Even though a new computer’s on its way, I thought I could do no harm in spending yesterday seeing if I could track down and get rid of the virus that waylaid my present one. It took a while, but to my surprise, given my lack of overall computer skills — anything beyond the basics is like magic — I think I’ve done it.

I don’t want to speak too soon, but everything’s working the way it should, and maybe this blog is back in business. When the new computer arrives, there’ll be another short break while I get it hooked up and humming, but later tonight I’m going to see about posting some of the huge backlog that’s accumulated.

Or at least that’s the plan.

As anti-virus software, Norton really let me down, first of all, for letting this last bugger in (called Zlob), and then for not knowing how to fix it. For what it’s worth, once I was able to restore my computer back to Sunday, when Firefox was still working, I was able to download a program called Spysweeper, which I used to clean out what I couldn’t eliminate manually. It found 15 viruses that Norton had missed. As I say, for what it’s worth.

   I just got back from Windy City. I went by Amtrak this year. Going from Trenton, NJ to Chicago only took an agonizing 28 hours with some delays and microwave food that I had trouble eating. Not to mention the claustophobia that kicked in when I closed the door to my sleeping car room.

   I traveled with long time pulp collector Digges La Touche and we spent the long train ride mainly reading. The last time I went to Windy City I drove for two days, but I can’t do that anymore since my eyesight is deteriorating. I’m a danger on the road for long trips or night time driving.

   I checked with Doug Ellis, and he said there were over 400 registered for the weekend and 128 tables. I spent all day each day in the dealer’s room roaming around looking through each table for pulps and artwork.

   I usually skipped lunch because I couldn’t tear myself away. However I did have breakfast and dinner each day with such great and out-of-control collectors like Nick Certo, Scott Hartshorn (Mr. Hollywood), Digges La Touche (The Human ATM Machine), Ed Hulse (the latest issue of his Blood n Thunder magazine debuted at this con and is over 100 pages!), Dave Scroggs (Pulp Librarian), Dave Kurzman, Kevin Cook, Steve Kennedy (pulp art dealer), and others too numerous to list. All these characters may not be well known to readers of this blog, but they all have enormous pulp collections.

   Bob Weinberg was there with his wife, and he has some great projects coming up. He and George Vanderburg of Battered Silicon Press are the new editors of Arkham House. I think this is great because Arkham has been a ghost of its former self the last few years. Others in attendance were Rodney Schroder, Paul Herman, Tony Tollin, Tom Roberts, Doug Ellis (thanks to you and John Gunnison for a great Convention), Rob Preston, Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, John Locke, and others.

   I spent some time talking to Frank Robinson, who looks great, and he told me several stories about his experience on the Milk movie set. He evidently got a good salary for his 17 days on the set and will be in the DVD extras. Frank warned me before one auction, “Watch out for the paper.” At first I didn’t know what he meant but as the auction progressed, I realized some the great-looking pulps looked excellent on the outside but had browning paper inside.

   Speaking of the auction, both were well attended and packed with rabid bidders. The Friday auction was mainly material from the Frank Hamilton estate, such as artwork, Shadow and Doc Savage pulps.

   The Saturday auction was of more interest, with a complete run of Weird Tales being auctioned piece by piece, 1930-1954. All were from Ray Walsh’s collection. He had the 1920’s issues at his tables. Also auctioned were many issues of The Spider, Munsey correspondence and checks, and various pieces of artwork.

   The art exhibit was stunning, packed with work by Ward and Hubert Rogers. After seeing a room full of Rogers art, I upgraded my opinion of his work. The program book was edited by Tom Roberts and at 138 pages deserves to be in all our libraries. There were several articles on Hubert Rogers, Ward, and the Spicy pulps.

   What did I actually buy? Well I went with a few thousand dollars and came back with a couple hundred. I found some pulp wants like Dime Mystery, Western Story, Far West, Street and Smith’s Detective Story.

   I also came home with many pieces of art including an Arkham House dust jacket by Herb Arnold, The Watcher Out of Time, a Detective Fiction Weekly pulp cover from the mid 1930’s, a Two Fisted Tales cover by Severin, ten illustrations by Potter from a Arkham House anthology, a Cartier illustration, and several pieces of “Outsider” art by an unknown artist who evidently submitted the pieces to Castle of Frankenstein magazine but never got them back.

   There must be something bad I can say about this convention, but no, I can’t think of a single criticism. Well maybe I can gripe about not being able to see Ed Hulse’s film program, but that’s my fault becuse I can’t drag myself away from the dealer’s room and auction.

   So after four days and nights of pulps, pulps, and more pulps, I headed back to Chicago’s Union Station and caught the 7:00 pm Amtrak. Fortunately this time the food was cooked and not microwaved, plus they had a nice lounge and bar car where you could sit and watch the scenery. This time no claustophobia! I took a xanex, closed the door to the tiny room and got more sleep than I did at the pulp show.

   Next thing on the horizon is Pulpfest! All members of this group should support it either by attending or sending in a supporting membership. Since this is the first of the new pulp shows, it must have our support in order to survive and prosper. We don’t want to wake up one day and face a world with no dealers’ room! Mark these days on your calendars, July 31, August 1 and August 2, 2009. See you there!!

There’s some sort of virus or a “rogue anti-spyware” thingy on my computer that makes Firefox iffy and has shut down Explorer completely. I have a backlog of posts for this blog that I’ve been working on, and I can still receive and send email, but until this junk is cleaned out of wherever it it, there’ll be a another short period of quiet here, I’m sorry to say.

I’ll be back as soon as I can!

[UPDATE] An hour or so later, from my wife’s computer. Firefox is gone, and Eudora is getting temperamental. This is going to be longer than I thought.

[UPDATE #2.] 05-05-09. The computer’s a goner. I’ll be ordering a new one this afternoon, but this “vacation” I’m on is going to last another week or so before things are in order and I’m set to roll again. It’s been frustrating, aggravating, and total waste of time dealing with this, to say the least.

[UPDATE #2A.] Later the same day. I was way wrong on my previous estimate of when the new computer can be delivered. Then of course comes the dreaded part of loading the software and all of the other luxuries of computing we’ve discovered that we, collectively, cannot live without.

The bad news is that it will be three weeks, not “another week or so.”

If I were to post reviews and so on without cover images, and add them in later, maybe I can avoid going nearly a month without posts. It won’t be easy, as the major portion of this operation is all the way upstairs, and I’m down here a level on the othe side of the house, but it can be done. I’ll have to do some thinking about it.

In the meantime, I am not lacking for things to do — like doing some spring cleaning around here.

That’s last spring, mind you.

MATT WITTEN – Breakfast at Madeline’s.

Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1999.

   I don’t what the following data signifies, probably nothing, since a book’s sales ranking on Amazon can fluctuate wildly. There are so many books listed there, all in competition with each other, and except for the top 100 or so, all so closely packed together, they should called tied. One sale and the ranking can go up by a million, just like that.

   In any case, as a writer of mystery novels, all of Matt Witten’s books are out of print, but as of tonight (01 May 2009) two of them are doing awfully well. (Relatively speaking, of course. Also note that rankings go down as far as the seven millions.) The fellow doing the sleuthing in all four is a struggling screenwriter living in Sarasota Springs NY named Jacob Burns:

         The Jacob Burns mysteries –

      Breakfast at Madeline’s. Signet, pbo, May 1999. Amazon.com Sales Rank: #172,411
      Grand Delusion. Signet, pbo, Jan 2000. Sales Rank: #1,700,960

      Strange Bedfellows. Signet, pbo, Nov 2000. Sales Rank: #172,444
      The Killing Bee. Signet, pbo, Nov 2001. Sales Rank: #1,601,905

   I’ve read only this first one, Breakfast at Madeline’s, so I don’t know what the future holds for Jacob Burns, but I’d better take back the “struggling” part of the description above. He’s struck oil, figuratively speaking, Hollywood style, having just earned a million dollars for doing the screen adaption for an “epic” called Gas, about “deadly fumes seeping out of the earth’s core after an earthquake and threatening to destroy the entire population of San Francisco.”

   One thing I do know, is that there are four books in the series, and there isn’t likely to be any more, not right away anyway. Matt Witten is not a big name on the tip of the general public’s collective tongue, but right now he’s certainly a big man in high-rise Hollywood circles, and that’s what counts. Writing mystery paperback originals is not anything he’s going to need to do for a long time to come:

   Credits on IMDB since 2002: Producer or supervising producer for CSI: Miami, JAG, House M.D., Supernatural, Women’s Murder Club and Medium.

   If you see what I mean. Witten is probably still a nice guy, though, since Jacob Burns, his leading character certainly is, and guys who aren’t so nice would find it, I suspect, awfully hard to create characters who really are. Nice, that is. And still living in Sarasota Springs NY.

   Burns is also happily married, and even though he comes awfully close to straying in this book, he says no and walks away, just before the point of no return. Burns also has two lovable little boys named (well, nicknamed) Gretzy and Babe Ruth, with whom he has a lot of fun, and likewise the same.

   Dead is an old man who hung out at Madeline’s Espresso Bar, a loner who spent most of his time scribbling on paper but known to all of the usual habitues, artsy types all, most of them members of the Sarasota Council Arts Councils and whom seem to get all of the available grant money, but Donald Penn (the dead man), no.

   Just before he died, Penn gave Burns the key to a safety deposit box, and inside? That’s the story, and all of the aforementioned artsy types want to know, too.

   Told in a friendly but wise-ass sort of way, there are probably too many F-words used for this to properly be called a cozy, but it is anyway. At least there’s no graphic violence, as long as you don’t count all of Jacob Burns’ very narrow escapes. There’s only a small amount of actual detection involved, but (come to think of it) there’s enough to form the basis of a pretty good TV series out of Burns’ adventures.

   I wonder if Matt Witten knows anyone who might be interested.

   I’ve received this inquiry in this afternoon’s email. I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of Philip MacDonald on one of his book jackets, but so far I haven’t come across it. I found this one on the Internet, but this is the one that Charles already has. Anyone else?

   My name is Charles Seper, and I’m currently working on a film documentary of Philip MacDonald’s author grandfather — George MacDonald. I intend to make mention of Philip in the movie also.

   My problem is finding a good photograph of him. The only one I’ve managed to procure thus far is very small and of poor quality. Do you by any chance know of any?

   Philip was often asked to speak at various Hollywood functions, so I know there must be a good photo of him somewhere. I also know he wrote many books that I haven’t yet read, so I thought perhaps you might have one which has a picture of the author on the cover.

    If you have any idea where I might find a photo I would much appreciate it.

         Sincerely,

           Charles Seper

CAPTAIN THUNDER. Warner Brothers, 1930. Fay Wray, Victor Varconi, Charles Judels, Robert Elliott, Don Alvarado, Robert Emmett Keane. Director: Alan Crosland.

   It was “Captain’s Day” one day last week on TCM. This one followed Captain Applejack which I watched and commented on a couple of days ago, with several more taped and ready to be watched as soon as I’m able, including Captain Blood, which is first movie I remember watching as a kid, when I was perhaps six or seven years old.

   Many of the other movies in this grouping, which were shown all day, seem to have been newly recovered from the vaults, but if so, this one may as well go back in. It does feature Fay Wray, whom I can watch in anything, as this movie has proven, but it has little else going for it that would prompt more than the slightest recommendation.

   Not only does Fay Wray have a leading role, but the very first time we see her, she’s in a very skimpy slip and little else, a fact worth both pointing out and explaining.

   Captain Thunder, a Mexican bandit raising havoc with the forces of the utterly inept and totally comical El Commandante Ruiz (Charles Judels), has previously robbed the stagecoach in which she was coming into town, and part of the tribute demanded was the outer clothing of all its passengers. (And perhaps the driver and the fellow riding shotgun as well. I should go back and look. I was distracted at the time.)

   El Capitan Thunder is played most boisterously by Victor Varconi, a Hungarian playing a Mexican in this movie. His career began in the silents back in his homeland, starting in 1913, and as is often the case with many early talking films, some actors did not at first understand that less is sometimes more.

   Be that as it may, Captain Thunder’s credo is that he will keep all of the promises he makes, which puts him in a quandary when one he makes to the slim and supremely beautiful Ynez Dominguez (Fay Wray) runs headlong into one he makes to the evil Pete Morgan (Robert Elliott), a strutting gent with eyes on Ynez himself, although she is about to marry another. Much booing and hissing expected here.

   Fay Wray’s career survived this pre-King Kong film, I’m happy to say, and surprisingly enough, so did Victor Varconi’s, who had many small parts and supporting roles through the early 1950s. Director Alan Crosland died in 1936 at the age of only 41, but before that, he was at the helm of a couple of Perry Mason movies, and The White Cockatoo (1935), a film based on a pretty good mystery novel by Mignon G. Eberhart.

Introduction: David Hume was the primary pen name of J(ohn) V(ictor) Turner, 1900-1945, an English author of several dozen mystery and detective novels not only under his own name and as Hume, but also as Nicholas Brady.

   He has come up for discussion several times on this blog, the first being this review I wrote of Requiem for Rogues. This post also contains a complete bibliography for Mr. Turner, taken from Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.

   This followup post discusses several of Mr. Turner’s many series characters as well as a little more about his life, accumulated from several sources, including a portrait of him taken from the back cover of one of his books.

   One additional post included more on Mr. Turner, with quite a bit of information provided by Bill Pronzini. Also announced was the creation of a webpage to display the covers of many of Mr. Turner’s books, found here.

   These posts are all two years old, so by all means go back and (re)read them before continuing. Last Monday, I received an email from Judith Gavin, who said “John Victor Turner, was the middle of the three brothers, in a family of six children. My Grandmother was married to the oldest brother.” She also provided me with several paragraphs of information about Mr. Turner, aka David Hume.

   Since some of what she included in her first email was perhaps not sufficiently verified to be placed online, Judith has kindly rewritten it and has agreed to allow me to post the following in its stead:

   John Victor Turner was one of six children, and the second of three boys in a family who moved to Stone in Staffordshire, having previously lived in the Wythenshaw area of Manchester. (There seems to be no record of why the family moved from Manchester to Stone.)

   The three Turner boys were Alfred, John (but the family usually referred to him as Jack as much as they called him John, the two names were interchangeable most of the time) and the youngest son was Joseph Turner, Joe to all the family.

   Alfred, the eldest son went to the War front on his 16th birthday and although he survived he was devastated by shell shock, the shadows of which gripped him throughout his life leaving him unable to hold down regular employment and making drink a constant companion.

   The second son, writer John Victor, would have been 16 in 1916 (his service years and regiment have yet to be confirmed). He secured employment on a local paper in Warwick (or it may be Stoke, to be confirmed) then several years later travelled to work in London as crime reporter on The Daily Herald Newspaper in Fleet Street where it is true that he was known for his network of associates, his contacts in the criminal underworld going regularly to live along side them.

   It is probable, however, that few of his underworld contacts knew that he had a younger brother, Joseph, who had also travelled to live and work in London – as a police officer, eventually rising to a senior rank in Scotland Yard.

   John Victor (Jack) married twice. His first wife, with whom he had a daughter, died when she drowned in the canal in Stone,

   (Details of names of first wife etc to follow when clarified further.) It was many years later when he married again, to a woman believed to be originally from Scotland, and they had a son. (Again details of name etc to follow when clarified further.)

   The timing of JV Turner’s death in 1945 may have caused some to speculate that he may have sustained injuries in the Second World War. This was not the case. The cause of death has always been rather glossed over as something of a mystery in the family, not because it was thought to be sinister or suspicious, or heroic, but because it may have been linked to TB which was “hushed up” by the family partly because it was notifiable and contagious, but also as it was associated with poor living conditions etc.

   The above information was supplied by my mother, Mrs Ann Hume Gregory (Nee Turner), daughter of Flora May Turner, (Nee Tully) who was married to the eldest Turner son, Alfred, before they separated in 1950. Flora May Turner (Nee Tulley) was also a first cousin to the Turner brothers.

SUPER-SLEUTH.   RKO Radio Pictures, 1937. Jack Oakie, Ann Sothern, Eduardo Ciannelli, Alan Bruce, Edgar Kennedy, Joan Woodbury. Director: Benjamin Stoloff. Shown at Cinevent 20, Columbus OH, May 1988.

   Jack Oakie plays a popular film sleuth who tries to repeat his success on screen in an off-screen mystery, abetted by studio publicist Ann Sothern (trying to cover up his almost constant mishandling of his amateur sleuthing).

   Edgar Kennedy was good as James Gleason’s flat-footed assistant in the delightful Murder on the Blackboard, the second of the Hildegarde Withers/Inspector Piper collaborations with Edna Mae Oliver (1934), shown earlier in the day, but he was even better in Super-Sleuth.

   For once, Kennedy comes off as a sympathetic, even competent professional undone by an incompetent amateur, even though the bumbling “Edgar” character lurks somewhere not too far from the surface.

   The heavy is Eduardo Cianelli, the unforgettable “assassin” of Gunga Din, and the comic/suspenseful climax has a wax museum as the perfect setting for the conclusion of a film about on- and off-screen detecting.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   My usual sources have come up dry as far as finding suitable images to show you. Even more unexpectedly, the movie itself has proven to be elusive, although not impossible to find in the usual collector-to-collector markets. The photo of Edgar Kennedy, a standard publicity shot, source unknown, is not from Super-Sleuth, or at least I’m fairly sure it’s not.        — Steve

DAVID ANTHONY – The Organization. Coward McCann, hardcover, 1970. Paperback reprint: Pocket, 1972.

    David Anthony’s Stud Game (reviewed by Steve Lewis in the previous post) was nominated for an Edgar as best paperback mystery of 1978. The Organization is an earlier episode in the life of the same main character, professional gambler and part-time private eye Stanley Bass.

   And it’s quite an episode. While reading it I was reminded very much of the 1950s paperbacks of Charles Williams, the ones in which a man becomes involved with a woman who in one way or another gets him into a situation from which there seems to be no escape.

   I don’t make this comparison to Williams lightly, because I really admire his work. The ending, while perhaps not as ironic as those achieved by Williams, still leaves Bass with very little.

   The story? A beautiful woman wants to kill Bass’s tennis friend, Jack Prince, a man with mob connections. Bass meets her and tries to dissuade her. He does so by coming up with a way to get Prince’s own bosses to do him in.

   But things go awry and Bass finds himself hunted by both the police and the organization for a number of things which he didn’t do. But who did do them? The answer isn’t as easy as it first seems, and Bass has the devil of a time getting out of the mess he’s gotten into. How he does so makes a fine hardboiled tale.

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

ANTHONY, DAVID. Pseudonym of William Dale Smith, 1929-1986.

    The Midnight Lady and the Mourning Man. Bobbs-Merrill, hc, 1969; Warner, pb, 1973. [Morgan Butler] Film: Universal, 1974, as The Midnight Man.

    The Organization. Coward McCann, hc, 1970; Pocket, pb, 1972. [Stanley Bass]
    Blood on a Harvest Moon. Coward McCann, hc, 1972; no pb edition. [Morgan Butler]
    Stud Game. Pocket Books, pbo, 1978 [Stanley Bass]
    The Long Hard Cure. Collins, UK, hc, 1979 [Morgan Butler]

DAVID ANTHONY – Stud Game. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1978.

   I like mysteries that have titles with two meanings, but believe it or not, this one has three! (1) Stan Bass, who for a friend undertakes a job normally performed by private detectives, is in his own words by profession a gambler. The book opens with an impressive bit of bluff-calling that closes out a “friendly” game of poker. (2) The dead man with a solidly satisfying marriage to a wife in San Francisco is not totally immune to playing a role with the starlet beauties of Los Angeles. (3) One of the starlets gets pregnant on cue, and she calls upon the widow for assistance.

   A long and complicated detective story develops, but I fear that at 256 pages, it’s too much of the former for its own good. The plot mixes the usual ingredients with some freshness; the writing is only adequate.

[UPDATE] 04-29-09. For what it’s worth, and I’d say quite a bit, Kevin Burton Smith thinks that Sam Bass was close enough to being a private eye as to include him on his Thrilling Detective website. Bass only had two recorded adventures, this one and another one.

   I wish I remembered more about this book, but other than what I wrote 30 years ago, I’m drawing a complete blank. You know as much as I do, in other words. Regarding my opinion of this book that it’s only about average, there are two big reasons why I think I ought to read it again, if I had the chance. See the next post.

   You’ll find a complete bibliography for David Anthony there, too.