J. J. STARBUCK “Pilot.” NBC, 26 September 1987. (The series itself of sixteen episodes began three evenings later, on September 29th.) Dale Robertson (Jerome Jeremiah ‘J.J.’ Starbuck), David Huddleston, Shawn Weatherly. Guest cast: Bill Bixby, Patty Duke. Co-creators/screenwriters: Stephen J. Cannell & Lawrence Hertzog. Director: Corey Allen. Episodes are currently available on YouTube.

   J. J. Starbuck (no relation to the coffee shop chain, as far as I know) was an eccentric billionaire who left the running to his several successful commercial enterprises to underlings to travel across the country solving murder cases in which he feels an underdog is getting a poor deal. (At the end of this, the pilot episode, it is revealed that the deaths of his wife and son were what changed his mind about his earlier philosophy that money is everything.)

   His primary means of transportation is a Lincoln convertible enhanced by a hood ornament consisting of three foot span of steer horns. Over the top, yes, but it helped make many a killer think J. J. is nothing more than a corn pone cowboy prone to quoting appropriate homilies fitting the situation at hand.

   Example: “I like to keep an open mind, in case someone comes along and drops a good thought in it.”

   I don’t think anyone but Dale Robertson could get away with lines such as this. The part was almost surely made with him in mind.

   In this opening episode, the villain (Bill Bixby) is accused and arrested of killing his wife. Midway through the trial a pool boy (or the equivalent) confesses to the murder, and Bixby’s character is set free. Then the fellow who confessed retracts his confession, but can Bixby be arrested and tried again? Supposedly not, but I will allow the legal minds reading this have their say.

   The beneficiary of J. J. Starbuck investigation is Bill Bixby’s stepson, who also ends up as J. J.’s foster son halfway through the episode, but I don’t believe he ever showed up again.

   The series lasted only the one season, but it had to be fun for viewers to see Dale Robertson back in the saddle again, so the speak. (*) To me, he was a man totally at ease in any role he played, and he plays this one to the hilt.
   

(*) Robertson previously starred in two cowboy shows on TV: Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-62) and Iron Horse (1966-68)

RICHARD STARK – Plunder Squad. Parker #16, Random House, hardcover, 1972. Avon, paperback, 1985. University of Chicago Press, softcover, 2010.

   But surely you’ve met Parker. He’s amoral, totally selfish, a hard professional criminal to his fingertips. No sense of humor, he reacts like a computer to any situation he’s in. He’s Lee Marvin in print; he’s beautiful (as his would-be assassin remarked in the memorable film Point Blank) —  and I love every minute in his company.

   This particular book, the penultimate in the saga, concerns the hijacking of a consignment of valuable paintings by Parker and his associates. It also involves Parker finally catching up and dealing with someone unwise enough to double cross him in an earlier book. A very stupid man.  You just don’t try any tricks on Parker.

   One query. Why in Point Blank (the film) was the character  called Walker rather than Parker? (Walker was one of Parker’s aliases.)

CHARLES WILLEFORD – The Difference. Dennis McMillan, hardcover, 1999. Previously published as The Hombre from Sonora as by Will Charles (Lenox Hill Press. hardcover, 1971).

   Starts off as a typical western. Set up maybe a bit like Shane.

   Johnny Shaw is 19. Living in Phoenix. He gets a letter saying his father is dead, deep in Arizona Territory, 1880. The elder Shaw left his son no money, only a ranch. But a nice one, with six head of breeding cattle.

   Soon as he arrives, the local open range ranchers want him gone. This is their land. Has been forever. Legal land claims be damned.

   But hey, for your trouble, we’ll pay you well. Say twice its value in gold. You’ve got til tonight.

   I don’t need til tonight, says Johnny. I’ll tell you now. I don’t want your money. My dad left me this ranch and this ranch only. It’s all I’ve got. Now get out.

   My father’s land, my father’s honor. My inheritance, my honor. I’m here to stay.

   So now Johnny’s at war with the ranchers. And the shooting starts.

   But this is Willeford, so you know there’s gonna a twist on western tropes.

   Once Johnny starts a-killing, he starts to like it. Once he defends his honor and wins back his right to till his land, to get the girl, to start a homestead, to be his father’s son, he doesn’t want it anymore.

   Like Courtney Love says, ‘Once I get what I want, I never want it again.’ Well Johnny’ll lay double on that.

   He’d rather be a gunman. And be free.

         ————

   If you like Willeford, you’ll love this one as much as anything in the Willeford canon. It fits right in. Another psycho in Willeford’s psycho pantheon. If you aren’t into Willeford and just like westerns — dunno how you’ll feel. I’m not that into westerns except as an alternate setting for hardboiled crime. It seems to me that noir is hardboiled in the city and gunslinger westerns are hardboiled in the country. As writers like Willeford and Whittington and Elmore Leonard and Clifton Adams show, a writer adept at one may be equally adept at the other.

   Another point of interest to me, the protagonist only fully realizes his potential once he dies inside. I book I read awhile ago, of marginal interest here, is called The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about cultural clashes between the Hmong and American medicine. It’s about how American doctors have a hard time dealing with the superstitions of other cultures and view them as impediments to scientific treatment methods. On the other hand, Hmong feel that to abandon their faith causes ‘soul death’.

   In any case, ‘soul death’ is exactly what allows Pretty Boy Floyd to become a successful, cool-handed bank robber and it’s exactly what allows Johnny Shaw to turn from a scared little boy to a stone cold killer. If you get treated like crap for long enough, you dissociate. You experience time-compression. You are outside your body and can watch things happen more slowly. Veteran NFL quarterbacks talk about time slowing down, watching the action unfold like Neo in The Matrix. In half-time, in quarter-time. While for everyone else everything is moving much too fast. Everyone else is scared.

   But for the dead man, the man who is dead inside already, like Johnny Shaw: “I knew that I would be faster [on the draw]…and deep down inside me I knew why, too. [They] wanted to live. They had everything to live for: a huge ranch, and two pretty girls anxious to marry them. Nobody had ever wanted to keep on living any more than those two men did at that moment. But I wanted to die, and knowing that I wanted to die meant that I would not be killed by either one of them. That was the difference between us”. That’s the Difference.

EARL NORMAN – Kill Me on the Ginza. Burns Bannion #6. Berkley Y626, paperback original, 1962. Barye Phillips cover art. Also available in ebook format (Kindle).

   You know the old saying, “you can’t keep a good thing down?” It seems sometimes you can’t keep a bad thing down either, which explains why Earl Norman’s Burns Bannion novels are back in print.

   Burns Bannion is an expatriate American private eye in Tokyo (each book gives us a long winded explanation how the Japanese would never give an American a P. I. License so Bannion is enrolled as a college student, but never goes to class), and an expert in karate. Literally the little bits of karate you get in these slender books is about the only reason to read them though they promised at times to be so bad they are good without quite making it.

   This one opens with our hero in a club on the Ginza, the neon club district in wide open Post War Tokyo, Burns is leaving a club when a pneumatic Japanese performer heaving precariously in her low cut outfit smacks him over the head with a metal tray.

   
   So far I can’t disagree with anything she says.

   This is really poverty row private eye stuff with a little international intrigue and exotic locations thrown in. In every book Bannion meets one dimensional (character wise, physically they are three dimensional) Japanese women in various states of undress and gets drawn into pretty non-dimensional cases.

   Bannion fails to recognize this one because she has her clothes on, and he last saw her a week earlier in the buff posing at the Art Photography Studio for Photo Fans also on the Ginza (next to the Urological and Sexual Institute we are told) where Bannion had pretended to be a photographer to check her out for a client, Hedges, a correspondent. Seems the girl, G. N. Noriko was a friend of Bill Crea a missing correspondent who disappeared on a trip to Kobe.

   Before he can go to Kobe though Inspector Ezawa, another Karate man, picks up Bannion and Hedges and takes them to the train station where a dismembered body has been found, and the police have been sent his head in a bowling bag. Bill Crea’s head.

   Not a terrible opening despite Norman’s somewhat tiresome version of wise guy private eye-ese. In this one he’s battling a cult, the Oshira, based on a prototype of modern Japanese gods and predating Buddhism, the hidden god, and something called the Grand Apex which turns out to be a front for sex trafficking from Korea while Bannion gets help from G. N. (and you do not want to know what those initials stand for) and a stripper called Bay-bee.

   There’s also a philosophical criminal called House Charnel who talks like Nietzsche on LSD: “We are all born into the world as enemies.”

   I can see where these time killers were exotic enough at the time to draw some readers. The plots are serviceable, there is a lot of talk about sex and pneumatic Japanese beauties, and of course karate battle aplenty (I wanted to get my hands free so I could Karate-chop the Whore-master to his just rewards.).

   I have a feeling that many people feel more kindly about these than I do, and I have no problem with that.

   I will give Norman this, he manages to keep the action boiling down to the last page and without a single chapter break — that’s right, the edition I read had no chapter breaks, just continuous narrative, and I have a suspicion this may be his best book, though that isn’t saying a lot. He knows something about Japan and probably could have parlayed that into something interesting, but never does.
   

      The Burns Bannion series —

Kill Me in Tokyo. Berkley 1958 [Tokyo]
Kill Me in Shimbashi. Berkley 1959 [Tokyo]
Kill Me in Yokohama. Berkley 1960 [Japan]
Kill Me in Shinjuku. Berkley 1961 [Tokyo]
Kill Me in Yoshiwara. Berkley 1961 [Tokyo]
Kill Me in Atami. Berkley 1962 [Japan]
Kill Me on the Ginza. Berkley 1962 [Tokyo]
Kill Me in Yokosuka. Erle 1966 [Japan]
Kill Me in Roppongi. Erle 1967 [Japan]

ANTHONY BERKELEY – Top Story Murder.  Roger Sheringham #7. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1931. Published previously in the UK as Top Storey Murder (Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1931).

   Novelist and part-time criminologist Roger Sheringham follows along, as Scotland Yard puts together a case against a burglar who added murder to his last job. These were the leisurely days when the professional criminals were all known and readily identifiable by their characteristic methods of operation.

   But Roger finds flaws in their· theories and strikes off on his own investigations, which increasingly point to an inside job. He also adds a secretary — the murdered woman’s niece — who mysteriously disclaims her rightful inheritance, and whom Roger finds secretly provoking in other ways as well.

   A nice bunch of clues and theories, which Roger conveniently lists at appropriate intervals, and which do provide a fitting solution to the discerning reader. But I think it’s the underlying happy twinkle which provides the most pleasure in this tale, well told.

Rating: A.

TAKE TWO. “Pilot.” ABC, 28 June 2018 (Season One, Episode One). Rachel Bilson (Sam Swift), Eddie Cibrian (Eddie Valetik). Created and written by Andrew W. Marlowe and Terri Edda Miller. Director: John Terlesky. Available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

   After her long-running cop show on TV (eight years) has been cancelled, and finished now with rehab (I didn’t catch the why), actress Sam Swift, still young and attractive, hopes to make a comeback in another series, one in which she would play a private eye. How to prepare for the role? Have her agent call in a favor and have real-life PI Eddie Valetik let her follow him around for a week to watch and learn.

   Eddie agrees, but only under protest. Who needs a washed up former TV star underfoot all day? Well, you know how that goes. Lots of sparks fly, but it is only inevitable that after they partner up like this for a while, Eddie grudgingly agrees that maybe, just maybe, she is more than a pretty face.

   Their first client? A man who thinks his daughter, on her own in L.A., may have been murdered.

   This first episode has all the depth, ambience, and wholesome charm of a Hallmark Channel TV mystery, and I doubt I need say a whole lot more than that. It isn’t bad, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be remembered, even by those who watched it. The series was apparently a summer replacement on ABC, and when the summer was over, so was the series, 13 episodes in all.

JIM TULLY – The Bruiser. Greenberg, hardcover, 1936. World, hardcover, 1943. Bantam #67, paperback, 1947. Pyramid #53, paperback, 1952. Kent State University Press, softcover, 2010.

   â€œHe was a broth of a boy — as weak as water and strong as a broken dam.”

   What a quote, right? Tully can really turn a phrase.

   The book’s about the rise and rise of Shane Rory, from hobo to heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

   There are terrifically vivid, livid scenes of the fights and the backstory, the training, the gambling. And the language rings true. Truly wonderful vintage vernacular, written by a road kid and pugilist of his own experiences and things he’d heard.

   The problems come when Tully tries to weave in a typical Hollywood melodrama. Shane Rory dreams of a pure midwestern maiden from his youth — and she of him. And at the end their shy romance finally blossoms — just as he wins the heavyweight belt. He immediately cedes the belt (to a hobo friend from his youth, no less) and leaves with the maiden for her pure and fertile farm she has just inherited from her grandmother. Fade to black with violins. Roll credits. Yech.

   Anywho, the getting there is still worth the trip for the clipped true prose of the street.

   Some more pith from the book:

   â€œYou’re a nice looking kid — how long you been a bum?” “Ever since I can remember,” was the answer. “And you?” He turned to Negro.” “Afore that.”

   â€œI hits ’im so hahd I jes’ blas’ his brains right outta de top o’ his head—if dem ropes haden been deah — he’d be a rollin’ yit.”

   â€œI’m just oozin’ out of the picture like I oozed into it.”

   â€œIt’s a rough world Shane — as warm as the very devil when the referee’s raisin’ your hand, and cold as a hangman’s heart when he ain’t.”

   â€œHis brains begun to rattle like dry peas in a pod.”

   â€œLet it be forgotten like a flower is forgotten; forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.”

   â€œNow you’ve got everything — but for God’s sake don’t develop brains. That’s what kills people.”

   â€œWhen life itself is a lie one more or less won’t matter.”

   â€œEven the hangman’s under sentence of death.”

   â€œWhere was Moses when the lights went out? Sitting in the window with his shirt tail out.”

   â€œWe’re both Irish and we have traditions: a kindlier race never tore a man to bits.”

   â€œYour mother’s ghost — if you weren’t hatched out of a buzzard’s egg — would haunt you.”

   â€œAll you have to do is wring the diapers of your mind.”

      Liam Neeson as Philip Marlowe:

      What do you think?

EDMUND COOPER – All Fools’ Day. Berkley X1469, US, paperback, 1967. Cover art by Hoot von Zitzewitz. Previously published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1966, and in the US by Walker, hardcover, 1966.

   Beginning in 1971, solar radiation cause the world’s suicide rate to increase sharply. Ten years later, only the Transnormals are still alive – the creative, the fanatic, and the crazy [have] inherit[ed] the Earth. The book follows the life of Greville, a former advertising executive, in this new world as he searches for love, purpose, and direction.

   Perhaps written for a wider audience than the usual SF one, the story loses impact simply because of the overuse of its theme, particularly by [British] writers. Frustrating in its deliberate irrationality, the civilization of this savage world seems doomed, but Greville forms the basis of a new world from a group of anarchists.

   The sudden optimism of the ending comes as a relief from the previously established tone, but it is not altogether satisfying. One point of disagreement: mathematicians are among the first to die (page 17), symbolizing [the loss] of normality and supreme stability, but mathematicians can be as crazy as anyone.

Rating: ****½

   In Part Two, I continue the episode-by-episode description of the 1961-62 television series, The 87th Precinct, based on the characters created by mystery writer Ed McBain in a long list of very popular police procedurals. If you missed Part One, you can find it here.

   â— Interestingly, two episodes were based on works by other authors, with Helen Nielsen adapting “The Very Hard Sell” (12/4/61) from her own story (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1959). An apparent suicide, a salesman is found shot dead in the car whose prospective buyer (Leonard Nimoy) duped him into transporting drugs during a test-drive; getting wind of this, he tried to make a citizen’s arrest with his own gun, which was then turned on him. Nimoy has little screen time, and his scam is convoluted and far-fetched, making this one of the less satisfying episodes.

   â— “Feel of the Trigger” (2/26/62) was adapted — again minus its initial article — from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Abe Levine stories (AHMM, October 1961), collected in Levine (1984); Hawkins gives Abe’s obsession with heart health to Meyer. During a confrontation with a youthful killer, Meyer faces him mano-a-mano and, after subduing him with judo — mentioned frequently in the novels, particularly as a defining characteristic of Det. Hal Willis — suddenly feels fine. Neither of McBain’s minority detectives, African-American Arthur Brown or Puerto Rican Frankie Hernandez, was seen on the show, but this episode gets points for matter-of-factly including black Officer Kendal (Bernie Hamilton) without making an issue of his race.

   The show’s original teleplays largely maintained the style and spirit of the books, periodically introducing a lighter tone, as did McBain. Obviously excepting Havilland 2.0, they captured both the personalities of and the dynamics among his characters, stressing the grindingly methodical, sometimes tedious nature of police work; the frequency with which luck and coincidence played an equally large role in the outcome; and the important contributions of the police lab, with which the detectives enjoy a pleasant raillery. Also like McBain, the scenarists populated the squadroom with colorful characters whose vignettes enlivened the proceedings.

   â— McBain contributed “Line of Duty” (10/23/61), which he later recycled for Ironside as “All in a Day’s Work” (2/15/68), and uses his character of stoolie Danny Gimp (Walter Burke). Bert sees a theater held up, then kills the perp who fires at him while the other drives away, described as a good boy by all who knew him; when Carella and Kling are given a lead by Danny, Bert freezes and is wounded before Steve shoots the fugitive, who reveals the “good boy” was his accomplice on 14 jobs. Unsurprisingly, McBain does an excellent job of focusing on Kling’s maturation as a detective, struggling to cope with the first time he is forced to kill.

   â— Cinematographer James Wong Howe directed Finlay McDermid’s “The Modus Man” (10/16/61), with Havilland and ex-detective Bill Brewster (John Anderson) — now a used-car salesman — recognizing the m.o. of a smash-grab as Maxie Greb’s … but he’s in prison. Carella’s investigating a second-story job, unmistakably the work of Blinky Smith…whose alibi checks; Roger and Kling raid the apartment of Greb’s former partner…who died a week ago. Brewster has microfilmed their m.o. cards, but slips up by telling a victim to shut up while impersonating a crook who can no longer speak.

   â— Winston Miller’s “Occupation, Citizen” (10/30/61) concerns a Hungarian refugee (Ross Martin) whose pregnant wife, fearing reprisals, stops him from identifying two mob killers, but after a second killing, he agrees to serve as bait. Immigrants feature prominently in McBain’s precinct, whose population, per Killer’s Wedge, “was composed almost entirely of third-generation Irish, Italians, and Jews, and first-generation Puerto Ricans.” This episode has a valuable lesson in citizenship applicable to all Americans, yet especially these aspiring citizens, with Steve reminding them of their civic duty to their unborn child’s adoptive country.

   â— The first of two teleplays by David Lang, “The Guilt” (11/13/61) finds Meyer clobbered by childhood friend Artie Sanford (Mike Kellin), who is bitten by a used-car salesman’s guard dog while trying to make a getaway. Dismissing news reports that it is rabid as a trick, he persuades sometime girlfriend Estelle Vernola (Norma Crane) to transport him in her uncle’s truck. Meyer records Blaney’s warning about the urgent need for treatment, and Estelle plays it for Artie in the back of the truck, prompting a spectacular, eye-rolling freak-out by Kellin before she drives him to the Emergency Hospital, where Meyer awaits.

   â— In Lang’s “Ramon” (4/9/62), the eponymous boy (Danny Bravo) can’t stop showing his appreciation after Havilland sends flowers to his mother’s grave, while his father, Villedo Morales (Edward Colmans), is conspiring to assassinate a visiting Central American prime minister, who plans to address his people in front of the precinct house. Roger collects $20 to send Ramon to camp, but Villedo, reconsidering when Havilland touts ballots over bullets in another of the show’s solid moral lessons, pulls Ramon from camp to leave town. Fearing he won’t see Roger again, the boy eludes him, his destination obviously the 87th, and Villedo, arriving just before the speech, fingers the conspirators.

   â— In Anne Howard Bailey’s “My Friend, My Enemy” (11/27/61), a woman lies to alibi her son, Andrew Mason (Dennis Hopper), who strangled a classmate in the park, and the suspicious Carella has an undercover Kling befriend him. Daniels urges caution when Bert risks the jealousy of Claire — killed off in Lady, Lady, I Did It! (1961) — to make a double date with two policewomen. With Hopper providing an early taste of the manic energy he brought to Apocalypse Now (1979), the unbalanced youth learns that Kling is a cop, and threatens him with his own gun before being disarmed.

   â— The first of four scripts by Donn Mullally, “Run, Rabbit, Run” (12/25/61) marks Paul Genge’s debut as Lt. Jim Burns (Peter Byrnes in the novels). The only surviving witness to testify against an executed mobster, Toots Brendan (Alfred Ryder) is betrayed when he tries to sell his interest in “the operation” to help finance his disappearance. Not above deception, Steve tells secretary Yvonne English (Barbara Stuart) — who is sweet on Toots — that he’s been killed, so she reveals her duplicitous boss’s address, enabling the detectives to intervene.

   â— Pete Rugolo and Jerry Goldsmith, respectively, pinch-hit on Mullally’s “Man in a Jam” (1/8/62) and Katkov’s “Step Forward” (3/26/62) — both directed by Twilight Zone vet James Sheldon — for Goldsmith’s protégé, Hawaii Five-O legend Morton Stevens; all three scored Thriller, another Hubbell Robinson Production. “Jam” concerns a man who claims he killed his fiancée during a drunken black-out, in reality a premeditated crime for which he forged I.O.U.’s from her to fictitious other men of whom he was supposedly jealous. Unfortunately, the Byzantine nature of his scheme threatens credulity.

   â— A somewhat whimsical departure, “Step Forward” finds the underpaid Carella accepting a job as a bank’s security chief; he chafes at the symbolic post, humoring rich clients, but provides two of them with valued advice. Kling drops in as the Carellas and Meyers enjoy cocktails, nicely showing how the detectives remain friends off-duty, and when he gets a tip on a payroll robber, the three head out to pick him up. Despite the extra money and the prestige of his own staff, Steve admits policing is “more fun,” his new job obviously forgotten as they question the suspect.

   â— Kling asks local baseball hero Larry Brooks (Michael Dante) to start a baseball clinic to get the local kids on the right path in Mullally’s “Idol in the Dust” (4/2/62). Larry tries to extricate his parole-violating brother Joe (Al Ruscio) from a crooked poker game, and in the ensuing mêlée, Joe pushes one crook out the window to his death; for their mother’s sake, Larry confesses to involuntary manslaughter, upholding the code of silence. This makes him a hero to the local punks, but when Bert assembles them and the clinic kids to see Larry, Carella brings Joe, who agrees to take his own rap, advising them to avoid his fate — guidance that could also serve viewers well.

   â— In Mullally’s “The Last Stop” (4/23/62), Mike Power (Victor Jory) is scapegoated after being shot in a taxi by Stu Tobin (Bern Bassey) while the latter silences a squealer, then asked by long-ago partner Burns to run out the retirement clock at “the Eight-Seven.” In an effective performance by Jory, he rubs everyone the wrong way, but his hunch is borne out that a rash of crimes by a shotgun-wielding woman is a hoax. Correctly confident that he won’t be recognized, Stu brazenly sits beside Powers in a bar; as Mike accosts him to return a lighter left behind, a departing Stu misconstrues and shoots it out, but Powers survives again and is retired, effective immediately.

   â— Written by Alfred Hitchcock Presents mainstay William Fay, “Main Event” (1/1/62) has Meyer’s pal “Sonny” Fitzgerald (Brad Weston) beset by a booby-trapped punching bag and spiked rubbing solution. The culprit is revealed as gofer Bobo Felix (Arch Johnson), an ex-pug who was used up and thrown away by — and is trying to frame — a notoriously crooked rival manager, resenting Sonny’s success. But the subtleties of Bobo’s plan seem at odds with his punch-drunk persona, making this another problematic episode.

   â— In Jonathan Latimer’s “Out of Order” (1/22/62), ex-con Jerry Curtis (Charles Robinson) is suspected of bombing a phone booth when his construction foreman reports a dynamite theft, and although cleared when another blast goes off during questioning, he decides to cash in, believing it’s useless to try going straight and voicing a familiar complaint about persecuted parolees. Bombing a café and emptying its register, he adds theft to the m.o., but Meyer finds evidence in the phone company’s crank letter file that helps identify the original bomber, who denies the thefts. Jerry is apprehended after shooting a man with a gun concealed in his “bomb” while bluffing a betting parlor.

   â— Rik Vollaerts received a story and shared script credit (with Raphael Hayes) on “The Pigeon” (1/29/62), with Peter Falk well suited to the typical oddball role of Greg Brovane. Coincidentally, the 87th entries So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976) and Jigsaw (1970) were respectively repurposed into his Columbo episodes “No Time to Die” (3/15/92) and “Undercover” (5/2/94). Aspiring to the big time like his father, Greg has been hypnotized to think he made it, confessing to two killings in a supermarket heist he didn’t pull and fingering three nonexistent accomplices.

   â— James Bloodworth also had story and shared script credit (with Collins) on “A Bullet for Katie” (2/12/62), the new bride of cop Bill Miller (Ed Nelson). Gantry (Harold J. Stone) excoriated Bill when left by his wife while in prison, but a co-worker recants his alibi for Katie’s shooting after Gantry refuses to be blackmailed into concealing factory theft. Providing extra nuance, Bill is well portrayed as abrasive and hot-headed, gunning for vengeance when he learns that Gantry is about to be picked up, but just in time, a boy admits wounding Katie while playing with an “unloaded” gun borrowed from a friend.

   â— In Sheldon’s “Square Cop” (3/12/62), written by Robert Hardy Andrews, Otto Forman (Lee Tracy) is suspected after the weapon that killed his partner is identified as his, reported stolen, and the description of the wounded perp matches his estranged son. When Burns says, “he fell down, failed, right in his own family,” Steve replies, “that happens to a lot of fathers,” alluding to Larry Byrnes, revealed as an addict and murder suspect in The Pusher. Tracy brings a nice gravitas to the role, dramatizing the classic duty vs. family conflict, with the viewer uncertain which way he leans until he decks the youth, who had tried to force his father’s help.

   â— Collins wrote the last episode, “Girl in the Case” (4/30/62), in which a millionaire dies after dictating a will to stenographer Cheryl Anderson (Janis Paige), offered $100,000 to swear that he was not of sound mind. It’s revealed that an ex-member of his law firm had planned to split $3 million left to a family member in a previous will. Havilland wines and dines Cheryl, but is chagrined to learn that she plans to marry the man’s ne’er-do-well son, who might actually become something with her help; this makes her a nicely complex character, seeming far less like a mere gold-digger.

   The “conglomerate hero” device aided the scenarists in mixing and matching characters from any book after Killer’s Choice to circumvent Roger’s absence. A Casanova, McBain’s Hawes often bedded any babe he saw, an aspect that not only was downplayed on the show but also ruled out the married Carella and Meyer and engaged Kling, leaving Havilland his default stand-in, e.g., romancing Cheryl. Roger’s literary successor, Andy Parker, fought with Steve over racist remarks to Hernandez, who is slain in See Them Die (1960) while trying to prevent a besieged killer’s becoming a barrio martyr.

   The 87th has since had mixed success onscreen, although as with noir authors David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich, French filmmakers, e.g., Claude Chabrol, favored these romans policiers. With Burt Reynolds (Carella), Jack Weston (Meyer), and Tom Skerritt (Kling) relocated to Boston, Richard A. Colla’s Fuzz (1972) was a misfire, despite being adapted by McBain-as-Hunter. His 1968 novel had brought back the Deaf Man — Yul Brynner, like Vaughn one of The Magnificent Seven (1960) — and Det. Eileen Burke (aka McHenry; Raquel Welch); the latter, unseen since The Mugger, became a major character starting with Ice.

            — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

      Editions cited —

The Mugger: Warner (1996)
Killer’s Choice: Avon (1986)
All others: Signet (1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1989)