PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery. Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1957. “Paul Temple” was a pseudonym of Francis Durbridge and Douglas Rutherford. Reprinted as by Francis Durbridge: Hodder, UK, pb, 1960

    A solid entry in the long running series about debonair British mystery writer Paul Temple (“By Timothy!”) and his wife and partner in solving crimes Steve (Stephanie), the former Steve Trent, a Fleet Street reporter. She and her husband solve crimes while enjoying the pleasures of the leisured upper middle class English lifestyle.

   The Temples are something of a cross between Nick and Nora Charles and the Lockridges’ Pam and Jerry North (though considerably more sober than either), with Paul himself a bit of an Ellery Queen figure (at least the radio or television versions) appearing in some fifteen books written with collaborators like Charles Hatton, John Thewes and Douglas Rutherford (appearing under the Paul Temple byline). A good deal of the charm of the series involves the byplay between the attractive husband and wife crime solvers.

   In addition to the books, there were ten radio plays and serials, movies, a television series, and a long running comic strip by Alfred Sindall and others (updated to reflect the 1969-1971 television series).

   When Betty Tyler is found stuffed in the boot of an abandoned Jaguar strangled with her own scarf on the Chipping Norton Road outside Oxford, Steve Temple, recently moved into their new Eaton Square flat with their Cockney servant Charlie, knows Sir Graham Forbes of the Yard is likely to show up at any time to ask her mystery writer husband’s help, interfering with her plans for a trip to Paris to celebrate Paul’s latest book deal.

   Sure enough, Forbes (“a splendid example of an Englishman”) shows up on their doorstep with Oxford Constabulary Inspector Vosper in tow.

   Paul and Steve agree to do a favor for Forbes, but still are intent on keeping out of the whole thing and making that Paris holiday — which Steve emphasizes by humming “I love Paris” at key times when Paul is tempted to defect, but after a suspicious near accident on the way to investigate Paul and Steve can no longer avoid involvement. Especially after a call from Jane Dallas — whom Paul finds strangled in the bedroom of her flat.

   All the victims work for a chain of beauty salons owned by the mysterious fashionable Spaniard Mariano (“a drink like a prophet is never honoured in its own country”).

   Paul and Steve investigate and capture the strangler, but Paul knows the man with the scarves is only the front for the man behind the murders, and in true style throws a dinner party to gather the suspects and expose the killer with a flourish. There is even a bit of a surprise in the killer’s identity and of course a touch of drama in the capture.

   There is nothing surprising about the Temple books. They are competently written, feature a bit of mystery, a bit of detection, and considering their radio serial origin, contain a good deal of action and suspense.

   Four movies featured Paul and Steve Temple, with Anthony Hulme and Joy Shelton in Send For Paul Temple (1946), and John Bentley (who also played John Creasey’s the Toff in two outings) and Dinah Sheridan in Calling Paul Temple (1948) Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950), and Paul Temple Returns (1952), all directed by Maclean Rogers, who directed the two Toff films as well. (In Returns, Patricia Dainton replaced Dinah Sheridan as Steve.)

   I’ve seen Calling Paul Temple, and it is an entertaining B picture with some nice location photography in Cambridge, some solid thrills, and builds to a good climax.

   Francis Matthews (Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the voice of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s “Captain Scarlet”) played Temple and Ros Drinkwater Steve in the 64 episode Temple series co-produced with Germany’s ZDF (1969-1971). In addition in the mid sixties several of the radio serials and books were done for British and German television. Eleven episodes of the color episodes of the Temple series are available on DVD as of 2009.

   Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was the Levinson and Link of British television. His popular serials included The Teckman Biography, The World of Tim Frazer, Melanie, Operation Diplomat, Portrait of Alison, The Scarf, and others. Most were also books.

   In addition his non Temple serials inspired films such as The Teckman Mystery, Postmark to Danger (Portrait of Alison), and the The Vicious Circle. His other series character, Tim Fraser, is featured in three books.

   The original ten Paul Temple radio serials are available as CD’s (a pricey Omnibus edition of all ten serials is well worth the price for the sheer hours of entertainment). In addition, there have been new productions as late as 2006, making a total of some twenty-seven Temple radio productions from 1938 to date.

   Postmark to Danger and at least one of the Temple movies are available on DVD on the gray market. Of the films, Postmark to Danger stars Robert Beatty and Terry Moore, and The Vicious Circle (1957) with John Mills, Roland Culver, Lionel Jeffries, Derek Farr, and Mervyn Johns has showed up on TCM several times and is well worth catching.

   Douglas Rutherford, the best of the Durbridge collaborators, and the only one to write as Paul Temple, was a first class action-suspense novelist whose own books were compared to Dick Francis. The novels under his own name always feature a background of racing cars and motorcycles, though the plots varied from crime, to murder, to spy-jinks. Barzun and Taylor had a few nice things to say of them in Catalogue of Crime.

   The Paul Temple books may sometimes show their origins as radio drama, but they offer pleasant thrills with an attractive pair of sleuths, and a bit of well done suspense and often clever mysteries.

   All of Durbridge’s books are worth reading, and hopefully more of the television serials will be finding their way onto DVD sets. When a German comic revealed the name of the killer in the German airing of The World of Tim Fraser, there was a major uproar.

   A modern American audience may not get quite that involved, but skillfully done fare along the lines of Durbridge’s radio and television serials, series, movies, and books are not to be sneezed at. These are well worth discovering and enjoying.

Editorial Comment:  Prompting the immediate posting of this review which David just sent me was, of course, my preceding review of Melissa, one of Durbridge’s many story productions for BBC-TV. The availability of the Paul Temple TV shows on DVD just a few months ago has only strengthened myresolve to obtain a multi-region player. The set is Region 2 only.

MELISSA. BBC-TV 3-part miniseries: December 4 through 18, 1974. Peter Barkworth, Guy Foster, Moira Redmond, Ronald Fraser, Joan Benham, Philip Voss, Ray Lonnen, Lyndon Brook, Elizabeth Bell. Story: Francis Durbridge; novelized as My Wife Melissa (Hodder, 1967). Director: Peter Moffatt.

   I have mystery writer Martin Edwards to thank for letting me know about this relatively ancient but remarkably well-preserved TV detective drama, first shown in the UK some 35 years ago and (believe it or not) available now in this country on DVD.

   Martin reviewed it on his blog back in June, and after his positive appraisal, I snapped it up from Amazon almost immediately. With the stacks of DVDs and shows on video tape all clamoring for my attention, though, I didn’t get around to watching it until the middle of last month.

   A piece of advice, if I may? If you’re a fan of complicated detective stories full of clues, false trails, mysterious happenings and twist after twist in the plot, don’t wait around as long as I did. Get this and watch it now. And do I mean that? Indeed I do. You won’t regret it. It’s fusty, it’s old-fashioned, and it’s absolutely terrific.

   Note that if you’re more of a fan of PI stories or hardboiled crime fiction, the recommendation I extend to you isn’t quite so urgent, but within its limitations, I think you might very well enjoy it too.

   I don’t know if a quickie, non-detailed recap will suffice, but here goes. A writer who’s been going through some tough times without a steady income allows his wife (Melissa) to go to a party with friends without him; when she calls him later to meet her somewhere, he goes, only to find her dead and all of the evidence pointing directly to him – and he has no alibi.

   Worse, a doctor specializing in neurological cases swears to the police that he was a recent patient, and so does his nurse, while Guy Foster, that’s name (played by a suitably rumpled and increasingly haggard Peter Barkworth) knows he has never seen either one before in his life.

   More funny business continues. By the time a second murder occurs, Foster is so wrapped up in elaborately phony (and highly unlikely) stories (although from his perspective, they are all perfectly true) he has nowhere to turn — until a chance comment he happens to make tells Detective Chief Inspector Carter (perfectly played by a suavely genteel Philip Voss) that the fantastic stories he’s been telling are the real truth.

   The story’s the thing in this case, and the only thing, with each of the first episodes ending in a beautifully constructed cliffhanger. I don’t imagine – no, make that I simply can’t imagine any killer going to such lengths to shift the blame to someone else, but it certainly creates a lot of fun for readers really, really fond of detective puzzles in their everyday brand of mystery fiction. In Melissa they’ll find something just as good, for a change, on the TV screen. Guaranteed.

   (On the other hand, I have to admit that Raymond Chandler might have found the overly elaborately and wholly invented affair utterly stagy and ludicrous, and therefore by extension, Raymond Chandler fans may very well follow suit. If you fall in the latter category, I can’t make you like it – but on the other hand, you might.)

   Other notes: Melissa was televised once before, as a 6-part mini-series beginning in 1964 with essentially the same characters (though not the actors) so I assume the story was the same.

   Another version appeared on TV in 1997, but the synopsis sounds makes it sound rather different in a number of ways. (The new guys who come along always seem to want to do that, for some reason.)

   Francis Durbridge, who wrote the story, is all but unknown in this country, but in the UK he was quite famous as a writer of detective stories and radio plays (e.g., Paul Temple), movie scripts and TV. The quickest way to check out his credits may be his Wikipedia page.

FREDRIC BROWN – Night of the Jabberwock. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1950. Paperback editions include: Bantam #990, April 1952; Morrow-Quill, 1984. British edition: T. V. Boardman, hc, 1951.

Based on two pulp stories: “The Gibbering Night” (Detective Tales, July 1944) and “The Jabberwock Murders” (Thrilling Mystery, Summer 1944).

   After hearing several people tell me about this book, I just had to read it. I went up to the loft and searched but to no avail. Fortunately a couple of days later, when I was looking for something else, I stumbled across my copy.

   Doc Stoeger, the narrator, is the proprietor/editor of a small town newspaper and a huge fan of the work of Lewis Carroll. After putting the paper to bed and getting home for the evening, he faces a night of catastrophic events, including a mysterious bank robbery, an escaped lunatic, a midnight gathering of the Vorpal Blades in a haunted house, and more.

   Most of them are unconnected, but after a murder for which he has been framed, Doc is fighting for his life and an explanation that will make sense of what has gone on.

   That the explanation makes as much sense as it does is a tribute to the plotting abilities of Fredric Brown, who has weaved a tangled web of intrigue. This madcap, humorous affair is a pleasurable romp with a satisfying ending, and I enjoyed the reading of it.

   Brown is an author that I am underexposed to, having previously only read Madball, which was only so-so, and The Fabulous Clipjoint, the first in the Ed and Am Hunter series, which I somehow didn’t take to.

Editorial Comment:   Happy Halloween, everyone!

THAT CERTAIN THING. Columbia, 1928. Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr Mcintosh, Aggie Herring, Carl Gerard, Sydney Crossley. Screenplay by Elmer Harris; photography by Joseph Walker. Director: Frank Capra. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    Described as a “restoration in progress” (the film is is a blow-up from a 16mm print), this domestic drama tracks the fortunes of a hotel newsstand clerk (Dana) after she marries Graves, the son of a magnate, who promptly disinherits his son, forcing him to go to work as a day laborer.

    When his co-workers prefer his wife’s box lunch to their own lunches, he has a brainstorm and starts the “Molly Box Lunch Company,” which takes off and attracts the attention of Graves’ father, who doesn’t know that his daughter-in-law is the Molly designing the lunches.

    Molly uses her native sharp wits to outwit her father-in-law, roping him into a highly profitable deal (for the company) to which he responds by showing he’s a good sport and finally accepting his husband’s wife.

    A good-natured comedy drama that makes light fun of big business and the innate good sense of the Little Man (or, in this case, Little Woman). Capra’s first film for Columbia.

   On his own Bear Alley blog, Steve Holland has just posted a long essay on the life (and sad death) of Gil Brewer, author of many bestselling paperback originals from Gold Medal in the 1950s before the market moved away from him, compounded by his own struggles with alcoholism.

   Based on his own research, Steve provides us with substantial evidence as to Brewer’s full name and his date of birth. Some of the rest of his article is based on Bill Pronzini’s well-known essay on Brewer, which can be found online on the main Mystery*File website, but by incorporating information from other sources as well, Steve covers Brewer’s life and writing career as completely and as full of insight as anything that’s been done so far.

THOMAS WILLS – You’ll Get Yours. Lion #87, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1952. 2nd printing: Lion LB129, November 1956. Also published as by William Ard: Berkley D2037, pb, 1960.

    This was the second novel of William Ard, a popular suspense writer of the fifties who is mostly forgotten today. While Ard’s first book, The Perfect Frame (1951) was a good-humored Eye thriller somewhat in the style of Richard S. Prather, this one owes its stylistic inspiration to quite another source.

   The publisher’s blurb calls Wills: “Fast as Hammett, sharp as Chandler, tough as Spillane,” while actually, in its treatment of lowlife types caught up in a sordid web of greed and lust which they themselves barely comprehend, You’ll Get Yours is most obviously patterned after the work of James M. Cain.

   It’s as if Cain set out to write a private eye novel. At least, that’s how Ard probably intended it.

   Barney Glines, a poor but honest private eye, is called in to deliver the payoff for a beautiful millionairess who is trying to buy back some stolen jewelry. Things go wrong, naturally, and before long Glines is caught up almost over his head in a nasty case of drugs and murder, and manages to fall in love with the millionairess along way.

   The writing is pure Cain, terse and hardboiled, utterly lacking the humor of Ard’s first book. The plotting is also Cainesque. The book is not primarily about a crime or crimes being solved, but about a group of people hurtling themselves headlong toward their own self-destruction.

   Unfortunately, any suspense inherent in such a storyline is sabotaged by the singularly foolish device of telling most of the book as a flashback — after the identity of the villain (and his fate) have been made obvious in the first chapter!

   Certainly Glines is a minor creation, in no way as memorable or believable as Ard’s major eye, Timothy Dane, himself the protagonist of nine fine novels.

   Sure, Ard does an adequate job of imitating Cain, but so what? Who needs imitations? Although I’ve likened Ard’s previous book to Prather, Ard was very much his own man; a superb plotter and stylist in his own right. This one has all the earmarks of a hurriedly produced script to earn Ard some extra pocket money in between his more notable genre work.

   Lion Books itself was an often seedy, bottom line paperback house of the early fifties, and collectors of old paperbacks will know what I mean when I say that You’ll Get Yours could just as easily have been published by Ace Doubles or Gold Medal. Packaging and content are practically identical.

   Rate this one a near miss from a first-rate hardboiled writer.

   The most entertaining portion of the book, for me, was the description of an exotic dancer’s striptease in a club. One half of the girl is made up as a woman, slinky gown, gaudy makeup, all of that. The other half, from head to toe straight down the middle, is made up as a man; short hair, suit, the whole bit.

   The number consists of the male half trying to feel up and strip down the female half, with the female half desperately fighting off the advances. Now that’s exotic!

FIONA BUCKLEY – To Shield the Queen. Scribner, hardcover; first edition, November 1997. Paperback reprint: Pocket; 1st printing, October 1998. UK edition: Orion, hc, as The Robsart Mystery.

    A solid introduction for the Ursula Blanchard series, set at the court of Elizabeth I. Blanchard, a young widow with a daughter she must provide for, has just been made a Lady in Waiting in the Court of Elizabeth I, thanks to her ties to Sir William Cecil , the Secretary of State. While her job is to serve the queen, her keen eyes and bright mind soon find her with more important duties.

    The year is 1560, and Lord Robert Dudley, Master of Horse to the young Queen, is one of her favorites, and rumors are rife about his relationship with the queen.

    When Dudley’s wife, Lady Ivy, falls ill Ursula is dispatched to help care for her — and keep an eye on a dangerous scandal that could develop if, as some suspect, Lady Ivy Dudley is being poisoned to take her out of the way for the furthering of the queen’s romance.

    And when Ivy Dudley falls to her death in a suspicious manner, Ursula finds herself at the heart of a conspiracy against the throne involving a handsome Frenchman and traitors in the Court. Her heart and her courage are about to be severely tested as is her loyalty to the queen. And Ursula will go to extraordinary lengths to both guard her monarch and the Frenchman she loves and marries — not entirely voluntarily.

    Buckley smoothly blends history and fiction with a heroine who navigates the treacheries of the Tudor court with intelligence courage and wisdom.

    Whether her solution to the real murder (or not) of Lady Dudley bears any relation to reality, it is in the best tradition of historical mystery, and the depictions of both fictional and historical figures are well done, especially a human portrait of Elizabeth as both woman and monarch.

    Ursula protects her monarch and the realm, saves her new husband, and secures a unique position with both the Queen and her court as well as winning the respect of the Spanish Ambassador who will play more important role in later books.

    For fans of historical mysteries, this one is a pleasant discovery, and Ursula Blanchard a protagonist who is both pleasingly modern yet true to her time and place. An excellent debut for a well-written series.

       The Ursula Blanchard Series —

   1. The Robsart Mystery (1997), aka To Shield the Queen.
   2. The Doublet Affair (1998)

   3. Queen’s Ransom (1999)
   4. To Ruin a Queen (2000)

   5. Queen of Ambition (2001)
   6. A Pawn for the Queen (2002)

   7. The Fugitive Queen (2003)
   8. The Siren Queen (2004)

MICHAEL KURLAND – The Infernal Device.   Signet J8492, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1979.   [Finalist for an Edgar and nominated for an American Book Award.]

   Professor Moriarty saved us all!

   At least that’s Michael Kurland’s report in The Infernal Device, a new departure from the Holmes and Holmes influenced stories. The Infernal Device deals with the truth behind that diabolical mastermind, the so-called Napoleon of Crime, Professor James Moriarty.

   It seems that the Russians — even then — were menacing not only The Empire, but all of the free world, with their nefarious schemes and dastardly deeds. This particular case in which Holmes is involved, peripherally at least, is no exception.

   But even before Holmes is involved in the case, the government of England has sought the aid of none other than the greatest mastermind of them all, James Moriarty. Of course, Moriarty is so clever, that although it is well known that he is the mastermind behind considerable wrong doing, there is no proof.

   But this, or so sees the Empire, is the edge. A master criminal against a master criminal. Moriarty against that Russian fiend, Trepoff.

   And terror of terrors, Trepoff is such a fiend, it takes the (gulp) unbelievable to stop him. The uniting of the greatest minds in Europe. The teaming of none other than Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes.

   Ain’t that a corker.

   Frankly, I for one, don’t believe a word of it. Moriarty is not a nice guy. Not even for money. Shame, shame, shame on Kurland for telling these lies.

   But it is an interesting, if a bit over long, book, and worth the 1.95 paperback price.

Editorial Comment:   Following my review of Michael Kurland’s The Empress of India (2006), a later Holmes and Moriarty adventure, I added a complete mystery-oriented bibliography for him here.

  BLANCHE BLOCH – The Bach Festival Murders. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1942. Mercury Mystery #90, digest-sized paperback, 1946, abridged.

   Can Crescent City handle a Bach festival, particularly when it conflicts with the season of its not very popular symphony orchestra? One would think not, especially when the symphony orchestra’s old conductor has been removed and a new conductor, a man very jealous of his wife, has been installed at the request of his wife’s old flame.

   There is also a significant feud between two socialites — the lady who raises the funds for the orchestra and the lady who has started the festival and who thinks there are musicians who play only Bach.

   The man in the middle of all this, Tony Farnum, is a rather unpleasant sort, with a penchant for blackmail. He is aware that his personal habits do not make him popular with most people and admits he would be a great candidate for murder.

   When he realizes that he has been poisoned and is about to die, he nonetheless is quite upset. You would have thought that he would have been pleased to discover his assessment was correct.

   Two more deaths take place in the novel and one hit-and-run, the victim of the latter being a member of the symphony orchestra who seems to accuse Til Eulenspiegel, or, as the police would have it, Miss or Mrs. Tilly or Matilda Oylenshpiegel, and for whom they have instituted a city-wide search.

   Not a classic, but a good, craftsman-like job, with a fair sprinkling of humor and insight into the thoughts, a word I use with some generosity, and spites of the upper classes.

Bio-Bibliographic Data: This is Blanche Bloch’s only entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. According to Contemporary Authors, she was a concert pianist who “frequently accompanied her husband, noted violinist Alexander Bloch, in his performances. She founded the New York Women’s Orchestra and conducted for the Florida West Coast Symphony Society for more than ten years.”

LOUISE PENNY – A Fatal Grace. St. Martin’s, hardcover; first edition, May 2007; paperback, 1st printing, February 2008. First published in Canada and the UK as Dead Cold: McArthur, Canada, hc, 2006; pb, 2007. Headline, UK, hc, 2006; pb, 2007.

   Second in the Three Pines series featuring Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté, this tale is set at Christmastime. The timing is leveraged to full effect, with vivid descriptions of gorgeous winter scenes as well as brutally cold, snowy weather.

   The murder victim is CC de Poitiers (hmmm, an assumed name?), a thoroughly horrid woman who has recently moved to the village. She succumbs in a rather bizarre way at a curling match, and Gamache must find out why.

   Office politics in the Sûreté are also at work, and the odious Agent Nichol returns. The plot is a bit of a stretch, and the many copy-editing glitches/ omissions (an ice floe is described as an ice “flow,” for example) often brought me up short.

   Imperfect, but very enjoyable.

Editorial Comment:   There are at the present time five books in the Chief Inspector Gamache series. Walter Albert reviewed Still Life, the first in the series, back here in July. Following his review, I added a list of all five books, along with a few additional cover scans.