WHISPERING SMITH. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Brenda Marshall, Donald Crisp, William Demarest, Fay Holden, Murvyn Vye, Frank Faylen, John Eldredge. Based on the novel by Frank H. Spearman. Director: Leslie Fenton.

   You can learn a lot by writing reviews, or at least I do. For example, I never knew there was a real “Whispering” Smith, and that he really was a railroad detective, among other occupations. You can read about some of his exploits online here at the Legends of America website.

   A writer named Frank Spearman was intrigued by the name and wrote an early western novel about a railroad detective named Whispering Smith in 1906, but his work of fiction and the his facts seemed to brush up against reality only on occasion.

   There also were three early silent films with Whispering Smith as the hero. Quoting from Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website:

   There was also a TV series on NBC that starred Audie Murphy in 1961, but it didn’t last long, only half a year. It is easily available on DVD.

   It was Alan Ladd, though, who played Whispering Smith in this movie made in 1948. While Ladd was notorious for being short, he also had the ability to command attention in a crowded room by speaking barely above a whisper. Or at least he did in the movies, and in this one in particular.

   He’s also a railroad detective in this film. His good buddy Murray Sinclair (boisterously played by Robert Preston, who does boisterous very well) is a rancher who works part time for the railroad to clear up train wrecks. When business is bad, he creates his own train wrecks. He has fallen on hard time, however, and in with bad friends.

   Murray has also married the girl that Smith had had a wish for, to Smith’s lasting regret, though he will never admit it, to anyone, and to Marian Sinclair’s regret as well (she being portrayed by beauteous Brenda Marshall). It’s this tacit love triangle that lies between these three old friends, as well as Murray’s taste for the good life, one that will (eventually) bring him to a bad end.

   I am not revealing anything I shouldn’t here, not if you’ve watched a few movies and a few of them happen to have been westerns. This was Alan Ladd’s first western, and the first movie he did in color. The stars are fine, the story’s passable, and you should have as much fun watching this one as I did.

CRAIG JOHNSON – Kindness Goes Unpunished. Viking, hardcover, March 2007. Penguin, softcover, February, 2008.

   This is the third Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire novel. He and his friend Henry Standing Bear are on a trip to Philadelphia. Henry is going because he has been invited to put on an exhibition of family Indian reservation photos at a museum, while Walt is going to visit his daughter Cady, who lives there.

   His daughter thinks she has met “the one” and wants to introduce him to her father. But Walt never gets to see her; he finds that she is hovering in a coma near death in the hospital after being attacked by an unknown male assailant outside the same museum that will host Henry’s photos.

   With the help of Henry, Walt sets out to find the person responsible. He discovers that the boyfriend is more than likely the guilty party; that he was a gambler and drug addict. But the boyfriend is thrown off a bridge to his death before Walt can question him, causing him to wonder if his daughter had discovered something about the boyfriend that would cause him to attack her.

   Walt continues to investigate trying to discover what is really behind the boyfriend’s death. Not as good as the first novel, but the Philadelphia locations feel very real and the writing keeps you turning pages.

Rating:   B.

       The Sheriff Walt Longmire Mysteries —

1. The Cold Dish (2004)

2. Death Without Company (2006)
3. Kindness Goes Unpunished (2007)
4. Another Man’s Moccasins (2008)
5. The Dark Horse (2009)

6. Junkyard Dogs (2010)
7. Hell Is Empty (2011)

   This is an annual event, held in November, and having missed the last couple, I managed to get into London last year [2010] for this one. First up was a illustrated talk by Rick Leary who was Computer Graphic Supervisor for the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes. He talked about how they recreated the banks of the Thames for the shots in the film.

   I was amazed by the amount of time and effort that they spent getting detail correct. The first thing he did was to get Victorian maps of the area from which to work. Panoramic digital photographs were taken from the high walkways on Tower Bridge and then existing Victorian building were found (some in Manchester) that were inserted to replace modem ones.

   As he said, most of the original buildings from that time that hadn’t been naturally replaced, were destroyed in the Blitz. A helicopter shoot was arranged, taking a great deal of time in these security conscious days, to film the Thames itself, but the day (in November) turned out to be so sunny that the footage couldn’t be used.

   In fact, he said, although they tried to use photographs of the Thames for the film, reflections in the surface meant that they couldn’t. He ended by showing excerpts from the film showing the final fight scenes on Tower Bridge, firstly with the green screen background as the actors grappled in the studio, and then with CGI imposed.

   It was an illuminating talk (in more ways than one) and I was very impressed by the amount of care that was spent in making the background detail authentic.

   Secondly came a 1949 thirty-minute television production of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” with Alan Napier (later to become Alfred to Adam West’s Batman) as Sherlock Holmes. This was part of a series Your Show Time and was a fairly routine rendition which could be described, I suppose, as dated but enjoyable.

   Melville Cooper made a Watson straight from the Nigel Bruce School of Performing Arts. The series was sponsored by Lucky Strike which perhaps explains why host and narrator Arthur Shields should suddenly take a moment to exhale smoke directly at the camera.

   Another amusing moment was when, as Helen Stones started to tell her story, Holmes started to light the biggest curved pipe you could wish to see.

   The third item was “Four Beheadings and a Funeral”, a seven minute excerpt from “Treehouse of Horror XV”, a 2004 episode of The Simpsons. It was a Jack the Ripper style story (Jack the Rip-off?) with Eliza Simpson as the Holmes look-a-like, hindered by the Watsonian Dr Bartley. Other Simpsons regulars, including Marge as a flower girl, cropped up using deliberately exaggerated phoney cockney accents. An amusing sequence that I hadn’t seen before.

   Finally we had “Sting of Death”, a 1955 episode from The Elgin Hour, based on A Taste of Honey by H.F. Heard. The leading character here is Mr Mycroft (supposedly, though not exactly stated, Sherlock Holmes) played by Boris Karloff. He comes to the rescue of Mr Silchester (a self-contained, stuffy man superbly played by Robert Flemyng) when he is attacked by the bees of the local beekeeper Hargrove (Heregrove in the book).

   The book’s weakness (well one of them) is that there seems no rational explanation for Heregrove’s actions (assuming that his actions are scientifically possible, a large assumption) except that he is mad. The film follows the book fairly faithfully (except for the necessary shortening) and somehow the failings appeared less as they are more easily overlooked as the action moves on.

   Karloff was fine as the elderly retired Holmes and Hermione Gingold put in a sterling performance as the deliberately perky housekeeper. Another dated but enjoyable production, which linked with “Speckled Band above when, in his final scene, Karloff proceeded to light the second largest curved pipe of the evening.

   I know, now, having checked after writing the above, that “Speckled Band” and “Sting of Death” are available on a US DVD together with other, some less Sherlockian, material. I’m trying to resist but the temptation is there.

Editorial Comment:  The DVD set is easily found in the US at least, including from Amazon. Some of these films and TV programs are also available as videos on the Internet. A little Googling should turn them up without much difficulty.

COCKEYED CAVALIERS. RKO, 1934. Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Thelma Todd, Dorothy Lee, Noah Beery Sr., Robert Greig, Henry Sedley, Billy Gilbert, Franklin Pangborn, Alfred James, Jack Norton, Snub Pollard. Director: Mark Sandrich. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   Wheeler and Woolsey were a very popular comedy team in the 1930s, turning out some 19 comedies for RKO from 1929-1937, with the team’s career cut short by a serious illness that forced Woolsey’s retirement.

   Jim Goodrich was a great fan of the pair, but I’ve never been able to sit through all of one of their features. However, encouraged by the favorable write-up in the program-notes, I agreed to make another stab at appreciating their work.

   I am happy to report that Cockeyed Cavaliers, in which the boys, decked out in period garb but losing none of their contemporary edge, play con men who are taken to be the king’s physicians, dispatched to cure the ills of the Baron (Noah Beery), is a delightful musical, with director Mark Sandrich also responsible for several of the Astaire-Rogers musicals.

   His sure touch keeps the film consistently afloat, aided and abetted by a talented cast headed by gorgeous Thelma Todd and lovely and delightful Dorothy Lee, with veteran film villain Noah Beery blustering through his role as Todd’s lecherous husband and displaying an impressive bass in a couple of the songs.

   The score may not be memorable, but it’s melodious, and if I hadn’t seen parts of a number of Wheeler and Woolsey comedies that I didn’t care for, I would have been convinced that the team was very much to my liking, with their other films worth tracking down.

THE SCREAMING MIMI. Columbia, 1958. Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, Harry Townes, Linda Cherney, Romney Brent, Red Norvo (and Trio). Based on the novel by Fredric Brown. Director: Gerd Oswald.

   The Screaming Mimi offers some kicking-and-kinky direction from Gerd Oswald, a cult director in the Jim Jones tradition, which is to say he showed a lot of potential in low-budget westerns and thrillers, and managed one classic, A Kiss Before Dying (1956) before drinking the kool-ade of network television.

   Mimi belongs to his Promising period, with a pleasingly straightforward (for the 50s) approach to homosexuality, bondage, obsession and amour fou, but it’s undone by a screenplay that seems way too limp for a movie about serial killings.

   There’s never a sense of momentum here, no feeling of progressing towards some resolution. Instead, events just seem to come along and happen in no particular order, then head off in any direction whatever, just sort of strutting and fretting across the screen till their allotted hour-or-so is over at last. A pity, because there are glimmers here and there of what could have been a perverse classic.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Central Cinema Company, Italy, 1970. Original title: L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo. Tony Musante. Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti. Based on the novel The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown (uncredited). Director: Dario Argento.

   The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italy, 1970) on the other hand, is a certified wowser. The directorial debut of Dario Argento, who became something of a Name in Horror films, this is a garish, fast-moving, humorous movie about serial slashing, stalking, knifing and general mayhem set against colorful locations, played and/or dubbed by a cast a cut (sorry!) above the usual run of Italian imports.

   Fredric Brown got no screen credit for this film, and for years critics who knew nothing about Pulp averred that it was based on an Edgar Wallace story, but I defy anyone out there to show me an Edgar Wallace book with this plot. In fact, I’ll wrestle anyone in the crowd who thinks he can do it. No takers? I thought not.

   Anyway, getting back to the story, this follows Brown’s novel pretty closely, right down to the minor characters and bits of by-play. Argento tossed away the thematic framework of Brown’s novel, and he turned the hard-drinking loner of the book into a young married couple, but that’s a fate that befell many of us in the 70s.

   The fact is, this is a fairly faithful translation of The Screaming Mimi into film, and if not all it could have been. (The real meaning of the book isn’t revealed until the last page, and it’s truly harrowing.) It’s at least a fun ride.

BERNARD THIELEN – A Charm of Finches. Mystery House, hardcover, 1959.

   One of my many biases deals with books that the publisher requires the full front and back flaps to describe. Generally these novels should be shunned. Those who would snickeringly point out the generous length of my reviews and mutter about pots and kettles also should be avoided.

   My reason for reading this novel was the presence of an ornithologist as the principal character. There is a paucity of these, I believe, though Ann Cleeves is currently filling the gap.

   At the Latham Wilderness in Vermont, Joe Coogan, ex-Navy fighter pilot and Ph.D., is recovering from a disappointment in love, attending the Science Brotherhood Experiment there, and planning to do a breeding count of birds. When his former fiancee is kidnapped, along with her new boyfriend, a chap who has been investigating Soviet espionage, the Navy re-enlists Coogan and forces him to find out what the Soviets may be up to in the Wilderness.

   Spy novels seldom appeal to me — I except Ritchie Perry and Anthony Price, of course — but Coogan is a refreshing and not too competent spy catcher. It helps that the spies also verge on the incompetent.

   Interesting information about ornithology and rock climbing adds to the novel’s appeal.

Editorial Comments:   Bernard Thielen wrote one earlier mystery included in Allen Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, that being Open Season (Mystery House, 1958), later reprinted by the Detective Book Club and in paperback as half an Ace Double D-419 (pictured below). Although it is also a spy thriller taking place in New England, Coogan is not the leading character.

   For a list of other collective nouns for birds, this page on Wikipedia should do. A “charm” of finches was new to me.

        #6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.

   The Battle McKim stories by Edward Parrish Ware were a short series of at least thirteen tales published in Detective Fiction Weekly between 1934 through 1937. The stories are about a detective who works for Sheriff Calloway in Zinc City, near the Ozark Mountains in what appears to be Missouri.

   Zinc City has a population of something over fifty thousand residents. “Brutus McKim, nicknamed ‘Battle,’ . . . stood five feet and five inches in his low-heeled shoes, and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds. His age was somewhat under forty, and his nature was as mild as milk. But this small, mild-mannered man had, on more than one occasion, proved his right to the nickname which had been bestowed on him originally in fun.” (The Clue of the Broken Chimney)

   In fact, in the first story McKim has to shoot two criminals who tried to kill him. However, Battle McKim “hated to use his gun. It was against his nature to kill. When he just had to do it, he did.” In one story, it was revealed that McKim was especially fond of circuses and circus people, and thought that circus bands “made the finest music of any other bands whatever.” (Clue of the Elephant’s Ear) McKim is never without his Stetson hat nor his gun.

   The stories mostly have titles that involve a clue which is important to the solution of the story. Ware had other series which were published in DFW: the Ranger Jack Calhoun series (1926-1938), Tug Norton (1926-1934), and Buck Harris (1930-1934). So Ware wrote many stories for the magazine, but nothing after 1938.

   The first known story in the Battle McKim series is “The Clue of the Broken Chimney” which sets forth some background facts and in its plot shows what the series was going to be like. McKim sees in the death of a mining owner by a fall from a height to be murder, when everyone else disagrees and claims either accident or suicide.

   McKim’s investigation into the matter causes some trouble for him with criminals, but he is not deterred. The sheriff seems to have great confidence in McKim’s abilities and will go along with whatever he says.

   â€œClue of the Bandit’s Beard” involves the false beard one of the criminals wears. The story involves the holdup and murder at a mining encampment. In this story Battle McKim shows his sleuthing and tracking abilities by tracking down the criminals.

   As seems to be usual in this series, he has gunfights with the criminals. However, he takes such a long time tracking down the criminals that Sheriff Calloway becomes angry at his absence. It seems that the sheriff depends a bit too much upon his resident detective.

   â€œThe Clue of the Animal Crackers” actually involves the contents of a box of animal crackers. These crackers seem to have been around a long time; I assume they are still available nowadays. The scene is the county fair, where a carnival is taking place. One of the carnival people has been murdered, and McKim must figure out who committed the crime. The animal crackers play a significant role in the solution of the mystery. For a change, there is no gunfight between McKim and the criminal.

   â€œClue of the Battered Bullets” involves a mysterious case of murder and a kidnapping of a banker. Upon investigation, Battle McKim also finds plenty of clues leading in various directions. He suspects that there is more to the case than first appears, and by the end, he has to gunfight with a criminal who was behind it all. A number of the stories in this series involve gunfights with the criminals. Occasionally McKim does capture the criminals alive.

   â€œClue of the Elephant’s Ear” takes place at the Moseby’s Marvelous Circus, which is visiting Zinc City. The headliner of the circus and its greatest attraction is the intelligent elephant Bong the Great, or Bong, the Elephant with the Human Brain as he is billed on advertisements. Battle McKim investigates after the elephant kills its trainer during a performance.

   The killing by the elephant was due to a sudden rage that came over the elephant, and McKim wants to know if there are reasons for this behavior. Sheriff Calloway objects to this, saying that he has already decided to kill the elephant as a dangerous beast. McKim doesn’t pay any attention to this and investigates anyway.

   â€œClue of the Persian Cat” involves two Persian cats and a murder mystery at a roadhouse. One of the two owners has been mysteriously killed, and the first thing Battle McKim must decide is whether it was suicide or murder. There aren’t very many suspects, so the mystery angle is a bit slim. The cats’ involvement turns out to be important in the mystery, and leads McKim to the solution.

   â€œClue of the Poisoned Dog” presents Battle McKim with a murder mystery that has taken place at a rich man house where several people are guests. It also takes place in the midst of a snowstorm, which shows that no on entered or left the house at the time of the murder. In addition, unset diamonds valued at a hundred thousand dollars have been stolen from the dead man. McKim cleverly solves the crimes and recovers the diamonds.

   â€œClue of the Hard-Boiled Eggs” has a slim clue for Battle McKim to work on. A local farmer had sold some land for $10,000 and decided to hide the money on his property rather than putting it in the bank. McKim becomes involved after the man supposedly died accidentally, leaving his money still hidden.

   After investigating, McKim deduces that the farmer was actually murdered and his money stolen. McKim has to resort to trickery to force the criminal to give himself away as the guilty man.

   â€œClue of the Pekin Ducks” is another good story. The clue of the ducks involves their reputation as a night alarm, alerting their owner as to trespassers. The crime here is of the murder and robbery of their owner, a stingy, miserly, person who is disliked by virtually everyone. Plenty of suspects in a case of this nature. But the duck clue led Battle McKim to the only person who could have committed the crime.

   â€œClue of the Crawling Cows” deals with a different kind of crime. A train baggage car of the Missouri Central Railroad has been robbed, one of the car workers tied up and the other man missing as well as fifty thousand dollars gone.

   Battle McKim must find out where the missing train worker went as well as find the missing money. The story is clever, and McKim finds the definitive clue in the behavior of some cattle next to the train tracks.

   â€œClue of the Second Death” involves a murder by somewhat improbable means, but the author seems to make it work in the story, although it is a bit far-fetched that Battle McKim should be able to figure it out. The murder victim is Colonel Shel Allen, who is stricken dead by aconite poisoning while driving his car.

   Because Allen was the county prosecutor, suspicion comes down on a crooked judge and his friends, but McKim tends to believe in a different group of suspects and devotes his investigation to them. The second death clue gives McKim the evidence he needs to figure out who committed the first murder.

   â€œClue of the Tallow Candle” was the last story in the series, and much of it takes place underground in some caves near Zinc City. A noted judge has been killed in one of the caves, and Battle McKim must first prove it was deliberate murder rather than an accident.

   As usual, hidden clues contribute to the story, and a second death makes the mystery more difficult to solve. However, McKim draws the suspects around with the addition of others in the sheriff’s department, and proves who committed the murder and why. As often happens, McKim shoots it out with the killer.

   This is an average series, with very good stories. There is not any humor in the stories, just a basic storytelling technique that does a decent job of the adventures of Battle McKim in his quest for the truth.

   The stories are at least a change from the sameness that had crept into Ware’s series about Ranger Jack Calhoun. Interestingly, Ware must have disliked veterinarians, as he makes them the villain in two of the stories.

      The Battle McKim series by Edward Parrish Ware:

The Clue of the Broken Chimney     October 27, 1934
Clue of the Bandit’s Beard     November 10, 1934
The Clue of the Animal Crackers     November 24, 1934
Clue of the Battered Bullets     March 16, 1935
Clue of the Elephant’s Ear     April 20, 1935
Clue of the Persian Cat     May 4, 1935
Clue of the Poisoned Dog     August 3, 1935
Clue of the Hard-Boiled Eggs     August 10, 1935
Clue of the Pekin Ducks     September 21, 1935
Clue of the Putty Paper     November 2, 1935    *
Clue of the Crawling Cows     December 21, 1935
Clue of the Second Death     March 21, 1936
Clue of the Tallow Candle     October 9, 1937

* I don’t have this story, but the title indicates it might be part of the series. [And so it is. See Comment #1.]

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.

FRIENDS OF MR. SWEENEY. Warner Brothers, 1934. Charlie Ruggles, Ann Dvorak, Eugene Pallette, Robert Barrat, Berton Churchill, Dorothy Burgess, Dorothy Tree, Harry Tyler. Based on a novel by Elmer Davis. Director: Edward Ludwig.

   Charlie Ruggles is the true star of this one, even though Friends of Mr. Sweeney was recently shown as part of a day-long salute on TCM to Ann Dvorak (pronounced with a silent D). As an editorial writer, over the years, he’s become hidebound and downtrodden, and totally subservient to his boss at the weekly magazine where he plies his trade, even to the point where he’s resigned to composing a favorable piece on a politician he knows is crooked.

   As his trusty assistant, Ann Dvorak can only look on sadly, and with unrequited fondness (which she obvious wishes could be more). Enter Eugene Pallette, Charlie’s old buddy at college, where they were on the football team together, and a couple of more high-spirited and fun-loving buddies you would be hard-pressed to find.

   Maybe you can take it from here. First a badly interrupted dinner date with his secretary, then out on the town as a foursome, posing as a friend of a fictitious Mr. Sweeney to enter one of the poshiest casinos in town, where all hilarity breaks out, then back to office while the building is being robbed (all part of the story line).

   The fussy Charlie Ruggles I always find amusing, especially in situations where he finds himself enjoying becoming a wildcat again. I often need only a small dose of Eugene Pallette to get me through the week, however, and unfortunately this is more than a small dose. (No offense intended.)

   Ann Dvorak, only 22 when this movie was made, was destined to have a career consisting only small parts or larger roles in minor movies like this one, but like this one, her beauty and engaging personality wins me over every time. (One scene is which she is wearing nothing but lingerie is rather revealing for a movie made with the Code in effect.)

Note:   You can see what I mean by that last parenthetical statement — as well as everything else I’ve said — by checking out the original trailer that’s available on the TCM website.

MATTHEW FARRER – Crossfire. Black Library /Games Workshop Ltd., paperback original; 1st US printing, July 2003. A book in the “Warhammer 40,000” series.

   I confess that I haven’t read any of the other Warhammer books, but the series consists of a long list of novels taking place in a universe set far in a future ruled by the Emperor’s Imperial Guard, the “ever-vigilant Inquisition” and the “tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.” Lots of bloody warfare, I gather, with “no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.”

   Maybe it’s a video game, too, or a role-playing game, or maybe I have it all wrong. In any case, if you haven’t already skipped this review and gone on to the next one, the small incident on an isolated planetary system that this novel is about has both a crime, or a series of crimes, and an active detective whose career seems to be only beginning. Really. Stay with me, and I’ll tell you what I mean.

   What caught my eye first was the cover. A punkish young lady with reddish, short cropped hair, dressed mostly in shiny black – either leather or metal, or a combination thereof – holding a light saber of some sort in one hand and a huge pistol-looking affair in the other.

   Her name is Shira Calpurnia, and she is the newly arrived Arbites officer on the planet Hydraphur. From the first sentence on, we know, hey Jenny, we’re not in Kansas any more, when she meets Genator-Magos Cynez Sanja, of the Order Biologis:

   An attempt to assassinate Shira is made soon thereafter, and hunting down the miscreants responsible takes the remainder of the book, which consists of 320 pages of very small print, and baroque prose nearly always as dense as the short extract above.

   Or as below, taken from page 51:

   Words fail me. I could not write like that in a million years.

   I’ll skip all of the action, all of interesting if not fascinating, all of it filled with a sense of wonder that I haven’t felt as strongly as this since I was about 12 years old. Not that I understood it all. Maybe you have to be, um, 12 years old. But the ending I understood, and you will, too:

   She may not look the part, but Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and all of other virtuous gumshoes who have toiled and labored in the mean streets the world over have a worthy descendant in Shira Calpurnia, destined (I believe) to continue on with other adventures.

UPDATE [June 2006].   I was correct. Shira Calpurnia has indeed appeared in a follow-up entry, and a third one that will be showing up soon looks extremely interesting:

   Legacy. Black Library, pb, US, August 2004. Shira takes more of a background role in this one, more of a novel of political intrigue than a mystery novel (from what I can deduce from a rather meagre description).

   Blind. Black Library, pb, US, July 2006. A telepath is killed with no weapon found nearby. Said to be a locked room mystery. It sounds like a must-have to me.

[UPDATE #2] 08-16-11.   These three are all there are in the series, so far. Enforcer, released in 2010, is an omnibus collection of all three.
.

“The Case of the Bogus Books.” An episode of Perry Mason (Season 6, Episode 1). First air date: 27 September 1962. Cast: Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, William Talman, Ray Collins, Wesley Lau, Phyllis Love (the accused), Adam West, John Abbott, H. M. Wynant, Joby Baker, Allison Hayes, Woodrow Parfrey, Maurice Manson, Tenen Holtz, Kenneth MacDonald (the judge), Michael Fox (not to be confused with Michael J. Fox). Writer: Jonathan Latimer. Director: Arthur Marks.

   Locked-room puzzles rarely turn up on TV, and the Perry Mason series of 271 episodes had very few. In this case, however, a bookshop owner, Joseph Kraft [Maurice Manson], is found dead in a sealed basement room, with a lamp still burning and the radio still on but the gas heater off, and a handful of dead flies on the window sill.

   Perry’s client, Ellen Corby [Phyllis Love] had been fired earlier by the dead man after a rare book went missing. Although she was sure the book was marked at $8, Kraft claimed that it was valued at $7000.

   The death, however, looks like suicide, and the police initially view it as such. But Perry Mason suspects murder. Unfortunately, every circumstantial clue will point to his client — as they always do.

   The locked-room problem, which isn’t the main focus of this episode, is partially cleared up in about ten minutes. I say “partially” because Mason will later perform a courtroom demonstration with flies that will change everyone’s mind, not about the CAUSE of death but the TIME of death, thereby exonerating his client and a multitude of likely suspects and narrowing it down, employing the classic Golden Age Detection trope of the TIME TABLE, to just one person — the murderer.

   This one had a fine cast of TV’s best character actors from the ’50s and ’60s: handsome Adam West (Batman); reliable H. M. Wynant; beautiful but evil Allison Hayes (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman); ubiquitous Maurice Manson; intellectual John Abbott; shifty Woodrow Parfrey (whom my wife calls “Woodrow the Weasel”); and durable Kenneth MacDonald as the judge, in one of his 32 appearances as the magistrate in the Perry Mason series.

Note:   The rare book at the heart of this story is a first edition of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, published in nine different volumes from 1759 to 1767. If you’d like to know what the rare books’ prices mentioned in this episode would be in today’s dollars, multiply them by 10 or 11 times.

   I couldn’t locate “The Case of the Bogus Books” online. Perhaps someone else will have better luck.