CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS. Films A2/Les Films du Carrosse/Soprofilms, 1983. France, 1983. Original title: Vivement dimanche! Also released as Finally, Sunday! Fanny Ardant, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Philippe Laudenbach, Philippe Morier-Genoud, Caroline Sihol, Georges Koulouris. Screenwriters: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Jean Aurel, based on the novel The Long Saturday Night by Charles Williams. Director: François Truffaut.

   This was François Truffaut’s final film; he died soon after it was finished. Filmed in black and white, it was intended as an homage to fellow director, Alfred Hitchcock, but I suspect that close eyes watching would spot a sizable amount of other inspirational material.

   I’ve not read the novel in many years, so I’m relying on summaries of the book I’ve found online as well as my probably unreliable memory, but the novel goes something like this: A businessman returns from a duck hunting trip only to learn that a fellow member of the club has been shot and killed in the same area. He’s accused of the crime, since it is widely suspected that the man was having an affair with is wife. When she is also found murdered, he’s the one immediately accused of both crimes.

   It is only with the help of his very efficient secretary that he is able to clear himself, during the passage of one long tense Saturday night. (If I have any of this wrong, please do correct me.)

   The film follows the story very closely, at least as far as the outline goes that I’ve supplied you above. I don’t remember the book well enough to tell you whether the same person is the killer or not.

   Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the businessman, and while Fanny Ardant is his secretary, getting top billing, perhaps surprisingly but deservedly so. She steals the show from beginning to end: a slim, full-lipped, beautiful brunette who is constantly on the move: if not walking, then running (like a girl). She even looks ravishing in a trenchcoat, and there is an extremely good reason why she is wearing a trenchcoat.

   The book and the movie do diverge. The book was an out-and-out thriller. Although filmed in black and white, with lots of interesting camera angles, the movie is often played for humor if not comedy. The real estate broker and his secretary are always bickering. She is fired more than once, and if it were possible, she once says in exasperation that she would fire him.

   Of course we all know what it means when a man and a woman in a movie are constantly battling each other, even though they are nominally on the same side. Unfortunately the two leading players don’t seem to have all that much attraction to each other. He is 20 years older, she may be four to five inches taller.

   I enjoyed this one anyway, perhaps in a way because of the above, and I recommend it to you highly. I wish I could tell you that all of the loose ends are tied up at movie’s end, but since I watched the film with subtitles (quite small and often white on white), I found myself concentrating more on reading the words than following all of the action. I will tell you this. If I find the time to watch this movie again, I most certainly will. I will also start looking for any other films that Fanny Ardant may have made. What does that tell you?

KEN PETTUS – Say Goodbye to April. Knightsbridge, paperback original; 1st printing, 1991.

   Knightsbridge was a short-lived company that published a wide variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including ones by Ralph Nader and Vince Bugliosi, not to mention 24 first edition mysteries listed in Crime Fiction IV, all between 1990 and 91. I’ve always suspected there was a connection between Knightsbridge and Kensington, an imprint from Zebra (or is it the other way around?) that is still going strong today, but a quick search on Google came up dry, so perhaps not.

   This connection was suggested, by the way, by the fact that the first mystery written by [the late] Jim McCahery, a friend of mine through DAPA-Em (I’ll explain some other time), was published by Knightsbridge (Grave Undertaking) and the second by Kensington (What Evil Lurks). The detective of record in both books was Lavina London, an elderly retired Old Time Radio actress.

   Knightsbridge also reprinted several books in Bill Pronzini’s “Nameless” PI series, most (or all?) in two-in-one packaging. Ones I know about are Dragonfire/Casefile, Hoodwink/Scattershot, and Labyrinth/Bones. They’re all scarce in these Knightsbridge editions: only seven combined copies of the three books are available at the moment [when this review was written] on ABE.     [FOOTNOTE.]

   Say Goodbye to April is almost, but not quite, as difficult to come by. There are 12 copies now on ABE, and believe it or not, four of them can be purchased for a dollar each. If you’re one of the first ones to read this, you can get one cheap, in other words, but if you’re not quick off the mark, I’ll be willing to wager that a number of Mystery*File’s readership will have gotten there ahead of you, this book not being widely known before now as a private eye story.

   Which it is, and yes, I’m finally getting there. Ken Pettus had a long career before writing this, apparently his first and only book in print, as a high honcho in the world of television mystery and action-adventure drama, his credits including stints as scriptwriter for (I’ll start with the earliest ones first) Bonanza, Combat!, The Gallant Men, Branded, The Big Valley, The Wild Wild West, The Green Hornet, Mission: Impossible, The High Chaparral, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon, Jigsaw, Battlestar Galactica, Magnum P.I., and Shannon. It’s quite a resume, and there’s not one of these shows I wouldn’t mind having boxed DVD sets for. (Some more than others.)

   Pettus’s last TV credit appears to have been in 1985. Goodbye to April was published in 1991, but of course it could have been written at any time before then, only to filed away in a cabinet somewhere, waiting for a publisher to come along and pick it up.

   And if that’s the case, which of course is a matter of high conjecture only, it should have seen print long before it ever did. It’s no classic, but … let me get into that now.

   The private eye who tells the story is Tug Cash, an ex-cop with a disability discharge. His partner on the police force, a heavy-set fellow by the name of Checkers (no first name discernible), is now retired and is running a PI agency. Tug works for him on occasion.

   The “April” in the title is April Tyson, their client in this case, who may be the long-lost missing granddaughter of one of those aged and reclusive multi-millionaires that California is so well known for. When the lawyer who is representing her, and who is also her live-in lover, is found murdered, she calls on the Checkers agency for help.

   That’s one of the story lines. Another has to do with a gang of hoodlums and drug-runners that April’s lawyer seems to have been mixed up with. It is not entirely clear for a good long while whether it was they who are involved in his death, or the gang of hangers-on surrounding the frail Mr. Tyson – including servants, crooked lawyers, crooked doctors, and a right-wing evangelist who, it goes without saying, is as crooked as they come. (The servants are a pretty devious pair themselves.)

   There is twist after twist in this tale, and they are not subtle ones. More like bombshells that explore on contact every once in a while. Pettus has a nice breezy style of writing, it almost goes without saying, with a tendency perhaps of being a little too “prime time,” which is to say that he has a tendency to allow dramatic happenings to overshadow the characters a little too much.

   Which forces Tug Cash to do some very strange things and to make some very strange decisions, some of which had me shaking my head at the time he made them, and sure enough, some very bad things happen as a result. On page 223, Cash calls himself a “crown prince of fools,” and no, I can’t disagree with his judgment there.

   A little lower on the same page, this concept is reinforced by the following. He’s walking on Venice (California) pier:

   In terms of his way with words, here, for what it’s worth, is Pettus’s take on the Santa Ana winds. Judge him for yourself in comparison with how Raymond Chandler (for example) may have said something along the same lines. From page 249:

   A lot of people eventually die in this book, a staggering number so, and all because of one chance event – well, not a chance event, it was deliberate – and for Tug, it turns the entire case around. It was something also made me sit up and think about it as well. While what happened was something I was wondering about all of the way through, it did not at all occur to me that this (I can’t tell you more) is what it was that turns out to have happened.

   If you were wondering, at the end of the book there is only a small hint that Tug Cash is destined to appear again in a followup adventure. In any case, for whatever other reason there was, as it turns out, no he didn’t.

   It’s no classic, but for a book by a professional writer, one with which I found only minor problems to quibble about, as suggested above, you could do worse than keep an eye out for this one.

FOOTNOTE.   A short note from Bill Pronzini confirms that these three doubles are the only books of his that Knightsbridge did. He also passes along all of the information he has about the short-lived company. (See the first comment.)

From her 2008 CD They Oughta Write a Song.

BONUS: A live version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” from the same CD:

IT’S IN THE BAG. United Artists, 1945. Fred Allen, Binnie Barnes, Gloria Pope, William Terry, Richard Tyler, John Carradine and Sydney Toler. Also featuring appearances from Minerva Pious (as Mrs. Nussbaum) Jerry Colonna, Robert Benchley, Rudy Vallee, Victor Moore, William Bendix, Don Ameche and Jack Benny. Written by Lewis R. Foster, Fred Allen, Alma Reville (!) and Morrie Ryskind, from the novel Двенадцать стульев, or Dvenadtsat stulyev (The Twelve Chairs) by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov. Directed by Richard Wallace.

   Credits like those above are going to get my word count off to a healthy start for the New Year, but that’s not my only reason for mentioning this neglected treasure. It’s in the Bag is a fast-moving and witty little comedy with moments of surrealism to rival Hellzapoppin.

   The “Twelve Chairs” plot is probably familiar to most readers by now, but to briefly recap, Flea Circus impresario Fred Floogle (Allen) inherits a fortune, only to find that crooked lawyer John Carradine has pilfered it down to five chairs and a phonograph record. Floogle sends the chairs to be sold at an auction house, then learns from the phonograph record that there’s a fortune hidden in one of them.

   Zaniness ensues (as they say) as Floogle and his long-suffering family (Binnie Barnes, Gloria Pope and Richard Tyler) track down, chase down, and sometimes wrestle down the new owners to recover their fortune, dogged relentlessly by the sinister Carradine and a tough police detective (Sydney Toler.)

   The turns by the Guest Stars here are consistently funny, and Jack Benny’s scene is a true delight, but to their credit, the troop of writers didn’t just sit back and let the thespians carry the load; Bag teems with clever lines and enough off-the-wall weirdness to give the viewer laughter and double-takes in equal measure. There’s a scene in an art deco movie palace (showing Zombies in the Attic) of Kafkaesque hilarity, and an action-packed musical interlude at a nightclub that just about defines fast-paced movie-making.

   I have to say, though, that my favorite treat in the Bag is John Carradine’s splendidly crooked lawyer, a generous portion of old-fashioned Ham served up splendidly by Carradine and director Richard Wallace, who lets his bad guy stalk about in a top hat and cape, and indulge in sinister organ solos when not cheating widows and robbing orphans. It’s the perfect straight-faced complement for a film rich in laughs, and one I’ll recall fondly years hence.

ARCHER MAYOR – Scent of Evil. Joe Gunther #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.

   Mayor is one of the few relatively new authors whom I have been recommending to just about anyone who asked. I thought both of his first two Joe Gunther books, Open Season and Borderlines, were excellent. Though he has gotten good reviews, he has failed to reach the critical mass of publicity that a number of lesser authors enjoy.

   Joe Gunther is a middle-aged cop in Brattleboro, Vermont, chief of detectives on the day shift. In the current offering, a hand is discovered sticking out of the earth at a public works project, which upon excavation proves to be attached to a body, and a murdered one at that. The body had been inhabited by a young investment advisor, a Brattleboro native, and circumstances cast suspicion on a member of the police force. Within a day, a small-time local drug dealer is killed, and there are indications that the cases are linked. After that, things get complicated.

   Scent differs somewhat from the first two in the series in that there is less space given to Gunther’s personal life and problems, though he remains the first-person narrator and very much the central character. His romantic relationship with one of the town Selectmen, Gail, continues to provide an interesting potential for conflict. There is much realistic police procedural work, and,a very interesting picture of the political life of a small New England city. Though I’ve visited Brattleboro, of course I can’t vouch for the picture’s veracity; it reads convincingly, however.

   Mayor is an excellent story-teller, and has written another good book. It wasn’t quite as much to my taste as the first two, due to the slight shift from character to procedure, and the fact that I didn’t find the resolution completely convincing. Still, the characterization of the supporting players was sharp and clear, the story moved crisply, and I have no problems at all in recommending it as well as the first two.

[UPDATE] 01-04-16.   There are now 26 books in Archer Mayor’s Joe Gunther series. See the Fantastic Fiction website for a complete list and a gallery of covers.

THE YELLOW ONE. CCC Filmkunst, Germany, 1964. Originally released in West Germany as Der Schut; also released in the US as The Shoot and Yellow Devil. Lex Barker, Maria Versini, Rolf Wolter, Rik Battlaglia, Marianne Hold, Friedrich von Ledebur, Pierre Fromont, Dusan Janicijevic, Dieter Borsche, Chris Howland. Screenplay Georg Marischka and (uncredited) Robert Siodmak, based on the novel by Karl May. Directed by Robert Siodmak.

   If you ever wondered what a Lone Ranger movie set in the Balkans would be like this Old Eastern is your movie. Lex Barker, who played beloved German author Karl May’s hero, Old Surehand, in a series of Westerns about Apache chief Winnetou with Pierre Brice, sails for the old world and the Balkans here as Old Surehand’s Middle Eastern incarnation (it’s the same character) Kara Ben Nemsi (variously Karl the German or Karl Blackbeard) author May’s stand in.

   Based on the last of a five novel sequence that began with In The Desert and known as the Oriental Odyssey (yes, I know it isn’t what we mean by the Orient and the term Oriental is considered derogatory today), Der Schut or The Shoot and sometimes The Yellow One, brings to a close Kara Ben Nemsi’s sojourn through the Ottoman Empire with an action-packed fight to the death with a master criminal known as der Shut who he has seen traces of throughout his Mid East adventures.

   Nirwan (Rik Battaglia) a wealthy merchant approaches Sir David Lindsey (Dieter Borsche) and his man Archie (Chris Howland) on Sir David’s yacht when he makes port in Albania to ask his help to rescue journalist Henri Galingre (Pierre Fromont) held captive by der Schut and help the interior region of the Skipetars, Albanian Muslims, escape the oppressive reign of terror of the mysterious kidnaper der Schut, and naturally Sir David turns to his friend Kara Ben Nemsi and hadji Halef (Lex Barker and Rolf Wolter), his servant, to join the quest.

   The comical Sir David and his servant are recurring characters in the novels who at various times either complicate the action or inadvertently help things along depending on their level of incompetence.

   Karl May was a beloved German storyteller who survived tragedy and a criminal past to write uplifting books that became beloved young adult literature. His Winnetou and Old Surehand books inspired Indian Clubs like the Boy Scouts that popped up all over Europe, and his admirers include as diverse a readership as Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Herman Hesse, Henrik Siekiewicz (the great Polish national novelist, author of Quo Vadis and his own attempt at a Karl May book Into The Desert) and Adolph Hitler.

   May’s philosophy can be found in his autobiography and in his allegorical novel Ardijistan and Djistan but shines through in his avatar, the moral and stalwart Kara Ben Nemsi/Old Surehand who can best be described as a cross between Superman, James Bond, Indiana Jones, the Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett, and Jesus Christ.

   Kara Ben Nemsi first appeared in German cinema in the silent era then again in the late thirties and the nineteen fifties, and again in the sixties with two outings starring Lex Barker and Rolf Wolter, this and Durch Wilde der Kurdistan. There was also a serialized German television series adapting the Kara Ben Nemsi novels, some episodes of which can be seen in German on YouTube. May’s books certainly contributed to the popularity of Eastern themes in German popular literature and cinema that includes the original Kismet, Joe May’s serial The Indian Tomb, and Fritz Lang’s dyptich remaking the serial in 1958.

   Wolter also appeared with Barker in two non Winnetou Westerns based on May’s works (and reviewed here) all directed by Robert Siodmak (Phantom Lady, The Spiral Staircase) brother of writer Curt Siodmak (Donovan’s Brain and the screenplay for The Wolfman) who, like Fritz Lang, returned to his homeland late in his career. Wolter was a popular character actor perhaps best known here for his role in Cabaret as Lisa Minneli and Michael York’s clueless fellow boarder who represented the German’s people failure to comprehend what was happening in their country.

   Kara Ben Nemsi and Halef are joined by Omar (Dusan Janicijevc) whose wife Tschita (Maria Versini) has been kidnaped by der Schut and by the wife of kidnaped Henri Galigre, Annette (Marianne Hold) in their quest, hampered by the fact der Schut knows they are coming and has laid traps for them along the way.

   Kara and Halef free a village from the heavy hand of der Schut’s man the Mubarek (Friedrich von Neidbhur, Queequeg in John Huston’s Moby Dick, a nobleman who liked to dabble in acting), and in typical Karl May plotting style, just about all of the heroes are captured and escape multiple times learning a bit here and there as they go and trimming down the numbers of the opposition. Whatever aspirations the books may have the plotting is pure pulp adventure revealing their origins as serialized novels.

   Like the Winnetou films these are handsome productions shot on location in gorgeous widescreen color with large casts and numerous well done set pieces that here vary from being ambushed from above on a barge, an attack by an escaped bear, being dragged behind a fleeing wagon, trapped in a burning house surrounded by the enemy, hand to hand combat, daring escapes, speeding horses, the cavalry coming to the rescue, well at least the Turkish cavalry, and Kara Ben Nemsi and Halef’s deadly marksmanship, though you might question why the film needs quite so much comic relief (Halef, Sir David, and the servant Archie) and notice almost exactly the same actors are in all the Barker films (Battaglia must have tired of being killed by Barker after four outings) and Old Albania looks a lot like the Old West.

   Barker, not the most expressive of actors, even gets a dramatic scene where he weeps when his beloved horse is killed before he walks off into the sunset, I suppose to return to the Old West and Winnetou (though the latter is killed in the books). At least some of the books carry Kara/Old Surehand around the world in adventures though those were never filmed. Anyway it is one of the few times you will see Barker exhibit any emotion in a film other than stalwart heroics are mild bemusement save for his outing as Q Patrick’s Peter Duluth in The Female Fiends.

   This one does exist in a dubbed English version though the German version available on YouTube is free and a fine handsome print. Once you know the plot you won’t miss a lot since the story is pretty straight forward right down to der Schut’s jealous wife who helps Tschita escape. My German is atrocious and it has been years since I read the book, but I had no problem following the plot or what was being said.

   This is old-fashioned movie making, a Western with burnooses instead of war feathers and turbans and fez rather than buckskins and ten gallon hats. The cast is competent, the action well choreographed, cinematography and direction both well above the average, and the Saturday matinee style plot well executed. It’s actually quite a bit of fun, though I still haven’t quite figured out what the Lone Ranger and Tonto were in Albania for in the first place.

HERO AND THE TERROR. Golan-Globus Productions/Cannon Films, 1988. Chuck Norris, Brynn Thayer, Steve James, Jack O’Halloran, Jeffrey Kramer, Ron O’Neal. Based on the novel by Michael Blodgett. Director: William Tannen.

   Chuck Norris shows his sensitive side in this somewhat effective, although hardly outstanding, Cannon Films thriller. Indeed, there’s enough suspense in Hero and The Terror to keep the viewer engaged with what turns out to be a rather formulaic story about a cop determined to stop a deranged serial killer.

   Norris portrays Danny O’Brien, a Los Angeles cop nicknamed “Hero.” O’Brien, who is as much a brooder as a fighter, is haunted by nightmares stemming from the time in which he successfully apprehended a notorious serial killer named Sam Moon (Jack O’Halloran). Moon, who doesn’t speak a word in the entire movie, is known as “The Terror.” And it’s not difficult to understand why. He’s less of a serial killer in the cop drama sense than some sort of hulking, supernatural evil. What are his motivations? We never learn.

   Time has passed and O’Brien is now in a relationship with his therapist, Kay (Brynn Thayer) and trying to move on with his life. But reality intrudes and intrudes hard. Turns out that The Terror might have successfully escaped from a mental institution and resumed his nefarious activities. So it’s up to O’Brien to once and for all exercise his demons and to stop The Terror. There aren’t too many surprises in this story, but it’s kind of mindless fun to see Norris shed his ultra tough guy persona for a little while.

REX STOUT – The Broken Vase. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprints include: Dell #115, ca.1946; Pyramid R-1149, “A Green Door Mystery,” 1965; Bantam Crimeline, 1995.

   At a friend’s behest, Tecumseh Fox contributed $2,000 to the purchase of a Stradivarius violin for “the next Sarasate.” Attending the premier performance of the violinist at Carnegie Hall, Fox finds it mildly enjoyable, but the music lovers are aghast at the performance. So, too, is the violinist, who, in front of witnesses, kills himself during the intermission.

   The violin is stolen and then returned. Fox is asked to investigate the circumstances by the violinist’s rich patron and later is hired to find out who committed a murder.

   On the cover of the [Pyramid] paperback the publisher says, “As great as Nero Wolfe.” Well, publishers will have their little drolleries. Nonetheless, while a Fox is not a Wolfe, this is a good, fair-play novel that should make the reader want to find the earlier Fox novels to find out more about this detective.

      The Tecumseh Fox series —

Double for Death. Farrar & Rinehart, 1939.
Bad for Business. Farrar & Rinehart, 1940.
The Broken Vase. Farrar & Rinehart, 1941.

Hawkwind is a “space rock” group formed in 1969 and still active today. The lead singer in the video below is Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015).

GHOST STORY “The New House.” NBC. Pilot episode, 60m, 17 March 1972. Sebastian Cabot (host), David Birney, Barbara Parkins, Sam Jaffe, Jeanette Nolan, Caitlin Wyles. Written by Richard Matheson. Producer: William Castle. Director: John Llewellyn Moxey.

   As the pilot film for a proposed series, Ghost Story: The New House was aired in the spring of 1972, paired up, I am told, with the pilot for another series, the name of which I do not know, nor of course do I know whether the other would-be series was successful or not. [LATER: But see the first comment!] Ghost Story was picked up, however, with the first episode of its first and only season airing on 15 September 1972.

   There were in total 23 episodes in this anthology series with a supernatural slant, including the pilot, but it ran into difficulty 13 shows into the run. The series went off the air briefly on 22 December 1972, and when it came back on 5 January 1973 under the title Circle of Fear. Sebastian Cabot as the host was dropped, and the emphasis was no longer on ghost stories.

   Ghost Story came along a year before Thriller, a somewhat similar series created by Brian Clemens appeared in the UK, and even though the shows I’ve seen so far from the latter have been uneven in quality, unfortunately I think the worst has been better than “The New House.”

   What it is is the story of a young couple, the wife pregnant, who move into a new house, only to find that it was built on the land where a young girl in the 18th century was hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. Soon the wife begins to hear strange noises at night, with no apparent cause, even though she wakes her husband up to go check. He is very exasperated by this, since he hears nothing.

   There was one short scene that made me jump, close to the end with the power off (in the story) and a thunderstorm crashing all around the house, the wife alone with the newly born baby.

   Other than that, I was not convinced. Neither star seemed to really get into the spirit of things, nor — even though I am sure this was done deliberately — do I believe that newly built homes in the US with dishwashers and modern two-car garages are conducive to ghostly hauntings. They seem to do this kind of story a whole lot better in England.

   I also think that once you accept the premise that ghosts can exist, and that they are not necessarily friendly, that they ought to act logically, not bang around and make nuisances of themselves when they really have evil intent in mind.