LES ROBERTS – The Lake Effect. Milan Jacovich #5. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 2000.

   I’m continually bemused by the fact that everyone doesn’t share my opinion that Les Roberts is in the top rank of currently practicing PI writers. Over the last two or three years I don’t think that anyone in that group other than Larry Block has written as consistently well as he has.

   Cleveland PI Milan Jacovich owes someone a favor. He doesn’t like owing favors in general, and he really doesn’t like this one, because it’s to the heir of Cleveland’s reigning capo. The payback seems harmess enough: Jacovich is to act as security consultant to a mayoral political campaign in one of Cleveland’s affluent suburbs. Milan can’t figure out why this mobster wants him there, but it doesn’t take him long to put his talents to good use.

   Jacovich is one of the best-characterized of today’s PI’s to me. He’s bright, and he’s tough, and he has a stern, somewhat inflexible moral code that gives him — and others — problems at times. Personal morality is a theme that pervades all of Roberts’ fiction, and to his credit it is never dealt with in a simplistic fashion.

   The philosophical underpinnings are never obtrusive, though, and Roberts tells a well-paced story in excellent prose. He handles all aspects of the novelist’s craft well, but his strengths are his characters, his prose, and the fine sense of place that permeates his books, particularly in the case of Jacovich’s Cleveland, which he obviously loves.

   This another good one from a very good writer.

      The Milan Jacovich series —

Pepper Pike (1988)
Full Cleveland (1989)
Deep Shaker (1991)
The Cleveland Connection (1993)
The Lake Effect (1994)
The Duke Of Cleveland (1995)
Collision Bend (1996).
Cleveland Local (1997).
A Shoot in Cleveland (1998).
The Best Kept Secret (1999).
The Indian Sign (2000).
The Dutch (2001)
The Irish Sports Pages (2002)
King of the Holly Hop (2008)
The Cleveland Creep (2011) !
Whiskey Island (2012)
Win, Place or Die (2013; written with Dan S. Kennedy).
The Ashtabula Hat Trick (2015)

HARRY LYNCH “The Ape.” John Jaffray #2. First published in Clues Detective Stories, May 1935.

   In spite of reading and collecting pulp magazines for about 40 years, there always seem to be new authors to come across that I’d never heard of before. And of course what that means as well is that I’ve never heard of the characters they wrote about, either. Harry Lynch is such an author, and his series character, private eye John J. Jaffrey, is brand new to me too.

   Jaffray is not in Lynch;s two dozen or so pulp stories; the list below of the ones he is known to be om comes from the online FictionMags Index, and may or may not be complete. (Identifying series characters in old and hard-to-find magazines such as Clues Detective Stories that are over 80 years old is not the easiest thing in the world to do.)

   And given its age, “The Ape,” which is tentatively numbered two in the series, is certainly a relic of its time, but I enjoyed it. If you ever happen to come across a copy, I think you may too, especially if you like mystery stories with murderous apes in them, just as this one does. (No surprise there.)

   It begins with Jaffrey on the trail of a wealthy businessman who has gone missing. Having been hired by the man’s partners, he has found someone to follow who may lead him to the man. But wouldn’t you just know it — the train they are on together derails and the man he is following is killed.

   Obviously what Jaffray does next — you guessed it — he changes clothes with the dead man and under these false pretenses he is picked up by members of the gang who have abducted the man he is searching for, and off they go to their hideout. Then begins the wildest series of events you can ever image. First a dead man om a bier attended to by a beautiful Asian woman. Then a mad man in shackles who wanders around shooting bent pins with a rubber band. Plus another beautiful woman who seems to have been a captive of the gang and who spends much of the story totally nude. Then at last the leader of the gang who is totally blind.

   And of course the ape, who fondly carries the head of a dead man around with him wherever he goes. What more could you want?

      The John Jaffray stories —

Rattlesnake! (nv) Clues Detective Stories Dec 1934
The Ape (na) Clues Detective Stories May 1935
One Hour to Live (nv) Clues Detective Stories Jun 1935
Prevue of Hell (nv) Clues Detective Stories Aug 1935
Fury (ss) Clues Detective Stories Dec 1935
The Hooded Men (nv) Clues Detective Stories Apr 1936
Blast (nv) Clues Detective Stories Jul 1936

KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE. NBC, 1963-1965, 60 minutes:

      â€œOne Tiger to a Hill.” Season 2, Episode 8. 03 Dec 1964. Barry Nelson, Diane McBain, James Gregory, Peter Brown, Warren Stevens. Teleplay: Robert Hamner. Directed by Jack Arnold.

      â€œFour Into Zero.” Season 2, Episode 15. 18 Feb 1965. Jack Kelly, Martha Hyer, Robert Conrad, Sue Randall, Joe Mantell, Jessie White, Bill Quinn. Teleplay: Don Brinkley. Story: Milt Rosen. Directed by Don Weiss.

   What these two episodes of Kraft Suspense Theatre (syndicated under the title Crisis) have in common is the fact that both are caper stories, and in both cases ones with happy endings. Not that the anthology series didn’t have its fair share of crime does not pay tales like any other series from the sixties, but at least these two episodes are different.

   â€œOne Tiger to a Hill” opens with a jewel thief breaking into a safe and relieving it of close to half a million in goodies. That draws the attention of the head of the Burglary division. James Gregory who is enjoying a bit of fine dining and a good cognac when he receives the call — only to find that sharing the restaurant with him is jewel thief extraordinare Colin Neal (Barry Nelson) and his girl Diane McBain, making Gregory Neal’s alibi.

   Neal and Gregory are friendly adversaries, Gregory the only cop to ever catch Neal and Neal the only thief to ever elude Gregory. Not so much Gregory’s subordinate Lt. Hadley (Warren Stevens) who wants nothing so much as to put away all thieves — in any condition he can catch them in.

   The secret to Neal’s latest success is bartender Peter Brown who is his apprentice and pulled the latest caper in Neal’s style. There are complications though. Aside from Hadley and the much smarter and more dangerous Gregory, Brown is ambitious. He not only wants Neal’s career, he wants his woman, and he isn’t above framing Neal for a crime he never committed. Even worse he shoots a policeman while committing it.

   Now Neal has to stop Brown, recover the stolen gems, and get the increasingly driven Hadley off his neck while not getting caught by Gregory.

   This could all be done darkly and in a noirish mood, but it is much more a low budget TO CATCH A THIEF, and thanks largely to good players and a light script, it doesn’t pause long enough to let you question the obvious gaps in the story, and it works for what it is.

   Next up is a somewhat more serious caper. “Four Into Zero.” Jack Kelly is the husband of wealthy Martha Hyer, tired of feeling as if he has been bought by his beautiful wife and determined to do something on his own. The something is a heist, and on a moving train across country from Chicago to Los Angles.

   The train will be carrying the currency plates for a new banana republic in South America, and the plot is lift the plates being shipped from Chicago from the baggage car, use a printing press built by failed artist and engraver Jessie White to print a million dollars in the new currency, and return the plates unsuspected for delivery. Also mixed in the job is Robert Conrad, whose fiance has been working for the South American dictator and unwittingly providing all the details needed for the job.

   Joe Mantell is the final part of the scheme, an alcoholic circus performer Kelly rescued from the gutter and dried out for a vital part of the caper, crossing the top of the train while it is moving with the plates.

   And complications ensue as you might expect. Kelly’s wife and Conrad’s girl (Sue Randell) are suspicious, and when they meet decide to fly to Los Angles to meet the boys. Meanwhile railroad cop Bill Quinn is taking the same train on vacation, and there is this annoying little boy who keeps seeing men climbing outside on the train …

   For once the caper goes fairly smoothly, until Mantell breaks his wrist, ironically on a crate of whiskey, and Kelly has to replace him on the final leg of the heist. It ends fairly happily with Kelly and Conrad rejecting their part of the spoils for love, and a nice ironic touch (actually foreshadowed in the script for once) ends the episode.

   Everyone gets at least one good scene, and what more could television actors ask?

   Neither the best or the worst of the series, this is your parents comfortable sixties television done with professionalism and style. Both episodes could easily have been expanded to features and both make for a tightly packed forty-eight minutes.

   I can’t say either generates much actual suspense, but both are fairly handsomely done and the dialogue is intelligent and revealing in both, making you wish they had been more interested in the suspense end of the thing.

   Of the two “One Tiger to a Hill” is the standout, but I recall seeing “Four Into Zero” when it first aired and surprisingly remembered almost every detail when I watched it again for the first time, so there is more here than may meet the eye

SUNSET IN THE WEST. Republic Pictures, 1950. Roy Rogers, Trigger, Estelita Rodriguez, Penny Edwards, Gordon Jones, Will Wright. Director: William Witney.

   The story line doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s one that’s strong and powerful enough to stand out in the minds of its intended audience. Which is to say, mostly 6 to 14 year olds watching the movie at a Saturday afternoon matinee — with solid enough production values to appeal to adults as well.

   For some mysterious unknown reason, a gang of outlaws are hijacking trains, killing the members of the crew and dumping all of the goods on board on the ground, then disappearing with the empty trains. The local sheriff, having no clues, is roundly castigated by a mob of townspeople outside his office until one of his former deputies, Roy Rogers, shows up to offer him a helping hand.

   What follows is a typical William Witney action-packed extravaganza, with songs and music inserted in every once in a while, some naturally, others more or less at random. The story isn’t much, as I’ve previously suggested, but it’s good to see one of these old series westerns in the bright shiny colors such as displayed in this one. By any standard, they’re quite spectacular.

DAVID EVERSON – Rebound. Robert Miles #2. Ivy, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1988.

   While Robert Miles is a PI (Mid-Continental Op and Associates), his specialty is political intelligence. Of course you realize that this is as much a contradiction in terms as “student athlete.” which is what this story is all about: an impending basketball scandal.

   Lincoln Heritage University is also where Miles’s wife (separated but amicably so) happens to work. All this background is interesting, but except on occasions mow and then, this is merely adequate PI fare. What Everson has to do is to make it both leaner and meaner.

      The Robert Miles series —

Recount (1987)
Rebound (1988)
Instant Replay (1989)
Rematch (1989)
A Capital Killing (1990)
Suicide Squeeze (1991)
False Profits (1992)

    Short stories:

“Catnap” (1991, Cat Crimes)
“Operation: Trojan Horse” (1991, Solved)

MERMAIDS OF TIBURON Pacific Productions, 1962. George Robotham, Diane Webber, Gaby Martone, Timothy Carey, Jose Gonzales-Gonzales, and John Mylong. Written, produced & directed by John Lamb.

   A real oddity, released, re-released and re-edited in sundry permutations (including the title The Aqua Sex) over the years by auteur John Lamb, and a big hit on Army Bases.

   Diver and all-around Deep Sea Honcho Dr. James Samuelson (played by stuntman George Robotham, here under the name George Rowe) is contacted by a mysterious scientist-guy (John Mylong, the scientist-guy in Robot Monster) for help exploring the waters off the island of Tiburon, apparently chock-full of pearls and mysterious sea critters. They arrange to meet in Mexico, but when Rowe gets there Mylong is missing, amid signs of violence in his Hotel Room.

   Enter Timothy Carey as a bad guy in possession of Mylong’s maps and a trunk large enough to hold a body. He charters a boat with skipper Jose Gonzales Gonzales and sets off for Tiburon, right behind our hero.

   At which point the action slows a bit—to put it mildly. Rowe (who also narrates, like Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt) gets there first, and after many long, extended, lengthy, leisurely interminable minutes of looking at water, he comes across a race of Mermaids.

   They’re a diverse lot, these Merladies. Some have fish tails, some wear seaweed bikini bottoms, but all are topless and blessed by nature. No wonder this was popular on Army bases.

   What follows is about twenty minutes of unadulterated ogling, dressed up like exploration, as Rowe follows the Merbabes into their briny homeland. I will say right now that the underwater photography is expertly done, with a professionalism you wouldn’t expect in a low-budget picture like this, and the aquatic toplessness is diverting… for a while. But after a near half-hour of nothing but buoyant boobs, I thought I was seeing double.

   Fortunately about this time we get back to the story, and I was never so glad to see Timothy Carey’s ugly mug or hear Jose Gonzales Gonzales sing off-key.

   Carey gets to show off his nasty side here, and he does it quite well, deep-sixing the trunk with Mylong’s body, dynamiting the water with Rose and the Merwomen underneath, and setting off in ruthless search of giant oysters (they look more like bits of décor swiped from a sea food restaurant) and precious pearls.

   So obsessed is he with loot that he spear-guns a Merlady in a fit of pique, leading to an end unique in the annals of movie villainy that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice it to say (as it usually does) that Mermaids of Tiburon may not be much good, but you’re not likely to see anything else like it.

   One additional footnote. Hero George Robotham spent most of his movie career as a stuntman, including stints in the Mole People, Confessions of an Opium Eater and doubling for Kirk Alyn in Atom Man vs Superman. Somehow Mermaids of Tiburon seems to fit right in.

HAROLD ADAMS – The Man Who Met the Train. Carl Wilcox #7. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1988; paperback, May 1989.

   Although in the past Carl Wilcox has been on both sides of the law, at the beginning of The Man Who Met the Train he is a itinerant sign painter, working his way around 1930s Depression-era South Dakota, making ends meet when and how circumstances allow. When he comes across a one-car auto accident in which three are dead, one is seriously injured and a small four-year-old girl is pulled to safety unscratched, circumstances allow him to put on his favorite guise, that of private detective.

   Working for both the local judge and then the town banker (but not at the same time), Wilcox finds himself more and more the center of both the town’s curiosity and hostility, and as he does so, incidentally solves the murder of the young girl’s father, a genius with numbers who could not hold his liquor and who was assumed to have had a fatal accident or committed suicide (perhaps) by walking in front of an ongoing train not long before.

   Although he had his own distinctive style, Adams wrote as closely in the mode of Dashiell Hammett as any author I can think of. His stories are as definitely hardboiled as they come, but they come fully equipped with an underlying sensibility that shows how deeply he understood people too. And it’s not the plot that’s the key in this one. It’s the people in it that makes this story sing.

        The Carl Wilcox series —

1. Murder (1981)
2. Paint the Town Red (1982)
3. The Missing Moon (1983)
4. The Naked Liar (1985)
5. The Fourth Widow (1986)
6. The Barbed Wire Noose (1987)
7. The Man Who Met the Train (1988)
8. The Man Who Missed the Party (1989)
9. The Man Who Was Taller Than God (1992)
10. A Perfectly Proper Murder (1993)
11. A Way with Widows (1994)
12. The Ditched Blonde (1995)
13. Hatchet Job (1996)
14. The Ice Pick Artist (1997)
15. No Badge, No Gun (1998)
16. Lead, So I Can Follow (1999)

WHITE GOLD. Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC), 1927. Jetta Goudal, Kenneth Thomson, George Bancroft, George Nichols. Director: William K. Howard. Shown at Cinevent 22, Columbus OH, May 1990.

   The notes for the program put it well: “…claustrophobic, oppressive and obsessed with lust and betrayal.” A bride is seen by her father-in-law s coming between him and his son. The father-in-law lies and the woman will not betray the lie, hoping that her husband will believe in her innocence in the face of overwhelming circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

   The scene in which, as the wife leaves the house, she makes a gesture that without a single comment answers all the questions raised in the preceding scene of confrontation, is an unforgettable lesson in narrative economy. I feel as if this film is burned into my mind’s eye. Not to be missed if it’s ever scheduled near you.

FRED MacISAAC – The King Who Came Back. Altus Press, softcover, 2016. Originally serialized in six issues of Argosy between October 24th and November 28th, 1931.

   Hollywood and the pulps had something in common, and that was what I liked to think of as the “Kitchen-sink plot.” The “Kitchen-sink” plot was one where a wide mix of elements from diverse genres and sub genres were stirred into the pot for what was hopefully a healthy stew and not an unholy mess. Cowboys, gangsters, science fiction, lost worlds, lost races … at one time all those combinations saw print or made it to the silver screen. By that standard Fred MacIsaac’s The King Who Came Back is fairly tame fare, but there is still enough of a mix to make for a hearty meal.

   We open South of Ruritania and North of Graustark, just around the corner from Fredonia and the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in the small kingdom of Berania where the peasants are revolting (do your own jokes) and the army traitorous. Our hero, the King, is assured if he will lead the troops against his own people he can stop the revolt, but he does not have the heart to march on his own people (“I do not propose to lead an army from one end of the land to the other over the bodies of multitudes of my subjects. What you gentlemen tell me confirms my own observations. There is a nationwide demand for a republic. Let them have it. I will abdicate.”), which is why King Carlos Aronhof, finds his recent flying lessons come in handy when he has to skip town literally on the fly with his friend the American flyer and diplomatic courier, Will Jevis.

   Carlos finds himself an enemy of the people holed up in Paris with dwindling funds and a bounty on his head from the annoyed revolutionaries he escaped making it difficult for the French to embrace him or the English, both of whom don’t want to start a war with a new government so with Will Jervis help Carlos reinvent himself.

   Finding himself six months later in the United States as a chauffeur in Hollywood working for one Mrs. Mason Sweasy, one of those popular types fiction loves who built her fortune by taking in laundry on land that turned out to have oil under it and now is one of those tough smart plain spoken types usually played by Thelma Ritter, Marie Dressler, or Jessie Royce Landis, Carlos has a new name, face, and a new career.

   Actually, so far the story isn’t all that far fetched. More than a few princes, deposed, imaginary, and not showed up in Hollywood in that era as everything from the owners of famous restaurants to screenwriters. Carlos is now Carl Decker, and employed by the oil rich Mrs. Swasey, her beautiful twenty-five year old daughter Gladys, and son Junior (no good of course), crusty Tom Clancy who works for Mrs. Swasey (see any of a dozen character actors of Irish lineage) and for the first time in a while things are looking up. Carlos is even starting to get over his prejudices about Americans.

   Meanwhile the Americans are worried about having Carlos loose in America. Berania is backward and it would take next to nothing for Carlos to raise and army and return, plus the new Republic is corrupt and less than stable. Carlos presence could be an embarrassment, if they knew where he was. Then Will Jervis stumbles on someone pretending to be Carlos, complicating things farther especially when Count Grandez, the man behind the impersonator, tries to kill him because he knows the impersonator isn’t Carlos.

   Carlos contacts Jervis to apologize for the attack, surmising rightly it was because of him, but remains hidden although the Beranians know he is in California somewhere. Meantime Carlos new job is less pleasing that it seemed thanks to the nasty James Swasey Jr.

   The rescue of a young actress, Dalroa Dawning, from the unpleasant Junior and a chance meeting by Will Jervis on the train to California contribute to the next phase of the plot, the one where Carlos the chauffeur end up as chauffeur to the young actress starring in a movie being made about the King Carlos Aronhof that Will Jervis has just been hired as a technical director on having lost his diplomatic career for rescuing Carlos in the first place…

   Pretty soon Carlos is knee deep in assassins, revolutionaries, Secret Service, a plot to loot the crown jewels of Berania, gangsters, movie types, a romance with Dalroa, the now movie star whose chauffeur he becomes, is framed as a jewel thief, and faces myriad twists and turns before a final triumphal return to Berania to hopefully modernize his backward homeland so a real republic will eventually have a chance under the benevolent guidance of he and Queen Dalroa.

   No surprise Fred MacIsaac among other things had been a concert manager. for the opera since this book is operatic in the best sense. To be fair if you ever stop and think about it things tend to go off rail, but MacIsaac writes painless professional prose and never lets things drag. At each turn he introduces attractive new characters who may or may not be who they seem, and the result despite the serial-like nature of the plot the book is an entertaining and easy read, and an offbeat addition to the Ruritanian subgenre, adding gangsters and Hollywood to the mix created by Anthony Hope and George Barr McCutcheon.

   McIsaac was a staple of many of the better known pulps appearing regularly in Argosy, Detective Fiction Weekly, and others throughout the heyday of the pulps, a featured name on the cover of any issue he appeared in. His may not be a name to conjure with, but he never turned out less than competent prose, and here, at least, outdoes himself.

   The Altus Press edition is attractive and available as a paperback or ebook, a fast moving well written adventure tale you can easily imagine as a film from the era, although Hollywood would no doubt have added singing and dancing and maybe cowboys and rustlers. Even if it isn’t the full kitchen sink it’s enough of it for a delightful mix.