CRAIG RICE – 8 Faces at 3. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1939. Hardcover reprint: Tower, 1943 (shown). Paperback reprints include: Mystery Novel of the Month #21, 1941, as Murder Stops the Clock; Bonded Books #13, 1945; Intl Polygonics Ltd, 1989.

   Rice’s debut detective novel, which introduced that rye-soaked couple, Jake Justus and Helene Brand, and the rumpled, sodden lawyer John J. Malone to the world, is an impressive debut.

   The first murder — that of a tyrannical, rich old lady despised by her heirs and servants — offers a classical situation immediately familiar to readers of British mystery, but the resemblance begins careening off course with the appearance of madcap, hard-drinking, reckless-driving heiress Helene Brand on the scene.

   Soon the lovely young lady suspect — a family friend of Helene’s and the newlywed wife of a band leader client of Jake’s (he’s a press agent) — has been spirited away from the police by Jake and Helene and hidden away in a whorehouse, so that Jake and Helene can find the real murderer, with the help of Malone.

   Copious drinking ensues, along with some genuine detection.

   Despite all the drinking (which is truly non-stop), Rice’s first detective novel devotes considerable attention to the puzzle, which, though not as convoluted as some of her later ones, is nicely put together.

   Rice wastes little time on red herrings, but the exact working out of everything, including the tantalizing problem of the eight clocks all set to 3:00, is interesting to follow. (Rice works out the Clock conundrum in much more interesting way than does Agatha Christie in the later The Clocks.) Indeed, as a puzzle 8 Faces at 3 is superior to Rice’s later Trial by Fury (considered her masterpiece by some), though the latter is the better novel.

   The supporting characters in 8 Faces at 3 tend to remain cardboard (the most interesting to me was the presumably Jewish D.A. with a chip on his shoulder, Hyme Mendel), so the interest tends to remain in puzzle and the antics of Helene, Jake and Malone.

   The antics, fueled by rye and many other adult beverages, will be a plus or minus depending on the reader. Much of the book I found genuinely funny, but I have to admit the amount of drinking did tend to pall on me a bit. One starts to feel that almost every other line, is “let’s have a drink.”

   I have not yet received Jeffrey Mark’s biography of Craig Rice, but I know a bit of her sad story and I have to admit I found myself thinking of that every time Helene passed out into Jake’s arms.

   I presume readers of the 1940s found drunkenness more uproariously funny than readers of today; and of course those readers of yesteryear did not know of Rice’s own alcoholism — at least until her messy personal life, including suicide threats, started, I presume, to get in the papers.

   For me that knowledge tempered a bit my amusement at the non-stop drinking, which is frequently accompanied, I might add, by driving. (These characters make Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe look like a teetotaler.)

   Still, 8 Faces at 3 offers an a good puzzle and is written with verve. It is a very good detective novel and I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a great deal of liquor-fueled zaniness accompanying the elucidation of a mystery.

Editorial Comment: Also on hand is Curt’s review of Trial by Fury, which he mentioned in passing above. Be on the lookout for it. I’ll post it here soon.

WILLIAM HARDY – The Case of the Missing Coed. Dell D360, reprint paperback; 1st printing, July 1960. First published as A Little Sin, Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1958.

    Case of the Missing Coed was one of those old-bookstore finds that proved to be quite rewarding. Bruce Graham is a professor at a small college, just getting on toward middle-age, who finds himself pursued by an attractive coed and growing a bit distant from his wife, a situation that can lead to some very enjoyable regrets.

    What this leads to is trouble, as Graham, tempted to visit the coed at a remote lodge, finds her murdered. Bad enough, but author Hardy rings in some interesting wrinkles: naturally, Graham has to remove any trace of his presence in order to preserve his marriage and his job, a task which he bungles beautifully.

    Then, since he thinks he knows who killed the coed, he tries to lead the police to her ex-boyfriend and proceeds to entangle himself in enough circumstantial evidence to get him convicted of murder.

    The mystery here isn’t particularly mysterious, and I’m betting most steady readers of the genre will spot the “surprise” killer early on, but Hardy does a neat job of getting his hero enmeshed in his own mistakes without making him look stupid, creating that sick, dizzy sensation of watching a character get spun out of control.

    As such, it’s a pretty engrossing few hours’ read… and you can’t beat that cover!

“Leviathan Five.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 1, Episode 14). First air date: 30 January 1964. Arthur Kennedy, Andrew Duggan, John Van Dreelen, Harold J. Stone, Frank Maxwell, Robert Webber (prosecutor), Frank Overton (the defense), Judson Laire. Teleplay: Berne Giler, David Giler, and William P. McGivern. Story: Berne & David Giler. Director: David Lowell Rich.

   Four men are standing trial for murdering another man. All five had been working in a high-security installation 1,500 feet underground when an earth displacement blocked the elevator and airshafts to the surface. Being scientists, they start calculating how long they have to live before help arrives.

   No matter how they figure it, unless one of them dies they’ll all suffocate. When it is suggested that someone could sacrifice himself (they have a gun) if he draws the short stick, one man refuses on moral grounds to be part of any plan involving suicide.

   The group then devises another approach — whoever is selected won’t kill himself but instead will wait until everybody has retired from the main area (to conserve air), fetch the revolver, and go to another man’s cubicle (chosen at random), where he will shoot that person, return to the common area, wipe the gun clean of prints, go back to his own cubicle, and pretend innocence.

   And so it comes to pass — except, as we learn later, the man who dies was not chosen at random ….

   This description makes the play sound like a whodunit, which it is — but, at the same time, it isn’t. The main thrust of the story is to explore such heavyweight ideas as: What is the difference between murder and execution? Can five men behave as a sovereign nation, making their own laws and deciding who lives and who dies?

   If a man consents to sacrifice himself, can his death at someone else’s hand be deemed a murder? If one man commits murder, can three other men who never wielded the weapon be held equally responsible? Isn’t this a nation “under God” and His laws?

   As I say, ponderous matter for a one-hour TV drama; yet the script smoothly proposes them all without bogging down in pointless moralizing.

   Although it’s never mentioned in the play, the term “leviathan” in the title must be a reference to English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ dubious conception of government: “For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State (in latine Civitas) which is but an Artificial Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Sovereignty is an Artificial Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body ….”

   There are plenty of undiscovered treasures waiting out there in those old Gold Medal Books, some of them by authors you may never have heard of. Clifton Adams is a case in point.

   His name is probably much more familiar to readers of western novels than to readers of crime fiction because he was much more successful as a western writer. But he wrote a couple of crime novels for Gold Medal that are well worth seeking out, Whom Gods Destroy and Death’s Sweet Song.

   These books are of the James M. Cain school, and while they don’t quite come up to the best of Cain, they belong on the same shelf.

   Both books are set in small Oklahoma towns. Whom Gods Destroy is the story of Roy Foley, who returns to his hometown of Big Prairie on the death of his father only to discover that his life is still ruled by his feelings of love and hate for a woman named Lola.

   In fact, his feelings for her have pretty much driven him crazy, though he doesn’t know it. He finds another woman named Vida (I’ll leave all discussions of symbolism to the English majors among you), but even his attraction to Vida isn’t enough to save him.

   To hear him tell it, Foley is one of those hardluck guys, plenty smart, but he’s just never gotten the break he deserves. He thinks he’s found the chance in Big Prairie, however. He’s going to take over the thriving bootlegging trade in the town, and he’s going to do it fast.

   He gets off to a bad start, as his first plan goes wrong. So does his second. And his third. Each time something goes wrong, he pays a price, and just when his plans finally seem to be working out, things fall apart.

   Roy winds up in a cheap hotel and in despair: “Out of the emptiness, I kept thinking: What are you going to do, Foley? What are you going to do? There had to be an answer — if I could only find it. Lost somewhere in the violence and rage there was an answer.”

   The guy in Death’s Sweet Song is Joe Hooper. He owns a little filling station with a couple of tourist cabins out back in Creston, Oklahoma. Like Roy Foley, he’s waiting for his big break, and one day it shows up in the persons of a safecracker named Sheldon and his wife, Paula.

   Paula is one of those women who often turns up in stories like this: bad clear through, and as beautiful as she is bad.

   Before long, Joe finds himself involved in robbery and murder, and at the end of his downward spiral, he’s thinking a lot like Foley: “I looked at them and they were waiting for the answer. They wanted a simple, clear-cut answer, and there wasn’t one. It was a long story, almost a month ago, I thought; that was when I saw her for the first time . . . Less than a month ago it had been. It seemed like a thousand lifetimes.”

   The simple plot summaries don’t do much to convey the quality of writing in these books. It’s the real thing. Uncluttered prose, smooth, and assured, with just the right amount of description to make things real and immediate.

GOLD MEDAL BONUS: If you’re curious about Adams’s westerns, I highly recommend two of his earliest, The Desperado and A Noose for the Desperado.

   These are dandy noir westerns with a protagonist worthy of Jim Thompson. They’re hard to find, though. They hardly ever turn up even on eBay. Copies of Death’s Sweet Song and Whom Gods Destroy show up now and then, and no one even bids on them. Maybe people don’t know what they’re missing, but if you’ve read this far, you don’t have that excuse.

NON-GOLD MEDAL BONUS: Adams also wrote a paperback original for the Ace Double line. He used the name Jonathan Gant, and the book is one half of D-157, Never Say No to a Killer.

   It seems to have been influenced by Horace McCoy’s Kiss Tomorrow Good-Bye, as it’s narrated by an intellectual killer and begins with an escape from a prison work gang. Roy Surratt deludes himself in much the same way that Joe Hooper and Roy Foley do, though he’s well aware that he’s far from the innocent they think themselves to be before they begin their crime sprees.

   This book has a nice twist in that it doesn’t appear to be a mystery novel until the very end, when it’s revealed that one character was indeed doing some detecting and putting the clues together. Maybe this one’s not quite in the league with the two Gold Medals, but it’s worth a read.

   In a way it’s too bad that Clifton Adams found his biggest success writing westerns and didn’t write more crime novels. He was very good at it.

Selected Bibliography:

       ● Death’s Sweet Song. Gold Medal #483, pbo, May 1955.
       ● Whom Gods Destroy. Gold Medal #291, pbo, March 1953.

       ● The Desperado. Gold Medal #121, pbo, 1950.
       ● A Noose for the Desperado. Gold Medal #168, pbo, 1951.

       ● Never Say No to a Killer, as by Jonathan Gant. Ace Double D-157; pbo, 1956.

Editorial Comments:   This column first appeared in Mystery*File #42, February 2004. Covered in previous installments appearing online are authors Day Keene, Dan Marlowe, Charles Williams, Marvin Albert, and Bill Pronzini & Ed Gorman.

   A checklist of the western novels Adams wrote as Clay Randall can be found here earlier on this blog.   [LATER:]   In comment #5, I’ve listed all of Adams’ westerns that I own which were written under his own name.

   And look for additional commentary by Bill on the Jonathan Gant book over on his blog, where it was a “Forgotten Friday Book” a week or so ago.

ANTHONY OLIVER – The Pew Group. Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover, 1981. Paperback reprint: Fawcett Crest, 1985. UK edition: William Heinemann, hc, 1980.

   Here’s a first novel that kept me laughing all the way to the last page!

   It’s set in an English village, but after that any resemblance to the good old conventional English murder mystery ceases. No one, least of all Doreen, is going to call her tripping her dull, antique dealer husband at the top of the stairs murder.

   But his death sets off a marvelous train of events: Doreen’s mother arrives from Cardiff, funeral unbaked meat under her arm. Joseph O’Shea, itinerant picker, tries to sell an undistinguished piece of pottery to a gay antique dealer; unsuccessful there, he goes on to Doreen’s, where he’s more successful in more than one way. The pottery turns out to be “The Pew Group,” a fantastically valuable piece, but as the assembled party partakes of baked meats after Rupert’s funeral, “The Pew Group” disappears.

   Inspector Webber, born in Flaxfield, returned there after a failed marriage and a lackluster career, finds new life in his old home town, as almost everyone involved does. Most of the characters are slightly bent, most of them are enjoying sex lives that aren’t exactly conventional and sometimes not even legal.

   All of them want “The Pew Group.” Who gets it and how we find out at the end, after a thoroughly delightful roam in the British country gloamin’.

    Bibliographic data:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

OLIVER, ANTHONY.    SC: Lizzie Thomas & Insp. John Webber, in all titles.

       The Pew Group (n.) Heinemann 1980.
       The Property of a Lady (n.) Heinemann 1983.
       The Elberg Collection (n.) Heinemann 1985.

       Cover-Up (n.) Heinemann 1987.

Note: Coming soon to this blog will be Maryell’s review of The Property of a Lady.

WILDE ALLIANCE. Yorkshire TV, ITV1, UK; 13 x 60m episodes, 17 January 1978 to 11 April 1978. John Stride (Rupert Wilde), Julia Foster (Amy Wilde). Producer: Ian Mackintosh.

   Tise Vahimagi happened to mention this series in a post he did on this blog almost three years ago, one in which he was discussing the various TV series that crime fiction writer Ian Mackintosh was involved in, one way or another.

   At the time I’d never heard of Wilde Alliance (and in fact back then I was more or less a complete novice when it came to old British TV series), and his description of the show was definitely tantalizing:

   Said he: “… [a] comedy-thriller featuring the amateur sleuthing adventures of a thriller novelist and his busybody wife (the latter in the Pamela North, Jennifer Hart vein).” Tantalizing, I said, because, I thought, what are the chances that anyone would dig this probably all-but-forgotten series out of whatever archive it might be in, if it existed at all.

   So what a fluke of luck it was to discover that, at the same time I purchased my first multi-region DVD player, that the series did exist, all 13 episodes, and that in fact it had just come out on DVD. It was promptly in my Amazon-UK shopping cart and speeding across the Atlantic on its way to me.

      As Tise said, Rupert Wilde is a thriller mystery writer. As played by John Stride, he’s a chunky fellow, with grayish white hair that’s just a little too long to be called kempt, but was probably in fashion then, back in the late 70s. His wife Amy is pert, saucy and slight and a perfect helpmate, very much her own woman, but cheerfully praising, pleasing and prodding Rupert on.

   They’re a happily married couple and normal in all regards except for their penchant to get mixed up in small scrapes and escapades, some of which involve crimes and some don’t. They aren’t as rich as the Harts (Hart to Hart), since Rupert is always pressed on deadlines for his next book in order to pay the bills, but they certainly are far from poor.

   Of the five episodes I’ve watched so far, I’ve enjoyed the fifth the most: “The Private Army of Colonel Stone,” in which the son of one of Rupert’s honorary aunts has mysterious died in Africa while on a diamond-hunting expedition. No body has been found, but the three men who’d been with him have taken over the isolated cottage that the dead man had used to finance his share of the venture. Plenty of twists and turns in the plot before it’s done.

   Other episodes, so far:

   Very minor plot material, when it comes down to it, nor are either of the stars big names, then or now (I will gladly stand corrected on that), but the interplay between the two leading actors is as charming (if I may use such a word in describing a TV series purportedly a detective show) as that between Steed and Mrs. Peel in a series in which, however, the stories were larger than life.

   Not quite so with Wilde Alliance. Their adventures are ordinary, or almost so. (None of the above ever happened to Judy and I.)

[UPDATE.]  Later the same morning.   Scouting on the Internet for more information about the series, I found a webpage containing a lengthy overview of it. Quoting briefly, which I assume I may:

BARBARA FROST – The Corpse Died Twice. Coward McCann, hardcover, 1951. No paperback edition.

   Though suffering from a severe hangover, Jerome Carrigan doesn’t feel he deserves the obituary published in a New York City newspaper. He calls upon Marka de Lancey, attorney at law, to investigate it and also asks her to check on an insurance policy he is considering purchasing. She doesn’t have time for the latter since Carrigan is found dead in a Turkish bath at Coney Island under suspicious circumstances.

   This is de Lancey’s second murder investigation with Lieut. Jeff McCrae of Manhattan Homicide. It is a moderately amiable non-fair-play novel.

Bio-Bibliographic Data: According to Al Hubin in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, Barbara Frost (married name Barbara Frost Shively) was a publicity manager for J. B. Lippincott Co., an obvious rival to Coward McCann, who was the publisher of her four mystery novels.

   Bill is correct in saying that this is Marka de Lancey’s second appearance. He did not mention that there was a third, however, nor that Ms. Frost’s first crime novel was not a series entry. One source on the Internet suggests that the police lieutenant’s name was spelled “Macrae.” It is not presently known if he appeared with Marka de Lancey’s in all three of her cases.

FROST, BARBARA.   1903-1985.   Note: Marka de Lancey appeared in books two through four:

        The Unwelcome Corpse (n.) Coward 1947.
        The Corpse Said No (n.) Coward 1949.
        The Corpse Died Twice (n.) Coward 1951.
        Innocent Bystander (n.) Coward 1955.

Editorial Inquiry: Marka de Lancey’s first appearance was in 1949, making her perhaps one of the earliest female attorneys to appear in crime fiction. Who may have preceded her in this category?

[UPDATE] 02-08-10.   See comment #3. It isn’t a definitive answer, but if Jon Breen doesn’t know of any other female attorney who was a lead character in a mystery novel and who came before Marka de Lancey, then my money’s on the fact that there weren’t any.

ONE MORE RIVER. Universal, 1934. Colin Clive, Diana Wynyard, Jane Wyatt, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, James Lawton, Henry Stephenson, C. Aubrey Smith, Henry Daniell, E. E. Clive, Snub Pollard. Script: R.C. Sherriff, from the novel by John Galsworthy. Director: James Whale.

   When Diana Wynyard leaves her caddish, sadistic husband, sneeringly played by Colin Clive, to establish an independent existence, private detectives report her every move (in particular, a compromising night in the country in a disabled car with friend and would-be lover James Lawton) to Clive, who sues her for divorce on grounds of adultery, naming Lawton as co-respondent.

   Apart from the casting of his Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and the usual impeccable direction of a fine and varied cast, the materials of this absorbing melodrama seem somewhat remote from Whale’s imaginative masterpieces: The Old Dark House; The Invisible Man; and Bride of Frankenstein.

   However, three brief sequences are reminiscent of those stylish films:

    ● Wynyard pulls her hair up into a striking semblance of the Bride’s electrified coiffure.

    ● A low-angle shot catches E. E Clive looking superciliously toward the bottom of the frame with Dr. Praetorius’s prissy, pursed lips (Bride).

    ● And most moving of all, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, slowly climbing an ornate, moodily lighted staircase (not unlike the staircase in the great hall of Baron Frankenstein’ s castle), spectrally intones Lady Macbeth’s exit line, “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed,” in a cameo scene that sums up unforgettably Whale’s unique feel for the extravagantly theatrical and sardonic, self-conscious mockery.

   The courtroom scene is splendidly acted and paced and the unlikely team of E.E. Clive and Snub Pollard, playing comic sleuths, is a delight. Finally, Diana Wynyard gives an effortless, understated performance that seems spontaneous and lends credibility to this contemporary story of a rebellion against a class and its taboos, a subject always of great interest to Whale.

   Old Time Radio collector and historian Randy Riddle has come up with another interesting program on his podcast/blog. It’s an Armed Forces rebroadcast episode of Hollywood Startime from 31 March 1946 entitled “Strange Triangle,” an adaptation of the noir film of the same name.

   It stars two of the three original leading players, Signe Hasso (as a truly seductive femme fatale) and John Shepperd. Replacing Preston Foster as the narrator and leading protagonist, though, is Lloyd Nolan, a fellow still known for a long list of B-movie mystery roles. Also in the radio cast is Lurene Tuttle, whose voice OTR fans will immediately recognize as that of Effie from The Adventures of Sam Spade radio program.

   The radio version of Strange Triangle suffers from being cut down in time from a 65 minute movie to only 25 minutes actual air time, but it’s still good entertainment. Give it a listen (click on the link above).

ROBERT B. PARKER – Hundred-Dollar Baby. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover; First Edition, October 2006. Reprint paperback: Berkley, September 2007.

   It was the ending of Ceremony (1982), that was quite controversial at the time, as I recall. A young teen-aged prostitute named April Kyle running from her pimp was able to win Spenser over to her side, and at the end, unable to come up with a better solution, he set her up as a call girl with a madam in Manhattan named Patricia Utley.

   April Kyle was also in Taming a Sea Horse (1986), or so I’ve been told, but if I’ve read that one, I don’t remember it, or I have the ending of the previous book mixed up between the two. (If I don’t take notes, an example of which you’re reading right now, then I tend to mis-remember things.) In any case, in Million-Dollar Baby both Parker and his alter ego, the wise-cracking Boston PI named Spenser, revisit that decision.

   Well. That may be all the plot you need to know. Naturally Spenser needs Susan Silverman right about here as the partner in a lengthy discussion about commercial sex and its pluses and minuses, the effect on society as well on the effect on the women taking an active part in the world’s oldest profession. To coin a phrase.

   This is not as deadly as it sounds, but either you enjoy the relationship between Susan Silverman and Spenser, or you don’t. If you don’t, you probably aren’t reading this review anyway. But as it so happens, I do. I also enjoy it when Spenser needs some muscle, which means calling on the author’s other alter ego, Hawk.

   Manly talk is what goes on then, rather than the domestic talk between Spenser and Susan Silverman, but I have to be honest with you, they are all part and parcel of Robert B. Parker’s fictional world, one of his own creation and one he allowed us to visit once or twice a year while he was alive, and even though he’s gone now, we still have the books.

   In any case, April has branched off from Patricia Utley and has set up shop in Boston, where things went well for a while, but she has now been receiving threats from a gangster and she needs Spenser to cool things down. Which means Spenser needs Hawk. (See above.)

   There are complications, of course, and the fact that everyone is telling lies makes things even more difficult. Some quotes, if I may. From page 19. Spenser is telling Susan about his new case:

   And from pages 209-210. Spenser is talking with one of the suburban housewives who have been working for April in her new venture:

   Make no doubt about it, though. Spenser is one tough character, and the ending of Hundred-Dollar Baby proves it.