-con who falls into the gears of mob-lawyer Ricardo Cortez’s scheme to rub out an uncooperative Judge, and ends up as the fall guy, fretting on Death Row while a young couple who witnessed the actual killing agonize over whether to come forward to clear him and risk the wrath of heavies like Barton MacLane and Joe Sawyer. There’s a beautifully-done and melancholy “last mile” walk to the hot seat – precursor to the similar trek in Angels with Dirty Faces — word from the Governor comes just as the lights go dim, and then….

   Well, it happens that the young couple who came too late to Elman’s rescue are in the employ of eccentric medico Edmond Gwenn, who has just kept a human heart beating outside the body for two weeks and is eager to try a Revival Meeting with Elman’s corpse.

   I use the term “Revival Meeting” because there is a strong spiritual component to the last half of this film. The revived man now knows who framed him, and exerts a frightening influence over the nasties that lead to some not-always-convincing fatal accidents. At the same time, Doctor Gwenn is pressuring him for details about things on “the other side” and the source of Elman’s newfound powers.

   Karloff sports a frizzy hairdo with a shocking white streak for this part, and walks with the eerie, half-paralyzed shuffle later adopted by Kharis. How much of this is due to his acting or to Curtiz’ direction may be debatable, but the result is quite effective, and the film itself moves along so fast there’s no time to get used to it. It’s a case of actor, director and studio at the top of their form, and a film not to be missed.

BILL PRONZINI “Gunpowder Alley.” John Quincannon & Sabina Carpenter, 1890s San Francisco. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 2012. Reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories, edited by Otto Penzler & Lisa Scottoline (Houghton Mifflin, softcover, 2013). Combined with one or two other stories to form The Dangerous Ladies Affair, by Marica Muller and Bill Pronzini (Tor, hardcover, 2017).

   One time Secret Service Agent John Quincannon and his partner, a former Pinkerton detective named Sabina Carpenter, have joined forces to establish their own agency, Carpenter & Quincannon: Professional Detective Services, and have had many cases together, mostly individually but on occasion working together. This is a purely professional, as much as Quincannon would wish otherwise. I have not read many of the stories that come after this one, so I do not know whether they ever do get together romantically. Will he? Will she? I cannot tell you.

   Quincannon works on this case pretty much solo, but when he finds himself stumped, he always has Sabina to tell his woes to, and not too incidentally, obtain useful advice.

   Dead by a fatal gunshot wound is a blackmailer Quincannon had been hired to follow. He is found in the back room and living quarters of the his tobacco shop on a dingy street called Gunpowder Alley. What stumps Quincannon is that the dead man, along with the gun that did the deed, is in a room that can be entered only through two locked doors, with no access through the barred windows.

   It is quite a puzzle, and it is no wonder that Quincannon is totally stumped, but after a little of Sabina’s support, he at length figures out how the killing was done. The solution is very meticulously worked up – this is one of those mysteries that once the explanation is given, you the reader (unless you are more clever than I) knocks him or herself on the side of the head and says “Duh.”

   Adding to the pleasure of reading this story is the equally meticulously described setting: 1890s San Francisco, where glitter and dark dismal streets and alleys exist almost side by side.

GALAXY SF, April 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover artist: [Douglas] Chaffee. Overall rating: ***½.

KEITH LAUMER “Thunderhead.” Novelette. A lieutenant of the Fleet Navy, who has manned his planetary post for twenty years, though it is clear that he has been forgotten, receives a message at last. In response, he climbs to the mountaintop beacon and sets a diversion for a fleeing enemy. Deliberately sentimental, the story is obvious from the beginning, but still succeeds. (4)

ROBIN SCOTT “Fair Test.” Aliens consider a segregated Earth. (2)

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “The New Member.” Bangolia joins the UN and immediately becomes a pest to everyone. Humorous. (2)

JAMES McKIMMEY “The Young Priests of Adytum 199.” The childish survivors of the war do not tolerate deviation from their norm. (5)

HOWARD HAYDEN “The Purpose of Life.” Novella. Dr. West, in telepathic control of Mao III, precipitates a crisis that buries hem and fifty Esks 4000 feet below Peking. The Esks multiply furiously, threatening the food supply, and a tunnel to the surface must be dug. The discovery and fulfillment of the purpose of the Esks on Earth is rather anticlimactic. Immortal life after death requires the death of billions. Dr. West dies too. ***½

[Note: This was number seven of eight stories Hayden wrote about the Esks. These were indigenous Canadian Inuits transformed by an Alien presence into an apparently benign, fast-breeding new species called Esks. (From the online SF Encyclopedia.)]

PIERS ANTHONY “Within the Cloud.” Clouds have a sense of humor also. (3)

KRIS NEVILLE “Ballenger’s People.” Burt Ballenger operates as a nation, as a democracy. (3)

HARRY HARRISON “You Men of Violence.” A mutation of homo spaiens develops, one unable to kill. At least, actively. (3)

   
TUCKER COE – Murder Among Children. Mitch Tobin #2. Random House, hardcover, 1968. Signet P4030, paperback, 1969.

   Mitch Tobin was kicked off the force. By rule, 2 cops on every call. He and his partner got a routine call, but Mitch had his partner go it alone, as Mitch and his ‘lady friend’ had a ‘date’. The ‘routine’ call turned out anything but, and Mitch’s partner was shot dead.

   The force was everything to Mitch. And he lost it. Now he’s got nothing. Nothing but his wife, who for some reason forgives him and still cares for him. A fact equal parts comfort and shame.

   All Mitch wants now is to disappear. He is barely of this world anymore. He just wants to read Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and build a brick wall around his back yard. He doesn’t care how long it takes. The longer the better. It’s just the process. Build the wall, read the book. Stay out of this century, stay out of this world. Disengage.

   But the world keeps trying to pull him back in.

   This time, it’s a cousin, a young pretty hippy-chick. She started a coffee shop in the East Village, but a cop keeps hounding them. She doesn’t know what he wants. Could Mitch please talk to him and ask him to leave them alone?

   Mitch isn’t too thrilled by the prospect, but reluctantly agrees. He’s always hated cops on the take — and he figures that’s what this is. He makes a date to go to the coffee shop tomorrow afternoon to talk to the cop.

   But when Mitch shows up, his cousin is covered in blood, holding a bloody butcher knife, with two bodies laying abreast of her frozen figure. Still life with knife.

   She’s in shock and can’t remember a thing. But Mitch becomes convinced she’s not guilty when the killer comes after him next.

   It’s a very short (140 page paperback) detective novel. Most interesting for the fact that Tobin hates himself for his betrayal of his wife and partner. And he feels there’s nothing left for him to do but hide, work on his wall, and read his Twain. The only peace he gets is when he’s put in jail as a suspect. He’s finally released, but would rather not go, if it’s all the same to you. He was kind of enjoying it there.

   It’s worth reading for the Tobin character. He’s got to be the most depressed, self-loathing detective I know.
   

      The Mitch Tobin series —

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death. Random 1966
Murder Among Children. Random 1968
A Jade in Aries. Random 1970
Wax Apple. Random 1970
Don’t Lie to Me. Random 1972

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Reluctant Model.  Perry Mason #66. Morrow, hardcover, 1962. Pocket 4524, paperback, 1963. Reprinted many times since.

   Fast, complex and unputdownable are the words for this one, which starts out unusually with Mason masterminding the strategy in a civil suit for slander that revolves around the authenticity of a certain painting.. There are some excellent character sketches, especially the aging playboy-businessman who dabbles at being a patron of the arts, and some knowledgeable insights on how to try lawsuits in the newspapers.

   Eventually of course comes the standard pattern — the murder, the   arrest of Mason’s client — the trial, the cross-examination scenes are among the most exciting in Gardner’s late books, and only the logical lapses and baseless deductions in Mason’s solution keep this one from ranking among Gardner’s best.

BERKELEY GRAY – Miss Dynamite.  Norman Conquest #3. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1939. Collins White Circle Pocket Novel #85. paperback, 1945. No US edition.

   â€œNorman Conquest Again!”, proclaims the blurb inside the title page and then proceeds to give away the entire plot about as blatantly as you can:

   
   Talk about giving the game away.

   To be fair, no one picking this book up could imagine Norman Conquest wouldn’t get the best of any villain and collect the boodle.

   Berkeley Gray’s first entry in the Conquest series just missed winning a thousand pound prize for best new thriller. John Creasey won the contest with Meet The Baron.

   Still, Gray got a contract.

   Miss Dynamite was the third entry in Berkeley Gray (E.S. Brooks) long running (1938-1968) series about Norman Conquest, 1066, the Gay Desperado (Mister Mortimer Gets the Jitters and Vultures Ltd., also 1938, proceeded this one) who made his debut in the pages of the Thriller magazine that had given birth to Leslie Charteris the Saint, John Creasey’s the Toff, Barry Perowne’s Raffles revival, and many more of the gentlemen adventurers gracing British popular fiction of the era.

   Six foot of gray-eyed nitro, Conquest was the Saint or the Toff in high drive, his adventures driven by his creator, who was one of Fleetway’s chief staff writers in penning the adventures of Sexton Blake, Nelson Lee, and Gray’s own popular creation Waldo the Wonderman (very much a forerunner of Conquest). Hitting the ground running is hardly adequate to describe Conquest.

   For sheer enthusiasm, high spirits (no one enjoyed cornering a bad guy and explaining how he had outsmarted them more than Conquest), gadgets (his cigarette lighter was a likely to blow down a wall as light a cigarette), and gusto, even the Saint might seem melancholy. Norman Conquest loved being a desperado. He practically reaches off the page and grabs the reader by the lapels he’s so eager to drag us into the action.

   The Saint and the Toff were primarily urban crime fighters with forays to criminal hideouts in the country, but Norman is often found traveling to a rural or village setting where he uncovers danger. He gets abroad more often in that era than most of his competitors.

   Unlike most gentleman adventurers Conquest had a steady girl from the start, Joy Everard, aka Pixie, eventually Mrs. Norman Conquest (another variation from the other nom de guerre boys). True, the Saint had Patrica Holm, but she wasn’t around that long, and Simon, while faithful, eventually just forgot about her. Joy was there from the start and stayed there for the entire run of the series.

   And Joy, unlike say Phyllis Drummond or Felicity Dawlish, wasn’t just there to be kidnapped. More likely Joy would show up and pull Conquest’s ashes from the flames before he was terminally singed, because when it came to women Norman Conquest was more a mooning schoolboy than Gay Desperado.

   He never met a blonde he didn’t like.

   Primrose Trevor is certainly near the top of that group (Says Joy: “Primrose my foot! Her name’s Poison Ivy!”).

   It is hard to imagine Simon Templar, Richard Rollinson, or John Mannering (the Baron) being led down the garden path as often or as near fatally as Conquest. Granted Richard Verrill, Blackshirt, had the mysterious voice of the woman on the phone blackmailing him enticingly to turn his criminal activities to crime fighting, but he recognized a bad girl when he saw her. For Norman Conquest every blonde was a goddess even if she turned out to be a she devil like Primrose Trevor.

   
   That’s all it takes and even Norman is wondering why he is spinning tales to her about writing thrillers and doing research when what he is there to do is relieve her crooked father, Sir Hastings of his ill gotten gains with his gang of international jewel thieves in the fine tradition of not quite outlaw gentlemen adventurers everywhere. But when she “presses her quivering body against Norman and gave him the works,” our boy was lost.

   Conquest practically cornered the market on femme fatales in this sub-genre, and fell for every one of them.

   Not that Norman still isn’t the most ruthless of the desperadoes of the era. He is closer to James Bond in that and his penchant for gadgets. Conquest even faces death by pore suffocation by being painted gold in one adventure.

   Edwy Searles Brooks was fifty years old in 1938 when Fleetway Publications decided they needed new blood. After some six million estimated words over a career that lasted back to 1918, some 20,000 words a week for twenty years, Brooks was out of gainful employment, sidelined as too old for his schoolboy audience.

   There was a flame that burned in Brooks chest though, and with hardly a moment to breathe he turned to a new pseudonym, and a new character, Berkeley Gray and Norman Conquest, and had an instant hit. Then just to prove he could do it again he began writing as Victor Gunn about Inspector Bill “Ironsides” Cromwell and again struck black gold, the ink and not the petroleum kind.

   Popular over most of the English speaking world (they never really cracked the American market, but then Creasey didn’t until the Sixties successfully), the books were reprinted in multiple languages, there was a Norman Conquest movie (with Tom Conway) and in Germany an Ironsides krimi film.

   Neither series reads as if it was written by a washed up tired fifty year old man who had burned out after writing six million words for boys.

   As always, the long suffering Pixie stands by her man though the “Hullo Pixie Hullo Desperado” business is a bit more curtailed than usual in this one. Even when Conquest is fooling around with blondes, Joy remains his partner, but she doesn’t have to like it with or without the wedding ring..

   How shocked would poor Conquest be to hear his lovely Primrose talking to her father when he fears Conquest is onto the gang: “You cringing, weak kneed, spine-less rabbit!”

   Sweet William, Inspector Williams of the Yard is on hand too, Conquest’s long suffering friendly rival at the Yard, ten steps behind his man, with a few nips at his heel for suspense before getting dust in his eye once more as the Gay Desperado laughs himself out of trouble. The gentlemen adventurers were a cheerful lot, which must have been doubly annoying to the Sweet Williams, Bill Grice’s, and Claude Eustace Teal’s left in their wake.

   It should be made clear the Conquest stories are as different from Charteris and the Saint as Creasey’s Toff stories are. Norman, of the “Laughing Conquests”, is his own man with his own unique voice.

   All the flaws of this literature in this era apply, readers need to understand that going in. Even Charteris slips in a place or two. John Creasey is possibly the only thriller writer of the era who mostly avoided the kind of easy assumptions that mar popular literature for modern readers. That said, in this one its more the class conscious assumptions than anything else that might bother a modern reader.

   Norman ties it all up with a little help from Mandeville Livingstone, the poacher he supped with in the above blurb (“… an honest-to-goodness, dyed-in-the-wool buccaneer…”), and with Joy and he both taking a bullet, “…his eyes, at this minute, were blinded with tears.” A little lead is nothing though compared with returning millions in stolen jewelry to Scotland Yard, realizing Joy is the true love of his life (again), and lifting £100,000 in the bad guys cash.

   â€œHullo Desperado,” indeed.

EDWARD D. HOCH – City of Brass (Leisure, paperback original, 1971) and The Judges of Hades (Leisure, paperback original, 1971).

   Edward D. Hoch is certainly the most prolific short-story writer in the mystery business today. He specializes in the challenge-to-the-reader story based on trickery and ingenuity, and he has become the current master of the impossible crime. All this is, of course, well known to anyone who has even glanced at EQMM or AHMM.

   What is less known is how accomplished Hoch was in his very first stories, published in the middle 1950s in such now defunct journals as Famous Detective Stories and Double Action Detective & Mystery. The two paperbacks under review contain a selection of Hoch’s earliest works about his mysterious detective Simon Ark.

   It says much for the young Hoch’s confidence in his ability (or, perhaps, his bravado) that he first tried his hand at creating an occult detective. I have stated my contention elsewhere that the occult detective story is the most difficult sub-genre of mystery fiction. (I believe that only Agatha Christie and Edward Hoch have been successful in combining supernatural powers with fair play detection. Both authors emphasize the mysterious nature of the crimes, but they provide natural and human solutions.)

   Simon Ark claims to have lived 2000 years searching for evil in all its aspects, and the crimes he solves in these two books include devil’s hoof prints, impossible self-conflagrations, and the suicide of an entire town — something that no longer sounds quite so unlikely to us, based on our recent exposure with cult leaders. The Simon Ark tales, like the best of Hoch’s later stories, are not only ingenious; much of their charm lies in Hoch’s knowledge of mysterious, occult, or (at the very least) unusual lore.

   His early stories introduce theories of witchcraft and legends of Satan; his current ones search for mermaids, investigate the Mary Celeste tragedy, and explain in detail even such apparently mundane subjects as dog-racing. It’s this mastery of background which make Hoch’s puzzles more than chess problems.

   Thus these two books, Hoch’s first collections of short stories, are important as well as entertaining volumes. It’s unfortunate that they are difficult to find. Leisure Books merged with Tower shortly after these books appeared, and apparently never had good distribution. Consequently Poisoned Penners should locate The Judges of Hades and City of Brass before dealers discover their scarcity and significance.

FOUR FAST GUNS. Phoenix/Universal, 1960,  James Craig, Martha Vickers, Edgar Buchanan, Brett Halsey, Paul Richards, Richard Martin, and Blu Wright. Written by James Edmiston & Dallas Gaultois. Directed by William J. Hole Jr.

   There ain’t much to it, but what there is works pretty well.

   James Craig, looking a bit dissipated since his days battling Satan at RKO, stars as Tom Sabin, a gunfighter kicked out of Abilene by a town-taming marshal. When they both head off to the distant town of Purgatory  – the marshal to take on a new job, Sabin just to get along  —  they meet by chance and Sabin guns down the town-tamer in a fair fight.

   In one of those coincidences reserved for pulp fiction and B-movies, Sabin arrives in Purgatory, is mistaken for the town-taming marshal, and decides to take the job. Whereupon the local dress-heavy (Paul Richards) summons three fast-gun dog-heavies to end Sabin’s career before it starts.

(PARENTHETICAL NOTE: “Dress Heavy” is a term used by Western fans to describe the bad guy in a Western who wears a fancy vest, runs a bank or a saloon, tries to buy the heroine’s ranch or swindle the locals, and says “Have the boys meet me at the hideout.” to nearby underlings. This as opposed to the “Dog Heavy” who does the grunt work and can usually be spotted somewhere on the trail, hiding in the rocks with a view to ambushing somebody. Dog Heavies look mean, but rarely win fist-fights and show remarkably poor aim when shooting from behind rocks.)

   Getting back to the movie, Sabin encounters the three adversaries separately, and writers Edmiston & Galtois do a fine job differentiating them, investing each potential killer with a distinct personality, subtly expressed by the actors themselves. It’s a lot more care than is normally taken with Dog-Heavies, and I found it pleasantly surprising.

   The result is a low-budget Western with plenty of action, and a bit of thoughtfulness – of Humanity, if you will – that goes down easily and stays on the mind longer than most.

SCOTT PHILLIPS – The Ice Harvest. Dennis McMillan, hardcover, 1999. Ballantine, paperback, 2001. Film: Bona Fide/Focus, 2005 (with John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton).

   Charlie Arglist runs some strip clubs and massage parlors in Wichita for some mobsters. He and his buddy Vic have been skimming off the top for a few years now, selling coke on the side, and have timed it so that right before the banks close on Christmas eve, they’ll empty out the operating accounts of the businesses and fly to Europe with a quarter million bucks.

   Unfortunately for hapless Charlie, everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. And were it not for the ultraviolence, we’d be looking at a Dortmunder-esque bumble.

   But this ain’t Dortmunder. It is extraordinarily violent. And the bodies pile up in what would be a disturbing affair — were it not for the karmic just deserts that befall each and every asshole. And they’re all assholes.

   It’s a dark dark comedy. The blackest of comedies. For the joke is on the greedy vicious perps. And that’s everybody. It’s not a comedy in the classic sense that the protagonist gets what they want. It’s a slapstick comedy where the protagonist and his cohorts get what they deserve. Which is nothing but pain, humiliation and eternal damnation.

   If you’re into schadenfreude, it’s a load of laughs. Read this quote. If it makes you laugh out loud, check the thing out. If not, not:

   â€œYou’ll rue the day you decided you could pull this kind of shit on me, you toothless old whore. I promise you will regret the day you were fucking born.” He slammed the receiver down, then picked it back up and screamed into it at the top of his lungs, then slammed it down into its cradle again and again, until finally, breathing hard, he looked up at Charlie…..”Sorry. That was my mom; she wants me to pick up my kids tonight instead of tomorrow. She and her shitbag husband decided they wanna head for Garden of the fucking Gods at six a.m. on Christmas morning.”