CAROLYN WELLS – Faulkner’s Folly.

George H. Doran Co., hardcover, 1917. Serialized in All-Story Weekly, September 8 to September 29, 1917.

   Carolyn Wells’ Faulkner’s Folly (1917) is the first novel I have read by that author. It shows the frustrating mix of (artistic) virtue and vice that other commentators have discerned in her work.

   The book is startlingly close to the traditions of the Golden Age novel. But it was written before Christie, Carr, Queen, Van Dine and other intuitionist Golden Age writers had published a line. And this is hardly Wells’ first work; she had been publishing for over a decade, since 1906, when this novel appeared.

   The novel has an apparent medium who holds séances, etc., and whose “supernatural” gifts are ultimately explained naturally; this seems very anticipatory of both John Dickson Carr and Hake Talbot. Carr was in fact devoted to Wells’ works while growing up, and we know from both Ellery Queen and Carr biographer Douglas G. Greene that he was one of Wells’ biggest admirers. Many of Wells’ tales are impossible crime stories; she was apparently one of the first to expand this genre from the short story to the novel, following Gaston Leroux.

   Faulkner’s Folly also anticipates the Golden Age in other ways. It takes place in an upper class country house, and draws on a closed circle of suspects of relatives, guests and employees of the murdered man. There is an atmosphere of culture to the novel, too; the murdered man was a great painter, and one of his guests is the widow of the architect who built his mansion. The whole novel is very close in tone to S.S. Van Dine; in fact it is one of the closest approximations in feel to his work among the mystery authors who preceded him.

   Wells would certainly be classified as an intuitionist. She started by publishing in All Story magazine, one of the early pulp magazines that also featured the work of Mary Roberts Rinehart. But her work could not be more different from Rinehart’s.

   There is no sign of an influence from Anna Katherine Green, or of scientific detection à la Arthur B. Reeve. Nor is there much suspense of any sort in Wells’ work. Instead, Wells’ book is squarely in the intuitionist tradition, and seems on the direct line to such later intuitionist writers of the Golden Age listed above.

   The best part of Wells’ book is the finale, when the murderer is revealed and the various mysteries are explained. It reminded me of the pleasure I have received from the finales of Christie, Carr and other Golden Agers, when all is revealed.

   Now for the down sides of Wells’ work. Her book is nowhere as good as a work of storytelling as the later authors we have mentioned. And her plot is nowhere as clever as these later authors, either. Bill Pronzini’s Gun in Cheek (1982), his affectionate but hilarious history of really bad crime fiction, points out other truly major flaws in Wells’ works.

   Her impossible crime plots tend to depend on secret passageways. This gimmick was later, during the Golden Age, regarded as a cheat; the locked room novels of Carr and others often contain solemn assurances from the author that no secret passageways were found in the buildings where the crimes occurred. To be fair, Wells showed some real ingenuity in the use of such secret panels and doors; but this gimmick is likely to annoy modern readers.

   We can compare Wells’ novel with “Nick Carter, Detective” (1891), an early series detective tale. The story opens with a “locked house” crime. Nick Carter suspects secret passageways, and sure enough he eventually finds the house to be riddled with them.

   They are similar to the secret passageways Herman Landon used for his Gray Wolf stories in Detective Story in 1920. Detective Story was the first specialized mystery pulp magazine. So the impossible crime caused by secret passageways was a common coin of inexpensive mystery fiction.

   Carolyn Wells also used secret passages for her locked room tales in the 1910’s, although she tended to employ Occam’s razor on them. She would employ the minimum number of passages need to commit the crime, often just one. It would be strategically placed in the only spot that would allow the crime to be committed.

   There was a quality of ingenuity to her placement: it was not at all obvious that a secret passage anywhere would enable the crime to be possible; the revelation that a secret passage would make the crime possible would startle the reader at the end of the story. She achieves a genuine puzzle plot effect by this approach: where is the secret passageway, and how could any secret passage possibly enable this crime?

AMBER DEAN – Snipe Hunt .

Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1949. Reprinted in The Standard as the “Book of the Week” feature, September 30, 1950.

   This one surprised me a bit. It starts out with a couple of G-men who are stuck in the basement of a New York City tenement on a stake-out, trying to stay alert in order to spot any of the members of a notorious gang of counterfeiters they’ve been tipped off about.

   Just another dull procedural, I thought. The only noticeable complications concern the unlucky love life of one of the agents, undone by some typical Woolrichian vicissitudes of fate.

   Then suddenly the scene shifts. To upstate New York, the Finger Lakes region, where a commandeered customs agent named Max, his wife whom he calls Mommie, and a pretty girl named Danny combine forces to show the federal men the local lay of the land.

   What a snipe hunt is is a wild goose chase; there is also a humorously nosy neighbor who thinks that Max is just pulling her leg. But comedy, even such an incongruous concoction such as this, does not mix well with sudden spurts of nearly devastating disaster.

   Maybe I’m just chagrined at being caught off stride like this.

[UPDATE] 01-29-09. I messed up big time when I wrote this review. It turns out that one of Amber Dean’s standard series characters is in the book, and she didn’t make enough impression on me even to note her name: Abbie Harris. Checking the blurb for the book from Ellen Nehr’s Doubleday Crime Club Compendium, Abbie almost assuredly is Max Johnson’s nosy neighbor.

   Most of Amber Dean’s 17 mystery novels take place in upstate New York, not too surprisingly, since she herself lived in the Rochester area for most of her life, 1902-1985.

   Abbie Harris was in eight of those books. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list:

         HARRIS, ABBIE    [Amber Dean]

      Dead Man’s Float (n.) Doubleday 1944.
      Chanticleer’s Muffled Crow (n.) Doubleday 1945.
      Call Me Pandora (n.) Doubleday 1946.
      Wrap It Up (n.) Doubleday 1946.
      No Traveller Returns (n.) Doubleday 1948.
      Snipe Hunt (n.) Doubleday 1949.
      August Incident (n.) Doubleday 1951.

      The Devil Threw Dice (n.) Doubleday 1954.

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS – The Cask.

Collins, UK, hardcover, 1920. Seltzer, US, hardcover, 1924. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback.

   Freeman Wills Crofts’s first novel, The Cask, is considered by many critics, including Anthony Boucher, to be one of the best and most important books in the mystery genre.

   The prime virtue of this and all the Crofts novels is their tight, logical plotting, in which every detail fits solidly and smoothly. His detectives work meticulously to piece the clues together, often in order to demolish a supposedly unshakable alibi; and because they are so logical, the endings are always exceptionally satisfying.

   Early in his career, Crofts experimented with a number of sleuths, but in his fifth novel — Inspector French’s Greatest Case (1925) — he introduced Inspector Joseph French, who was to appear in most of his subsequent books. Like Crofts’s previous heroes, French is a bit of a plodder who slowly and carefully works his way step by step through the process of deduction to a natural conclusion.

   In The Cask, the plot turns on alibis. When four casks fall to the deck of a ship during unloading, two of them leak wine, one is undamaged, and the last leaks sawdust. This last cask is examined more closely, and gold coins and the fingers of a human hand are found. But before the cask can be completely opened, it vanishes.

   Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard is assigned to this bizarre case. Using the few clues available to him, he is able to locate the missing cask. And when it is opened, Burnley finds the body of a young woman who has been brutally strangled.

   There are no clues to the victim’s identity, so Burnley goes to Paris, where the cask was assembled. What follows is a detailed, complex investigation, involving timetables, a performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and a group of suspects with a multitude of motives.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS – Anything to Declare?

Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1957. Reprint: House of Stratus, UK, softcover, 2000. No US edition.

   Anything to Declare is the last of Crofts’ detective novels and one of the least successful. One third of the book is taken up by giving a detailed account of the launching of a smuggling racket. The scheme involving pleasure cruises up the Rhine to Switzerland seems clever enough but is not really up to the standard of Croftsian gangsters.

   Take for instance the problem of getting the stuff aboard. This was done much better in the early Crofts The Pit-Prop Syndicate. In this late novel a blackmailer tumbles to it by accident and later the Swiss customs also have no problem finding out.

   The blackmailer has to be eliminated and the reader is fully aware of who does it and how it is done. Part 1 ends with a real surprise for both readers and murderers: a second blackmail attempt.

   In part 2 Inspector French is called in. Evidence is gathered and the right conclusions are immediately drawn. Through the interference of the customs officials the gang is arrested before sufficient evidence to convict them of the murder is collected.

   French deplores this but is able by luck and his usual ingenuity to supply the necessary evidence and by a typical tour de force even the body of the murdered blackmailer.

    I admire Crofts but couldn’t find much here of what I appreciate in him: the surprises, the dead ends, French’s moments of despair. All this is missing. Those who don’t like Crofts will find themselves confirmed. Those who do may find still enough to enjoy the book.

ROBERT BARR – Revenge!   Chatto & Windus, UK, hardcover, 1896 (shown). Stokes, US, hardcover, 1896.

   As readers no doubt realise, the theme of this collection is the many and varied forms of revenge, some of them more inventive than others. A few thoughts on its contents follow:

    “An Alpine Divorce.”   A woman is dead but it suicide or murder?  [The English Illustrated Magazine, Oct 1893.]

    “Which Was The Murderer?”   Will the man whodunnit escape justice via a legal loophole?

    “A Dynamite Explosion.”  How might you destroy a cafe under police guard, particularly when you live in a flat above it?

    “An Electrical Slip.”   Revenge carried out by a particularly well-placed relative of the victim.

    “The Vengeance of the Dead.”   A woo-woo tale wherein a disgruntled chap punishes his cousin and the lawyer who won the cousin’s case against him. [The English Illustrated Magazine, May 1894.]

    “Over the Stelvio Pass.”   But will the newlyweds be able to pass safely over it?

    “The Hour And The Man.”   A condemned prisoner escapes from prison.   [The English Illustrated Magazine, Aug 1894.]

    “And the Rigour of the Game.”  A young man does not gamble or imbibe at his club, why does he attend it?

    “The Bromley Gibberts Story.”   An author planning a murder rampage calmly describes its details to an editor beforehand.

    “Not According to the Code.”   Collar manufacturers fall out and it all ends in tears. [Black and White, 31 June 1895.]

    “A Modern Samson.”   A member of the Alpine Corps attempts to escape a court martial by scaling a mountain on the border with Italy.

    “A Deal On ’Change.”   Wall Street magnate craftily ensures his daughter-in-law is not shunned by society.

    “Transformation.”   An inventive watchmaker extracts justice for his brother’s death.  [The Strand, June 1896.]

    “The Shadow of the Greenback.”  Under a man’s will the man or men who kill his murderer will receive $50,000.

    “The Understudy.”  An actor steals the identity of a missing African explorer but with the best of intentions.  [The Strand, Dec 1895.]

    “Out of Thun.”  A young woman collects marriage proposals when conducting research for, well, you’ll see.  [McClure’s, July 1896.]

    “A Dramatic Point.”  Two actors argue about a piece of stagecraft.

    “Two Florentine Balconies.”  It would be wise not to mess with Venetian ladies….

    “The Exposure of Lord Stansford.”  Lord Stansford gets an interesting offer.  [The Strand, Aug 1896.]

    “Purification.”   And it’s also best to avoid aggravating jealous Russian women.

My verdict: To describe the stories more than I have would give away much of their content and then a host of “continential objurgations” (a wonderful phrase stolen from one of the above yarns) would surely fly about.

   However, I can reveal a number of these tales have twist endings and I found it an enjoyable collection to dip into at odd moments.

Etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/8/6/6/8668/8668.txt

JOHN B. WEST – An Eye for an Eye.

Signet #1642, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1959, plus at least one reprint edition.

   John B. West was a man of many talents and achievements: A doctor, he was both a general practitioner and a specialist in tropical diseases; he was also the owner of a broadcasting company, manufacturing firm, and hotel/restaurant corporation. He lived in Liberia, was black, and late in his life — as a pastime, apparently — wrote novels about white private eye Rocky Steele, of New York City.

   West appears to have been used by Signet Books as an attempt to fill the gap when their star seller, Mickey Spillane, stubbornly refused to write any more novels (until The Deep in 1960, that is). While the Rocky Steele novels were never any real competition for Mike Hammer (or anyone else), the six titles in the series did go through various printings and editions.

   An Eye for an Eye, the first Rocky Steele adventure — in which for no particular reason the private eye avenges the death of the blond, beautiful, and wealthy Norma Carteret — is singled out here arbitrarily, as all of the books seem to be of a similar “quality.” (One book, the posthumously published Death on the Rocks, 1961, does have an African setting to distinguish it.)

   While unquestionably lower-rung Spillane imitations (like Mike Hammer, Rocky Steele smokes Luckies, packs a .45, refuses the advances of his lovely secretary, has a loyal police contact, etc.), the West novels are goofily readable, as Rocky Steele teeters between the violence and revenge of Hammer, and the broads and campiness of Shell Scott.

   The world West creates (actually, re-creates) is pure pulp fantasy, and makes the work of Carroll John Daly read like documentaries. The energetic pulpiness of the plots, and West’s confident, tin-ear, tough-guy dialogue (“Mercy! That rat didn’t know what the word meant, and I wasn’t gonna teach him.”) gives his private-eye stories the same sort of appeal as Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner tales and Michael Avallone’s later Ed Noon novels.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

         Following Steve Mertz’s review of The Deadly Kitten…

   I’ll admit to a great deal of affection for the Carter Brown books that goes beyond my appreciation for Bob McGinnis sexy stylish covers. The Brown books are fast, fun, and harmless time killers that you might use like a bowl of sorbet to cleanse your mental palate after reading a heavier (and better book).

   And it isn’t as if the books are badly written. Al Wheeler is different enough from Danny Boyd, who is different enough from Rick Holman and so on, and the Mavis Seidlitz books deserve to be rediscovered and rightly praised.

   In some sense the Brown books are a continuation of Robert Leslie Bellem and the screwball school of writing, similar to Richard Prather and Shell Scott (though lacking the qualities that set the Scott books in their deservedly higher position of regard), or the Fickling’s Honey West. Anthony Boucher was one of the few critics to go out of his way to praise some of the better Brown books.

   The Brown books always reminded me of a good episode of one of the old Warner’s private eye series like 77 Sunset Strip or Hawaiian Eye, pleasant time killers you could enjoy and forget like a good hamburger.

   Interested readers should note that a few of the author’s other books under other pseudonyms made it in print in the States, including at least one written as Dennis Sinclair.

   Lt. Al Wheeler was popular enough in his native Australia to star in his own comic strip which often featured Carter Brown as a somewhat comic Watson to the L.A. detective.

   I have to admit that I miss the equivalent of these entertaining and inexpensive books today. Sometimes you would rather spend time with Danny Boyd than wade through War and Peace, and the Brown books were always what they were intended for, a pleasant diversion, simple, and in their own way, charming escapism.

SIMON HAWKE – Much Ado About Murder.

Forge, hardcover; First Edition, December 2002; reprint paperback: January 2004.

   There’s a period (1585-1592) in the life of William Shakespeare that’s called the Lost Years, in which nothing is known — where he was, what he was doing, and who he was hanging out with.

    Filling in the gap — pure speculation on Hawke’s part, not to mention audacity — here’s the third in a series of detective adventures of the most famous poet and playwright the world has ever known. Assisting him is his good friend and hanger-on with the Queen’s Men, Symington “Tuck” Smythe.

   Hard times have hit the traveling group of players. Plague has struck London, and all of the city’s playhouses have been closed down. (Not so incidentally, Hawke describes the horrible condition of the unsanitary streets in more than adequate detail. Ghastly.) Will has sold some sonnets, though, so he and Tuck are not starving, yet.

   They also run athwart the Steady Boys, a gang of young ruffians who feel that the country is being done under by too many immigrants: England for Englishmen in Shakespeare’s day!

   But while the events in Will and Tuck’s day-to-day life are interesting, after 130 pages, they’re no longer entirely riveting, so for the mystery fans perched in the front row, when the murder of Master Leonardo occurs, it’s with (dare I say) a certain amount of relief and “at last.” It’s a relatively minor case to be solved, but it’s Will’s sense of what makes people do what they do that saves the day.

   Bawdy at times, extremely funny at others, this is an entirely enjoyable lark, a remarkable flight of fancy, and I think you’ll like it, too.

[UPDATE] 01-26-09. It turns out that Simon Hawke is (or was) an SF writer named Nicholas Yermakov, before he changed his named legally to Hawke.

   He’s most noted, perhaps, for a long series of books in his “TimeWars” series, the first of which you see here to the left. He’s also written Battlestar Galactica, Batman, and Star Trek novels, as well as novelizations of “Friday the Thirteenth” movies.

   There were only four books in his series of Shakespeare movies, I’m sorry to say. Perhaps the funny bones of a wider audience weren’t tickled as much as mine was. The fourth one was never even released in paperback:

     The Shakespeare & Smythe mysteries —

[LATER THE SAME DAY.] I was looking at the two cover images I included in this post, and I think I can see one reason why there were 12 books in the TimeWars series, and only four in Hawke’s Shakespeare series, even though they were desgned for two entirely different audiences.

   You probably can, too. Look at the cover of Much Ado. It’s perfectly designed to show that it has something to do with a mystery (from the title) and something to do with Shakespeare (also from the title). Other than that? Dullsville.

NIKKI AND NORA. Unaired TV pilot, UPN, 2004. Christina Cox (Nora Delaney), Liz Vassey (Nikki Beaumont). Director: John David Coles.

   It didn’t make the new season for the UPN television network, but from all I’ve read, this busted TV pilot has become a cult favorite in many quarters. You can watch it in its entirely on YouTube, broken up into seven parts, starting here. Warning: The picture quality leaves something (a lot) to be desired.

   Nikki and Nora are cops. That’s nothing new, not even if they’re young and good-looking. Pepper Anderson was not the first lady policewoman on TV, but she was one of the first whose good looks were emphasized. In fact, for many undercover situations she usually found herself in, her good looks were most definitely a positive plus for the job.

   It’s not that Nikki and Nora are partners and both female. Cagney and Lacey covered that territory a while ago also. Here’s the thing – in case you didn’t know where all this is leading. Unknown to the New Orleans Police Department, Nikki and Nora are lovers.

   There has been at least one TV series featuring two law enforcement officers having an affair: a show called Standoff that starred Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt as top-notch hostage negotiators for the FBI. The program lasted about 18 weeks a couple of years ago. It wasn’t bad, but there are only so many hostage crises you can see before you decide you don’t want to see any more.

   The brunette is Nikki, the honey blonde is Nora. Nora’s family doesn’t know, except for her brother, who’s also on the force. Nikki comes from a wealthy family which gives her an “in” in certain (wealthy) neighborhoods. Her daddy is a suave southern gentleman fond of the local cuisine.

   The story itself is standard enough. A young girl, a member of one those wealthy families I just mentioned, is raped and murdered in her own home. Before she died, though, she was able to call 911.

   After one false trail, a (snoopy) eye witness is able to send Nikki and Nora in the right direction. I could say more, but you may want to watch this for yourself. The acting is adequate, most of the time, and the two female stars seem to do most of the action scenes themselves. The scenes with the two of them together at home are toned down, I’m sure, from how they might have played out on cable TV.

   Some additional background might help you place the two stars: Christina Cox played ex-cop turned PI Vicki Nelson in a series called Blood Ties not too long ago. (She specialized in paranormal cases: vampires, werewolves and the like.) Liz Vassey has been on several series. Most recently she’s been Wendy Simms on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

   Neither of these two shows means much to me, I’m sorry to say. I’ve never seen an episode of either series, but the first one sounds tempting. I tend to stay away from crime scenes and autopsy labs. (I was going to say I ought to get out more, but that’s not the problem.)

   George Seitz is an interesting and under-appreciated movie pioneer. It’s true that’s he remembered — if at all — as the director of M-G-M’s Andy Hardy films, but he’s also celebrated for his contributions to the motion-picture serial, a form in whose development he played an important part.

   Seitz worked in theater before breaking into the movie business before the first World War. He landed a position as scenario writer and editor for the American arm of Pathe Freres, a French company that eventually became known as Pathe Exchanges and then simply Pathe. (It merged into RKO at the dawn of the talkie era.)

   Seitz had a natural flair for melodrama and was largely responsible for the nurturing of serial queen Pearl White’s screen persona. He wrote and/or directed most of her serials before being chosen to head up his own production unit in 1919, making other chapter plays for Pathe release.

   As was the custom in those days, he not only directed but also starred in serials, including Bound and Gagged (1919), Pirate Gold (1920), and The Sky Ranger (1921). His most frequent collaborator was Frank Leon Smith, who penned short stories for the Munsey pulps before taking a job with Pathe as scenario editor and eventually writing many of the company’s most successful chapter plays.

   The Seitz unit also employed — first as a stuntman, later as an assistant director — Spencer Bennet, who eventually helmed more serials than any other director. Bennet, Smith, and the other members of Seitz’s production unit made the classic 1925 version of Edgar Wallace’s The Green Archer, only a few tantalizing reels of which survive today.

   Seitz left Pathe early in ’25, taking a westbound train for Hollywood immediately upon shooting the final scenes for his last serial, Sunken Silver, in Florida. He initially worked for Paramount, directing several Zane Grey adaptations for producer Lucien Hubbard: Wild Horse Mesa, The Vanishing American (both 1925) and Desert Gold (1926).

   Shortly thereafter he began freelancing, which he did with considerable success until 1934, when he signed a long-term contract with M-G-M. That studio was accelerating B-movie production to keep pace with Depression-era demands for double features, and Seitz’s background in low-budget serials made him very attractive to Metro.

   He was not a stylish or innovative director by any means, but he shot films quickly and efficiently, with a minimum of retakes and no behind-the-scenes foolishness. Although the Andy Hardy series had pretty much run its course by 1944, when Seitz died, there’s little doubt that M-G-M would have kept him on the Culver City lot.

   Forgive me for being so long-winded, Steve, but Seitz is a favorite hobby-horse of mine, so to speak. I think he’s an unjustly forgotten filmmaker.