ROBERT THOROGOOD – The Marlow Murder Club. First in series. HQ/HarperCollins, UK, softcover,2021. Poisoned Pen Press, US, softcover, 2022.

   The club, formed only on an ad hoc basis, so to speak, consists of Becks, a vicar’s wife; Suzie, a dog-walker; and Judith Potts, a 70-year-old widow who lives in an inherited house along the Thames and who has a penchant for going swimming in it in the nude on warm summer evenings.

   On one such occasion, she hears a gunshot coming from the house directly opposite hers. She calls the police, but after they leave without finding anything, she punts over and finds her neighbor – or at least his body. He has been shot to death.

   She now, of course, has the police interested. A possible fourth member of the club is DS Tanika Malik, who at first resists the assistance of Mrs Potts and the two other ladies who gradually become involved. But Tanike, realizingshe is in over her head, somehow manages to find a way to get the detective-minded trio officially on the case.

   Marlow, by the way, is the small English town where this first death and the two others that follow take place. Based on the title of the book, those readers tempted into reading this particular mystery novel thinking it will be a hard-boiled possibly PI novel will in all likelihood give up quickly. Written by Robert Thorogood, the creator of the Death in Paradise TV series, this is about as cosy a work of detective fiction as aficionados of that particular sub-genre of that field as they might wish.

   Being a fan of both fields, I enjoyed this one, save for an unfortunate thriller of an ending in which Mrs Potts confronts the killer with the backup she assumes is waiting in the wings is not in the wings at all, but across the river in a torrential thunderstorm.

   Considering the alternative, say, of a finale consisting of gathering all the suspects together in one room, at least I’d have to concede, well, it was different.

MICHAEL FESSIER – Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind. Knopf, hardcover, 1935. Lion 214, paperback, 1954 [?]. Stark House Press: Staccato Crime #5, softcover, 2022.

   Johnny Price, a 30-ish bachelor of independent means, lives in San Francisco. He’s just minding his own business, out for a stroll, when a well-known publisher of a city paper is shot to death down the street. As he scurries away with the crowd, an ordinary looking little old man with startlingly satanic green eyes casually says to him: I’m the one that murdered him.

   Price assumes the old man, who aside from his dangerous eyes, does not appear to be capable of harming a mosquito, or even downing a mojito, is just batty. And walks on.

   The old man continues to make unwelcome appearances. At the bar, at the apartment. He just wanders in, uninvited. Drinks a bit of sherry, and leaves. Leaving discomfiture in his wake. And then dread.

   Meanwhile, Price has taken to midnight meanders by the Golden Gate park, where he encounters a beautiful naked maiden who swims there each evening. He falls in love with the sea nymph, and she him, but she is unwilling to leave her park and live with him.

   Then Price’s acquaintances begin to die. And the old man claims to be a witness to Price murdering one of them. And Price is imprisoned.

   The book is an oddity, and a bit uncomfortable. You’re not sure who or what to believe of the goings on. It’s a bit reminiscent of the malaise I felt reading The Deadly Percheron and The Red Right Hand. Though where those two attempted to explain away all the oddness by the end, this author feels no such compunction. So you close the book with the weirdness unresolved. It continues to irk, unlike its ilk.

         ——

   Incidentally, when I read that the same author’s other ‘famous’ novel was called Clovis (Dial Press, 1948), about a bird that could not only talk but think, becoming the leader of a cult, I had to read that too. Nothing particularly criminous about Clovis. But also strange with its strangeness unresolved. A bit more on the comic side though.

   In one funny part he’s giving a lecture on evolution when a middle-aged matronly bumpkin exclaims: “You saying my grandma was a monkey!! I’ll get you!!!!” To which Clovis responds: “In your case, I’ll agree. You did not evolve from monkeys. However, if you and your offspring make very careful and deliberate breeding choices for many generations, it is possible that your lineage may evolve into monkeys.”

   Like JG Ballard (though not at all like JG Ballard), Fessier only mildly tinkers with reality. He doesn’t throw it completely out of whack. Which causes you to experience a level of verisimilitude in the strangeness. It’s not so weird as to be deniable as simply fantasy. Rather it reads like it’s true. And it’s believable enough to create an absurdity that you cannot quite dismiss — howevermuch you might like to.

THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE.“The Wages of Sin.” Acorn TV original, 07 February 2022. (Series one, episode one). Adrian Scarborough (DI Max Arnold), Sonita Henry (DS Priya Shamsie). Writers: Peter Fincham, Glen Laker. Director: Richard Signy.

   TV producers and other executives, if their TV detectives aren’t buddies from episodes one on, then the next best thing is that they’re mismatched in almost every way possible. It may actually be the best thing, if you stop and think about it.

   DI Max Arnold is short, chunky-ish, and male. DS Priya Shamsie is tall, statuesque, and female. What they have in common, though, is a dedication to their jobs, and personal problems they’re working their way through. (TV producers and other executives like those too.)

   In the first episode of a new British series, the victim is a middle-aged stone mason who dies in front of an oncoming trade in a tube station. Did he fall? Did he jump? Was he pushed? When CCTV tapes establish the latter, the two policeman have a case on their hands.

   And as they gradually discover, the victim had been plagued with guilt, for what, not known, but spurred on by finding messages from the Bible written on his bathroom mirror when waking up in the morning.

   The case is solved by plodding but indispensable police work – which in today’s world means not only person-to-person interrogation, but sitting at the computer, with one person standing and looking over the shoulder of the other who is typing furiously away at the keyboard.

   I mentioned personal problems. Arnold is working his way through the death of his father as well as a messy divorce, and Shamsie has just returned from maternity leave, which leaves the baby at home with her father, who is not entirely happy about it. Perhaps we the viewer can hope these problems have been resolved by the time this first episode ends; it shouldn’t take a whole season!

   You should not take this last comment the wrong way. If it helps to show that your two TV detectives have their human sides too, I’m all for it, and given the overall rather light touch, I think they succeeded. Recommended.

ROGER L. SIMON – Wild Turkey.  Moses Wine #2. Straight Arrow, hardcover, 1974. Pocket, paperback, 1976. Warner, paperback, 1986.  iBooks, softcover, 2000.

   The second Moses Wine book and in my view a better and less confused book than the first, The Big Fix. From the word go the pace is hectic as Wine, initially challenged to clear best selling author Jock Hecht of the murder of a famous TV woman newscaster, finds himself chasing desperately after Hecht’s killer and searching for some mysterious tapes before he himself is bumped off.

   There’s a touch of the Donald Westlake about some of it, and by and large I enjoyed it. I’m not sure that I believe in Wine’s strange domestic set up or casual sex life — but I’m not sure that it matters.

   
      The Moses Wine series —

The Big Fix. Straight Arrow, 1973.
Wild Turkey. Straight Arrow, 1974.
Peking Duck. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
California Roll. Villard, 1985.
The Straight Man. Villard, 1986.
Raising the Dead. Villard, 1988.
Director’s Cut, Atria, 2003.

IAIN PEARS – The Last Judgment. Jonathan Argyll #4. Scribner, hardcover, 1996. Berkley, paperback, 1999.

   I’ve only read one other in this series, and my vague memory of it was that it was a quite decent read, if nothing major.

   Expatriate British art dealer Jonathan Argyll, now living in Rome, is having a rough season of it. While in Paris buying some sketches for a museum, he works out a deal with a Parisian dealer — if the dealer will see that the sketches are shipped to America, Argyll will deliver one of the dealer’s paintings to a buyer in Rome.

   Nothing could be simpler, right?

   Wrong. First someone tries to steal the painting in the train station, and then a murder is connected with it. Then there’s another, and Argyll’s lover, Flavia di Stefano of Rome’s Art Squad, gets involved The Parisian police are strangely obfuscatory, so Argyll and de Stefano follow the trail back to Paris and secrets buried since World War II and into some serious danger.

   I enjoy this series. I like the art background (though in one sense there isn’t much of it in this one), I like the European setting,  and I like the  characters. These aren’t major books by any means, probably on a par with and similar to Aaron Elkins’ Chris Norgren series, but they are enjoyable. In these days of bloated books about serial killers and women in peril, I value my minor pleasures more and more.

      
      The Jonathan Argyll series —

1. The Raphael Affair (1990)
2. The Titian Committee (1991)
3. The Bernini Bust (1992)
4. The Last Judgement (1993)
5. Giotto’s Hand (1994)
6. Death and Restoration (1996)
7. The Immaculate Deception (2000)

      Is this the second best Private Eye movie ever made?

RICHARD SALE – Lazarus #7. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1942. Harlequin #79, paperback, 1950.

   Dr. Steve Mason has dedicated his life to fighting leprosy across the globe. He’s spent the past few years abroad. He’s back stateside for a new gig with the Rockefeller Institute in NYC. He schedules a stopover in LA to hang out with an old college buddy, Joss Henry.

   Joss is an A-list Hollywood screenwriter and hell with the ladies. By comparison, Dr. Steve’s a bit of a buttoned-up nerd. But he humors Joss, and they get drunk and party with the aspiring actresses, eager to please, hoping for their chance. And producers. And all the other Hollywood tripe.

   One particularly odd duck is the studio medico, Dr. Max Lekro, who lives in something like an abandoned castle in the middle of nowhere. Dr. Max is the kind of guy who likes to tear the wings off flies and then surgically reattach them. He’s really into killing dogs and trying to resuscitate them. He’s obsessed with the biblical story of Lazarus, who Christ raised from the dead. Lekro has made six attempts at raising dead dogs, naming each of his experiments in succession: Lazarus #1, Lazarus #2, etc…. One of his most successful experiments involves a beheaded dog who remains ‘alive’ via attachment to some blood circulation machine.

   Dr. Max has also been treating a Hollywood persona for leprosy. On the down low. Because being a leper doesn’t play so well in the fan zines.

   And a wannabe starlet has found out about the leper, and has been bleeding them for dough, blackmailing them that they’ll disclose the leper if they don’t keep paying thru the nose. And now the wannabe starlet is dead. But she had a poison pill letter sent to Joss Henry upon her death, disclosing the identity of the leper. And now Joss Henry, rather than telling the cops, decides to get greedy and use the info for his own aggrandizement. And then Joss is murdered. And so on.

   And now the perp thinks Dr. Steve, being a leprosy expert, might notice the tell tale signs. So he’s got to go too! But Dr. Steve is our hero, so he’s lucky and safe. But not so for Dr. Max.

   So Dr. Max gets stabbed to death. But Dr. Steve brings him back to life, for just a moment: Lazarus #7. Whispering the name of the murderer. Loud enough for Steve to hear. Loud enough for the truth. For justice. To be served.

         —-

   The book is okay. It kept my attention. It kept me turning the pages. And it’s short. But it ain’t great. It’s just okay. I wouldn’t expect this forgotten book to be raised from the dead anytime soon. If it were, count it Lazarus #8.

PHILIP K. DICK “The Defenders.” Novelet. First published in Galaxy SF, January 1953. First reprinted in Invasion of the Robots, edited by Roger Elwood (Paperback Library, April 1965). First collected in The Book of Philip K. Dick (Daw, paperback original, February 1973). Along with two of Dick’s other stories, “The Mold of Yancy” and “The Unreconstructed M,” the basis for his novel The Penultimate Truth (Belmont, paperback original, 1964).

   The story begins with a married couple unhappily having breakfast together. The war news is good, but there is an uneasiness to their conversation that suggests that not all is well. Gradually it is revealed they are several miles underground, and the war on the surface is being fought with robots (called leadies) on each side. Because of uncontrolled radiation, the Earth itself is uninhabitable.

   Strangely enough, the husband is called into his lab to learn that one of the leadies that has been brought down for a progress report is not radioactive after all. Baffled, a team including our protagonist is sent to the surface to investigate.

   I will not spoil your enjoyment of this story by telling you what they learn, but if you have read enough of Philip K. Dick’s work, I imagine you can guess what the twist is well enough on your own.

   Of course, though, that’s the point of the story, but what Dick also manages to do is describe living conditions not on, but inside the Earth so well that we, the reader, can feel the oppression of a life that is so subtly unbearable, although it has been made as palatable as technology can do it.

   It’s short for a novelette, only 25 pages long, but I think it was long enough to make a noticeable impression on SF readers of the day. My only personal unhappiness with it is that the ending seemed to me to be an overly happy one. To me, it was a case of too quick, too soon.

   This actually is a small tiny fraction of my To Be Read pile. I brought this stack up from the basement late last night, almost entirely at random.

   The question is, which of these should I read next? Any recommendations? Any I should stay far away from?

   Here’s hoping you can read both the authors and the titles:
   

ROCKET STORIES. July 1953. Vol. 1, No. 2. Edited by Wade Kaempfert [Lester del Rey]. Cover: Schomberg. Overall rating: 1½ stars.

ALGIS BUDRYS “Blood on My Jets.” Complete novel. Detached Operator Ash Holcomb of the SBI is hired to fly the first ship into hyperspace, but as old friend and his iwfe, known since Academy days, plot to steal it from him. Not much of a story, but it reads well enough. (2)

GEORGE O. SMITH “Home Is the Spaceman.” An experimental FTL ship is stopped by a policeman for speeding. (2)

MILTON LESSER “Picnic.” A husband, wife, and two brats stop on a living asteroid for a picnic. (0)

POUL ANDERSON “The Temple of Earth.” Novelette. Civilization on the Moon is headed downhill unless the priests and their knowledge of science can take over. Too much fighting. (2)

BEN SMITH “Sequel.” The paths of three former Academy students meet in space. (3)

CHARLES E. FRITCH “Breathe There a Man.” Rebellion on an Earth where the very air is taxed. The first plot twist really didn’t seem believable. (1)

IRVING COX, JR. “To the Sons of Tomorrow.” Novelette. The crew of a wrecked spaceship become the gods of a new Earth. Distortion of proper names didn’t help. (2)

WILLIAM SCARFF “Firegod.” A fair point to be made, but a basic flaw ruins story of a man playing god. [Pen name of Algis Budrys.] (1)