KATHLEEN MOORE KNIGHT – Port of Seven Strangers.

Detective Book Club; hardcover reprint [3-in-1 edition], November 1945. First edition: Doubleday/Crime Club, 1945. Paperback: Armed Services Edition 1123. Reprinted in Two Complete Detective Books, No. 41, November 1946.

   This one was disappointing. In a span of 25 years, beginning in 1935 and ending in 1960, Knight wrote 30 to 35 mysteries, most under her own name, but there were a handful that appeared under her alternate byline of Alan Amos as well. The ones I remember most featured Elisha Macomber, a rustic Cape Cod selectman who did a lot of crime-solving on the side. It’s been a while, so the details escape me, but I always enjoyed them.

   Not so this one. The ingredients are all there, and it starts out in fine fashion: an all-but-deserted tourist hotel in Vera Cruz during the stormy season, partly filled with an assorted group of vacationers, plus a foursome of stranded wartime American fliers, an invalid old man unable to leave, and a young European woman named Lorel (or perhaps Elise) whose beauty draws men like moths to the proverbial flame. (*)

   The first murder happens right away, but it’s hushed up almost right away. Two are more difficult to manage: a second body is found in the room of Gail Warren from Boston, who until then had been happily sharing an almost-at-first-sight mutual attraction with Lieutenant January (one of the aforementioned fliers). The local constabulary, a stout, dark man named Sanchez, seems convinced of the lady’s guilt, which of course we (the reader) know to be complete nonsense.

   All the right stuff. Everything’s in place. Sit back and enjoy … but the plot needs some tinkering with. As it is, it just doesn’t work. Gail has the feeling that the murder was committed in the room next door (she heard a strange sound while finding her wrap). No one wonders (too much) why the body is in her room.

   Later, after she is pushed down some dark empty steps, events become even more impossible to follow: why was she abandoned with two people she does not even know, where is her aunt who has been traveling with her, who was it who killed Lorenzo (who turns out to be a parrot), and when Lorel is murdered in turn, it appears to be the last anyone thinks of her.

   It might have all been untangled, but no. Knight has a twist or two up her sleeve, and one of them just doesn’t gibe with how the events were said to have happened in Chapter One. There would be a clever way to have worked around this, one that someone named Christie could pulled off easily, but Knight seems to have missed the mark on this altogether.

   As I say, a disappointment, but given the chance to read another of her books, do you know what? I’d still grab it.

(*) Yes, I know. Clichés are supposed to be avoided like the plague.

GRIF STOCKLEY – Probable Cause.

Ivy, paperback reprint; 1st printing, December 1993. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, October 1992.

   According to the information provided inside the back cover of Probable Cause, the second of his two recorded adventures, Grif Stockley was (in 1993) “an attorney for Central Arkansas Legal Services, which was funded by the federal government to provide representation to indigents in civil cases.”

   As an author, his series character is Gideon Page, a middle-aged attorney whose first case after striking out on his own is highly is highly charged with racial overtones. And undertones, too, for that matter. His client is a black psychologist who’s accused of killing a retarded girl he was administering electric shock therapy to with a cattle prod. Why is the case so difficult? The man was having an affair with the wealthy girl’s mother, who is white.

   Large portions of this novel are taken up with detective work, but for the most part what this is an intimate, inside look at how the justice system actually works, with lots of snapshot character studies of the people who either try to make it work, or (in some cases) try to make it work on their behalf.

   Page’s life with his precocious and sensitive high school daughter (Rosa, her mother, is dead) and his platonic love affair with Rainey, a social worker at a local state hospital, are essential parts of the story, more than background matter, although not part of the case itself.

   This is the legal equivalent of a multi-faceted and well-diversified police procedural, in other words, as Page divides his time among his other clients, colleagues and adversaries, told by someone who’s been there. One suspects with some amount of surety that some of Stockley’s own clients, colleagues and adversaries may find more than a little similarities between themselves and some of the people populating this book.

   There’s very little spelled out in black and white, pun intended, including the ending, nor as to what might happen next in Gideon Page’s life. I for one will be looking eagerly for more in the local used book stores. Unaccountably, this is the only one of his adventures that I own.

   Thanks to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here are the others:

STOCKLEY, GRIF. 1944- .
      Expert Testimony. Summit Books, 1991.

      Probable Cause. Simon & Schuster, 1992.
      Religious Conviction. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
      Illegal Motion. Simon & Schuster, 1995.
      Blind Justice. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

   And if you’re interested, here’s a link for more information on Grif Stockley himself.

   Back from Michigan, that is, where a wonderful time was had by all, as expected, and back from Gary Lovisi’s paperback show in New York City yesterday. Attendance was up slightly and a lot of money seemed to be changing hands, but of course the even greater attraction was seeing and talking to many, many friends I’ve known for a long time.

   I hope none of them will feel slighted if I mention only one of them, writer and pulp historian Ron Goulart, author most recently of Cheap Thrills, a profusely illustrated history of the pulp magazines, and Good Girl Art, also profusely illustrated, and even more so. I recommend both to you very highly.

   Recent health problems kept Ron from this year’s Windy City pulp and paperback show, where he was to have been this year’s co-guest of honor. We’ve known each other for well over 30 years, and it was good to see him again.

   Lots of people asked me about the recent absence of posts on this blog. I’m still not sure in what direction I (and it) will be going next, but until I find out, I have a large backlog of reviews that need to be uploaded, and I think you’ll see one here sometime in the next few minutes.

   As I do every year, I’ll be spending Columbus Day weekend in Cadillac, the small town in Michigan where I was born and grew up. My sister and her husband still live there, and my brother and his wife drive over from London, Ontario, where they live. (I fly, and I’ll be leaving mid-afternoon today.)

   In previous years my daughter and her husband have been able to join us on occasion, driving up from Illinois, and even more often my brother’s daughter has come along with them, but this year it doesn’t look as though any of them can make it. We’ll have a good time together anyway. It’s usually the only time we see each other all year long.

   I won’t be back until late on Monday, so of necessity the blog will be quiet until then. There is also a lot happening next week back at home here as well. For some reason (a variation on Murphy’s Law, no doubt) a number of things are taking place over the span of the next few days after I’m back. This current short but scheduled hiatus, in other words, is likely to be followed by a period of scattered and intermittent postings, I’m sorry to say.

   But do, as they also say, stay tuned!

   
MERLE CONSTINER – Hearse of a Different Color. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1952. Previously serialized in Short Stories magazine as “Death on a Party Line”: July 10, July 25, August 10, Aug 25, 1946.

   In Gun in Cheek (1982), the undersigned reviewer’s humorous study of classically bad crime fiction, an entire chapter is devoted to the lending-library publisher, Phoenix Press. During the Thirties and Forties, Phoenix foisted upon an unsuspecting public some of the most godawful mysteries ever penned — scores of them, in fact.

   Not all Phoenix mysteries were horrendous, however; every now and then, whether by accident or otherwise, a pretty good one seems to have slipped out. Hearse of a Different Color falls into that rarefied category.

   Arkansas semanticist Paul Saxby comes to the backwoods town of Falksville, Tennessee, for two reasons: to study the picturesque colloquialisms of the area (?Git down and tie up, Brother Saxby; we’uns is shore hellacious proud to have you jubilating with us”), and because of a letter written to him by a local resident, Alicia Poynter, which hints at a “great and terrible crime being planned.”

   Shortly after Saxby’s arrival, at least part of that terrible crime is revealed: He finds Alicia dead of poison that mayor may not have been meant for her. Saxby’s investigation involves him with, among other colorful characters, a tough old lady named Cora Bob Wilkerson; the founder of the Caudry Burial Brotherhood; the owner of an abandoned sawmill (in the vicinity of which are all sorts of strange goings-on); and a dog with the magnificent moniker of Moonrise Blizzard the Second. More homicide — and the local sheriff, Masters ? plagues Saxby before he finally arrives at a well-clued solution.

   You should not get the impression that this is a masterpiece, however; Hearse of Another Color has its flaws (one of them being the title), and in places the story shows its pulp origins (it was originally published as a serial in Short Stories in 1946).

   Still, the unusual background is well depicted (Constiner was a native of southern Ohio and traveled extensively in the Deep South), the plotting is competent, and the writing is above average. Come to think of it, considering the general run of Phoenix mysteries, maybe this is a masterpiece ? Phoenix’s, anyway.

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

[COMMENTS]   (1) A working bibliography for Merle Constiner by Peter Ruber can be found online at the Pulp Rack website.

(2) Covers for almost all of the Phoenix Press covers can be found online here, beginning with those published in 1936.

Steve,

To mark this week’s Bouchercon mystery writers conference in Baltimore, the Baltimore Sun‘s book blog (www.baltimoresun.com/readstreet) will feature guest posts from visiting authors. Today, Austin Camacho will discuss black characters and Charles Todd writes about police procedurals. We will have three or four more author posts each day this week. Thought this might be interesting to Mystery*File‘s readers.

Regards,
Dave

Dave Rosenthal
Sunday Editor
The Baltimore Sun

ISRAEL ZANGWILL – The Big Bow Mystery.

Henry, UK, hardcover, 1892. Rand McNally, US, hardcover, 1895. (The latter is shown.) Reprinted often, either alone or in various anthologies, including the following (all shown): W.B. Conkey Company, US, hardcover, 189?   Three Victorian Detective Novels, edited by E. F. Bleiler (Dover, trade pb, 1978).  Great Detectives: A Century of the Best Mysteries, David Willis McCullough, editor (Pantheon, US, hc, 1984).

   The Big Bow Mystery opens on a frigid, foggy December morning as the Dickensian-named Mrs Drabdump, a widow letting out rooms in her home in Bow, east London, cannot get lodger Arthur Constant to open his bedroom door. She becomes so alarmed she goes to ask for help from George Grodman, a retired detective who lives a few doors down the street, and he forces the door open.

   The horrible sight within is described by the coroner as “the deceased lying back in bed with a deep wound in his throat… There was no trace of any instrument by which the cut could have been effected: there was no trace of any person who could have effected the cut. No person could apparently have got in or out.”

   Needless to say the case causes a sensation, the more so as Constant, though wealthy, was devoted to helping the working class.

   Fellow lodger and friend Tom Mortlake, a man of similar mind and “hero of a hundred strikes”, had left early that morning for Devonport Dockyard to help the dockers there. A second sensation is caused when Mortlake is arrested at the Liverpool Docks where he was making enquiries about steamers to America.

   He is released when it is learnt he was in Liverpool to seek news of a friend about whom he was uneasy. His innocence is supported by a cabby who drove him to London’s Euston Station that morning, who confirms he picked up Mortlake at about 4.30 am, well before the estimated time of Constant’s death. Even so, more doubts are raised when Mrs Drabdump reveals at the inquest that Mortlake and Constant had quarrelled the night before the latter’s death.

   The retired detective Grodman and Edward Wimp of Scotland Yard both undertake investigations and so the deciphering of The Big Bow Mystery begins. To add a bit of spice to the teacake, the men detest each other.

   In the course of a lengthy narrative we hear of Denzil Cantercot, a poet with secrets — why he gives money he’s just received to two housemaids before it’s even warm in his pocket for example — and Mortlake’s fiancee, Lucy Brent, who has apparently disappeared.

   There’s some plot padding, which is not to say the story is uneventful: Gladstone appears at an event that ends in a riot and ultimately Mortlake goes on trial for the murder of his friend. But did he really do it and if he did, how it is to be proved?

My verdict: One of the burning questions in The Big Bow Mystery is how the culprit carried out the crime, given the bedroom door was not only locked but also bolted on the inside.

   Various theories are suggested in letters to the press, including a monkey with a razor coming down the chimney, the removal and replacement of a window pane or a door panel, a culprit hiding in the wardrobe who managed to escape unnoticed when the door was broken down, and secret passages and trapdoors!

   As for the missing weapon, was it a candlestick or similar common item of bedroom furniture, fitted with a hidden blade after the fashion of a swordstick — or could the departed have been a suicide and somehow swallowed the weapon before expiring?

   After various red herrings are thrown back into the briny and trips into investigative cul de sacs are reversed, the culprit turns out to be the least likely suspect, who committed the crime for a particularly vile reason.

   The explanation of how a murder could be committed in a locked room is clever, hinging partly on the physical arrangements and partly on a psychological point, the clew to which is given in fair fashion early in the novel.

   If readers don’t mind Zangwill’s somewhat rambling and wordy style The Big Bow Mystery will be of interest. Published in the early 1890s, well before the beginning of the Golden Age, it is also said to be the earliest true example of the locked room mystery.

    http://freeread.com.au/ebooks/c00062.txt

   They died just a few months apart, forty years ago this year, and each is still considered the gold standard in his domain, Anthony Boucher in commentary on mystery fiction, Cornell Woolrich in nightmarish suspense. What did Boucher make of Woolrich and his work? I hope to address that question here.

PART I. THE NOVELS.

   Boucher’s first detective novel, The Case of the Seven of Calvary, came out in 1937; his last two, The Case of the Seven Sneezes and Rocket to the Morgue (as by H.H. Holmes), in 1942. Late in October of that year he took over as mystery critic of the San Francisco Chronicle from Edward Dermot Doyle, who had joined the military after Pearl Harbor.

   By then Woolrich had published well over a hundred crime-suspense stories in the leading pulp magazines plus his first four suspense novels: The Bride Wore Black (1940), The Black Curtain (1941), Black Alibi (1942), and Phantom Lady (1942, as by William Irish).

   Boucher was clearly familiar with Woolrich’s work before he reviewed The Black Angel, of which he said: “Even Mr. Woolrich has never written a tenser, more jolting novel….” (21 February 1943). Ten months later he described the book as a classic of the ‘school of pure terror’ and listed it among the year’s best crime novels (26 December 1943).

   Reviewing Deadline at Dawn, the second novel to appear under the William Irish byline, Boucher called it Woolrich’s “most contrived and least believable story yet, and still magically exciting almost against one’s judgment.” (5 March 1944).

   That summer he was equally ambivalent about Woolrich’s The Black Path of Fear, much of which is set in Havana. “The consciously colorful atmosphere robs this of some of the impact Woolrich can get from drab American cities, but it’s nonetheless exciting.” He was bothered however by what he called the novel’s “frank glorification of revenge-killing.” (18 June 1944)

   Woolrich published two more novels during Boucher’s years on the Chronicle. For some unknown reason he didn’t review Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1945, as by George Hopley). He did write up Waltz into Darkness (1947, as by William Irish) but I couldn’t establish that his review was ever published and therefore left it out of The Anthony Boucher Chronicles, my collection of his journalism for that paper.

   The carbon copy survives and is among his papers preserved at Indiana University’s Lilly Library. Waltz has never been one of my favorite Woolrich novels and I gather it wasn’t one of Boucher’s either. He described its protagonist Louis Durand as an “ordinarily decent man who, sexually obsessed by an unprincipled woman, sinks ever deeper into crime and destruction” but contended that Woolrich gave this theme a rather “conventional treatment, romantically betrapped and ‘redeemed’ by a sentimental conclusion.”

   On the other hand, he said, Woolrich’s “familiar skill is highly in evidence here – he can still make suspense all but unbearable, and invest the everyday with sinister terror. You won’t soon forget the scene of the real estate agent showing a prospect over the house – with the grave not yet tamped down.”

   In the last analysis however he wrote off Waltz into Darkness as “a Class A production in glorious Technicolor with a glamorous cast – as it will doubtless (and deservedly) become.” In fact Waltz was one of only three Woolrich novels of the Forties not to be adapted into a movie – in any event not until shortly after both Boucher and Woolrich died, when it became the basis of Francois Truffaut’s intriguing if not terribly Woolrichian La Sirene De Mississippi (1968), with exactly the kind of glamorous stars Boucher had predicted (Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve) in the leading roles.

   Woolrich’s last major novels, I Married a Dead Man (as by William Irish) and Rendezvous in Black, were published in 1948. By then Edward Dermot Doyle had returned to civilian life and reclaimed his slot on the Chronicle. Since Boucher hadn’t yet made his connection with the New York Times, those novels were reviewed there by others.

   Boucher did however mention Rendezvous in the first of his short-lived “Speaking of Crime” columns for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, calling it “pure black magic… – and if it’s a rewrite of his first book-form mystery story [The Bride Wore Black], who’s complaining?” (February 1949)

   Of the first three Woolrich novels published after Boucher began writing for the Times, he ignored Savage Bride (1950), a paperback original and the only one of the trio to come out under Woolrich’s own name, while another reviewer wrote up Strangler’s Serenade (1951, as by William Irish). But Boucher had much to say about Fright (1950, as by George Hopley):

    “No one could read a dozen pages … without recognizing the authentic Woolrich mastery of the terror of the everyday-gone-wrong; nor could one read all 245 pages without also recognizing the equally authentic Woolrich falsification of plot for the sake of a facile irony, with a few unexplained coincidences left over. Though this flaw constantly arises infuriatingly to prevent consideration of Woolrich as a serious novelist, there is no one mystery story writer more adept at suggesting the small uncertain terrors of life and the evil latent in drab characters. This 1915 period piece concerns a clerk goaded into murder on the morning of his wedding and forced deeper and deeper into self-destruction by his obsession to destroy the things that imperil him.” (12 February 1950)

   The last genuine novel Woolrich completed and published during his lifetime was the paperback original Death Is My Dancing Partner (1959), a disaster which Boucher mercifully never mentioned. The following year saw publication of The Best of William Irish, an omnibus volume reviving the novels Phantom Lady and Deadline at Dawn and the collection After-Dinner Story.

   Boucher was enthusiastic as only Boucher could be. “Although the complete ‘Best’ of Irish-Woolrich would run to at least three more volumes of this size, these will do as terrifying plunges into the vertiginous world of nightmare below the surface of everyday life.” (13 March 1960).

   The last Woolrich suspense novel that Boucher discussed was the first in point of time. The 1964 paperback reissue of The Bride Wore Black (1940) begins with an introduction in which the foremost mystery critic of his time (or since) summed up the achievements of the genre’s master of suspense. “He is personally something of a recluse and a mystery. No one in the profession knows him intimately, and everyone who knows him at all takes on a slightly dazed look when his name is mentioned.”

   Boucher refused on principle to summarize Bride’s plot but called it “my favorite among his book-length stories … purest essence of Woolrich, sounding like no one else in the business.”

   Coming soon:

PART II: THE STORY COLLECTIONS.

PART III: LETTERS, A CARD AND A MEETING.

NANCY PICKARD – No Body.

Pocket, paperback reprint; 1st printing, November 1987. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, October 1986.

   I can sum up one impression of this book in one short sentence: More, I think, about funeral homes than I wanted to know.

   This was the third appearance of Jenny Cain, Nancy Pickard’s first series character, and the first to be published in hardcover, the previous two being paperback originals from Avon. For the record, here’s a list of all of Jenny’s full-length cases. (There are no short stories about her, as far as I’ve been able to discover.)

      Generous Death. Avon, pb, 1984.

      Say No to Murder. Avon, pb 1985. Winner of the first Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Mystery.
      No Body. Scribner, 1986. Nominated for an Anthony.
      Marriage Is Murder. Scribner, 1987. Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel.
      Dead Crazy. Scribner, 1988. Nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony awards.
      Bum Steer. Pocket, 1990. Winner of the Agatha Award for Best Mystery Novel.
      I. O. U.  Pocket, 1991. Edgar Nominee for Best Mystery Novel, Agatha Winner for Best Mystery Novel, Macavity Winner for Best Mystery Novel.
      But I Wouldn’t Want to Die There. Pocket, 1993.
      Confession. Pocket, 1994.
      Twilight. Pocket, 1995. Nominated for an Agatha Award.

   I may have missed some of the nominations the books in the series have gathered, but even so, it’s an impressive list.

   The title of Twilight suggests that it may be the last in the series. Given that 13 years have gone by since it came out and Pickard has begun another series in the meantime (one featuring true-crime author Marie Lightfoot), Jenny may have packed up her sleuthing duties for good.

   Jenny is the director of the Port Frederick Civic Foundation, which means that she knows all the important people in a small town. Also helping to explain why he has such success in getting involved (and solving) crimes of murder is the fact that she lives with Detective Geof Bushfield of the local police department. (I don’t believe it was ever stated in No Body, but Port Frederick is in Massachusetts. While reading it, I was under the slight assumption that it was in Maryland.)

   No Body is strong on humor, but other books in the series become gradually darker, or so I’ve been led to believe. Nonetheless, I think the Jenny Cain books fall in the forefront of the cozy, malice domestic movement in which amateur detectives, most of them women, have gradually taken over the non-thriller portion of the mystery publishing world today, filled as it is with quilters, herbalists, catsitters, wedding planners and so on.

   One of Jenny’s problems to solve at this book is that of 133 missing bodies in a 19th century and now closed cemetery. But while investigating the archives of the Harbor Lights Funeral Home, a more serious current crime is committed — the body of a dead man’s secret lover is found in his cover just before it’s put to earth.

   Many of the secondary characters presumably appeared in the first two books in the series. They seem familiar enough to the author that she doesn’t feel the need to overly describe them or get them involved. For the most part they stay in the background, allowing a full focus to be placed on solving the murder. Good news, as I far as I am concerned.

   Geof is called out of town for most of the book, in fact, allowing Jenny nearly free rein in tackling the case, not always successfully, adding immensely to the comic effect. The ending is quite a spine-tingler — caused by Jenny’s not quite thinking things through — but the story becomes quite a page-turner at the conclusion, there’s no doubt about that at all.

[FOLLOW-UP.]  Who would I pick to play Jenny Cain in the movies? Maybe a younger Shirley MacLaine. As for Lew Riss, the disheveled dope-smoking local reporter with dreams of a Pulitizer (and a hopeful but unrequited yearning for Jenny), perhaps Richard Dreyfuss would do.

   In the process of cataloging my collection of western paperbacks, I’ve been putting together checklists of various authors to help let me know which ones I have and which ones I’m missing.

   I’ve done such lists for Gordon Shirreffs and Tom West, although neither one is online yet. I’ve just completed one for Doyle Trent, and I’ve just finished setting up the webpage for it. (I’ll add the other two later this month when I’m not quite so busy, and work on additional ones as time allows.)

   If you’d care to take a look, you can find Trent’s page here. It’s a work in progress. Additions and correction are most certainly welcome.

   Needless to say, I’ve added as many covers as I’ve had access to. (Even though I may have a book, it does not mean that it’s accessible.) Here are a couple of them: