FIVE GOLDEN HOURS. 1961. Ernie Kovacs, Cyd Charisse, George Sanders. Director: Mario Zampi.

   Even though American comedian Ernie Kovacs was a great favorite of mine, he’s not the primary reason for watching this very slight comedy caper of a film made by a largely British crew, and after him, you have no guesses left at all.

   Kovacs, of course, was much better known for his work on television, but who knows what sort of success in the movies he might have had, had it not been for his fatal automobile accident in January, 1962. He made only one additional film, a wacky comedy called Sail a Crooked Ship, which premiered just before his death and remains fondly in my memory as a Very Funny Movie.

   Perhaps I should leave it there — in my memory, that is — as perhaps I should find it not nearly as side-splitting today as when I was a mere lad barely out of my teens. His mugging in Five Golden Hours is exactly how I remember him, and yet — I barely cracked more than a smile. Subtle, I don’t imagine he ever was.

   He’s an assistant funeral director in Italy, you see, and what you might call a professional pallbearer, offering his abundant sympathies to bereaved widows for accommodation and reward: three of them — widows, that is — at the beginning of this movie.

   Enter the Baroness Sandra (Cyd Charisse), having just lost her fifth husband, and about to be evicted from her small castle of her home. Enter Aldo Bondi, whose charm seems surprisingly (to him) ineffective. Until, that is, the Baroness decides that she may have a use for him after all.

   All is not what it seems. Her latest husband had had a scheme, something to do with the five hours difference in time between financial centers on the continent and New York City, but as the scheme did not work out according to plan, the aforementioned creditors are beginning to circle around.

   Aldo gladly offers to help. The lady, that is, not the creditors. Enter the rich widows who have most recently been supporting him. Exit the Baroness.

   And then, at last, the twists in the plot begin, including an abortive (but funny) attempt at murder. Take George Sanders, for example, whom I have not mentioned before now, as there was no need to, as he does not show up until very nearly the next to the last reel, and then in only one room, the one in the mental institution where … just before one widow … and Bondi has to go off to the monastery where … I told you there were twists, didn’t I?

   Too bad that they’re not very interesting ones, and none of them bring Cyd Charisse back on the set for more than another small glimpse or two. What a waste of on-screen talent. They really should have filmed this movie in color, too. Who wants to see the grand Italian countryside in black-and-white?

  Steve:

   I was pleased to see your posting on Richard Ellington. In addition to being one of my favorite P.I. writers of the late 40s and early 50s, I got to know him personally in the mid 70s when he submitted a story to an MWA anthology Joe Gores and I were editing. The story, “Goodbye, Cora,” which is set on St. Thomas, appears in Tricks and Treats (Doubleday, 1976) and was Ellington’s last published fiction.

   Duke, as everyone called him for the obvious reason, did indeed own and operate a small hotel on St. John, located on Gallows Point in Cruz Bay. The hotel is still there, though the new owners have expanded it into an upscale resort to take advantage of spectacular sunset and ocean views.

   Marcia and I had the pleasure of staying at the Gallows Point Resort during a combination vacation and research trip five years ago. The restaurant there is called Ellington’s, no doubt as a tribute to Duke and his wife Kay.

   The work involved in running a hotel is the reason he did very little writing during the last three decades of his life. Though he did mention in a letter that he’d been working on his autobiography off and on for many years, chronicling his life as a soldier, theatre and radio actor, radio announcer, radio and mystery writer, and hotel owner. The rather unwieldy title was Fathead, or “The Story of a Man Born the Year World Changed and Who is Now Going Like Sixty.” As far as I know, he never finished it. More’s the pity.

   After Gores and I took “Goodbye, Cora” for Tricks and Treats, Duke invited us and our then wives down to Gallows Point for a free week’s lodging. We’d planned to accept, but for one reason and another the plans failed to materialize; so I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person. More’s the pity on that score, too. If he was anything like his letters, which I still have, he must have been quite a raconteur.

   Attached is a photo of Ellington, from the back of the Exit for a Dame dust jacket.

JOANNE FLUKE – Strawberry Shortcake Murder.

Kensington; paperback reprint, February 2002. Hardcover first edition: Kensington, March 2001.

   By sheer happenstance — a fluke of luck, you might say [*] — I discovered that Joanne Fluke has had quite a varied writing career. She seems to have started out writing horror novels, beginning in the early 1980s: books with titles like The Stepchild, Video Kill, and so on. Then as Jo Gibson she began writing young adult novels in much the same vein: Slay Bells, My Bloody Valentine and more.

   As “Kathryn Kirkwood” in the late 1990s she began to branch out in an altogether different direction: regency romances. And two years ago she seems to found her forte with the first in her Hannah Swenson mystery series, The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

   This is the second, with the third already out in hardcover, and if these books don’t at least make you hungry — recipes included — nothing will. Hannah runs a cookie shop in snowbound Lake Eden, Minnesota. Fluke makes it sound like a small town, and the way things are going, in a few more books, it will be even smaller. (Trend analysis at work.)

   When the local basketball coach is found murdered after his last-minute substitution as a judge for a TV cooking contest, Hannah and her non-lookalike sister go snooping after the killer, even though Hannah’s boy friend (a cop) and Andrea’s husband (also a cop) do their best to discourage them.

   A cozy sort of mystery novel, as comfortable as scarves and old shawls. Most of the appeal lies in the people, Hannah’s friends, relatives and neighbors, which constitutes 90% of the population of Lake Eden. The detective work is minor — there is an interval of time during which almost every reader will simply be screaming (non-verbally) for the obvious to dawn on Hannah and her sister.

   Even so, it’s a fun read, to coin a phrase, and I think Fluke has something good going for her.

[*]   I confess. Not luck at all. On page 181 of the paperback edition, the Lake Eden Regency Romance Club re-enacts a scene from one of Kathryn Kirkwood’s (unpublished?) regency romance novels. You can’t read this without at least cracking a smile.

[UPDATE] 07-02-08. I’m not very good at predicting track records of authors, but I was right this time. Just over six years later, there are now ten books and one novella in the series, and I don’t think Hannah Swenson will run out of recipes anything soon:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (2000)

Strawberry Shortcake Murder (2001)

Blueberry Muffin Murder (2002)

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (2003)

Fudge Cupcake Murder (2004)

Sugar Cookie Murder (2004)

Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)

Cherry Cheesecake Murder (2006)

Key Lime Pie Murder (2007)

Candy Cane Murder (2007) (a novella included in Candy Cane Murder;
   other authors: Laura Levine & Leslie Meier)

Carrot Cake Murder (2008)

WADSWORTH CAMP – The Abandoned Room.  Doubleday Page & Co., US, hardcover, 1917.  Hardcover reprints: W. R. Caldwell: The International Adventure Library, Three Owls Edition, n.d. (this is the edition shown); A. L. Burt, n.d.   Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1919.  Silent film: Jans, 1920, as Love Without Question (scw: Violet Clark; dir: B. A. Rolfe; with Olive Tell as Katherine, James Morrison as Robert Blackburn, Mario Majeroni as Silas Blackburn, and Ivo Dawson as Carlos Paredes, the “Panamanian Sherlock Holmes”).

   How was the murder accomplished in a room with both doors locked on the inside and the windows too high for someone to climb in without warning the occupant? Were what one character firmly believed were psychic forces at work in The Abandoned Room?

   The Abandoned Room begins with an account of the discovery of the body of Silas Blackburn in that very bedroom, long shunned because of its history of family members dying there from various types of injury to the head. And this death was after Silas had been going around terrified out of his wits, but refusing to say why he was afraid or indeed who or what it was he feared.

   Silas is the grandfather of cousins Katherine (who lives with him) and Bobby, who has been having what Camp politely calls a “lively life” in New York and is thus about to be cut out of his grandfather’s will, which otherwise would have left him a million or so with which to be even livelier.

   As the story backtracks about 24 hours, Bobby and his good friend, the lawyer Hartley Graham, are talking at their club. Hartley is trying to persuade Bobby to give up his fast ways and go and see his grandfather at The Cedars, a lonely and eerie tumble-down country house.

   Bobby agrees to do so but is prevented from catching the vital 12.15 train by a dinner appointment with Carlos Paredes, who brings along theatrical dancer Maria. Lawyer Graham strongly disapproves of Carlos, that “damned Panamanian”, and after reminding Bobby he has to catch his train leaves in disgust.

   Next morning Bobby wakes up with his shoes off in a decrepit old house near The Cedars with no recollection of how he got there or indeed anything that happened after his dinner with Carlos and Maria the night before. Ashamed to be seen by his grandfather and cousin in crumpled evening dress and somewhat dazed condition he hoofs it for the railway station to return to New York.

   On his way to the station he is met by county detective Howells, who more or less accuses Bobby of doing away with his grandfather in order to prevent the threatened changing of the will. Told to go to The Cedars to await events, Bobby finds his friend Graham already there and not long after Carlos shows up and invites himself to stay. It is a testament to their good breeding they do not tell him to be off although at times the reader will do the job for them.

   What follows is a rich stew of events, including strange happenings in the candle-lit dwelling, haunting cries in the surrounding woods and outside the house, suggestions of ghostly presences infesting the decaying mansion, a woman in black glimpsed in the woods, and Bobby’s growing fear he somehow entered the locked room and murdered his grandfather in a drugged haze.

   A tightening net of suspicion seems sure to bring him to trial for the crime. When one of his monogrammed hankies is found under the bed in which his grandfather died and his evening shoes fit a footprint under the window, it looks really bad for him — and he cannot summon any memories of the missing hours to his own defence.

My verdict: I really enjoyed this novel and thought the descriptions of the unhappy house and its run down grounds were excellent. The suggested supernatural element is conveyed beautifully, making this a work that would have made a wonderful Hitchcock film, in particular because of a terrific shock near the end when the explanation begins to be revealed.

   If nothing else this old dark mansion mystery demonstrates that on the whole monogrammed hankies are probably best avoided. And how was the crime accomplished? The method is prosaic enough, but with a little twist from numerous similar explanations.

      Etext: http://www.munseys.com/disktwo/abroomdex.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY:  Taken from Part 19 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

CAMP, (CHARLES) WADSWORTH. 1879-1936. Born in Philadelphia PA. A journalist, writer and foreign correspondent whose lungs were said to have been damaged by exposure to mustard gas during World War I. Father of writer Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007, q.v. Author of six titles included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below. [Films based on these books are omitted from this entry.]

      The Abandoned Room. Doubleday, hc, 1917. Jarrolds, UK, hc, 1919.

      The Communicating Door. Doubleday, hc, 1923. Story collection (ghost tales).

      -The Forbidden Years. Doubleday, hc, 1930.

      The Gray Mask. Doubleday, hc, 1920. SC: Jim Garth. Setting: New York. Collection of seven connected novelets, untitled. “Mystery novel of a detective who falls in love with the chief of police’s daughter.”

      The House of Fear. Doubleday, hc, 1916. Hodder, UK, hc, 1917. Setting: New York; theatre. Also published as: Last Warning (Readers Library, 1929).

      _The Last Warning. Readers Library, UK, hc, 1929. See: The House of Fear (Doubleday, 1916)

      Sinister Island. Dodd Mead, hc, 1915. Setting: Louisiana.

   Dave Dresser came to town, a fresh breeze blowing out of the West. Breeze? Better say gale. Maybe, hurricane. Known to his readers as Brett Halliday, he wrote the popular hardback series featuring tough Miami private-eye, Mike Shayne.

   Dave had my name as chairman of the Pulp Section of the Author’s Guild, and he looked me up at our apartment at 110 East 38th Street. So different in surface ways, we vibed from that first hard hand-clasp and eye-flash contact. I’m low-key; I don’t make waves except as a last resort. Dave would make waves on a sunny-day millpond. He made big waves bigger everywhere.

   More than any other series writer I have known, Dave identified with his bigger-than-life storybook character, Michael Shayne. Shayne was lean and spare – a hard-bitten guy addicted to conflict. Tough and turbulent, but coming on amazingly gentle sometimes, sensitive and understanding. Ruggedly honest. As personal as you can get in your reactions to things. Nothing was as act-of-God to Shayne. Everything was an act-of somebody, and if it was a heedless or hostile act, somebody better look out. A direct action man, Shayne stormed around and got things done – if not in one way, then in another.

   Same with Dave.

   Mike Shayne put away a bottle of Martell cognac a day. So did Dave. They both woke up in the morning chipper as a young robin, head cocked for the dew-fresh worm. (The Martell people sent Dave a case of it one time in appreciation of the promotion he was giving their product in the Shayne novels.)

   Volatile was the word for Dave. One time at a party far long in alcoholic liberation I called him that. Volatile. I didn’t think it was a bad word. But Dave glared and hauled his fist back.

    “Did anybody ever land one hard on the end of your overhung jaw, Johnny?”

   (For the record, he didn’t.)

   When I first met Dave, his Michael Shayne was selling millions of copies. Shayne was one of the most successful detective series characters ever launched. And yet it was rejected by 22 publishers. They cited all kinds of reasons, from their opinion that the so-called hard-boiled school of mystery fiction had run its course and was dead, dead, dead, to just plain “unsaleable as written.” (Today, children’s book publishers are quite generally claiming that dinosaur books are “dead” – while teachers and librarians emphatically state they’re the liveliest titles on the racks.)

   In November 1951 a new writer’s magazine came out: REPORT TO WRITERS. Dave had an article about his series character in the first issue: “The Hard Times of Michael Shayne.” Before 1936 he had been doing half a dozen romance novels a year for the drugstore circulating-library trade. At $250 a book – no royalties.

   Then he wrote his first Shayne manuscript: Dividend on Death. It kicked around for several years before Henry Holt bought it. Holt printed five Shayne titles. None of them sold more than 3000 copies in hardback, with an unimpressive pick-up on a couple of titles in paperback reprint.

   Henry Holt bowed out.

   Dave pushed the titles around to half a dozen other publishers, and finally Dodd Mead bought. From the time the first Shayne novel appeared, it was a dozen years before it was making much money for anybody.

   Now it was roaring – so successful that Dave decided to do his own printing. Dodd Mead, after a lot of filling and hawing, apparently figured that part of the profit was better than no profit, and agreed to continue circulating the series.

   Dave put the books together and presented the complete package, jacket and all, to a printer. As I recall, he told me it cost him something like 32 cents to get a copy of the finished book off the presses. They sold in the hardback edition at $2.50. The novels were published under the Torquil imprint.

   Torquil was the name of Dave’s dog.

THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER. Hammer Films, 1962. Kerwin Mathews, Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Glenn Corbett, Marla Landi, Michael Ripper, Peter Arne, Oliver Reed, Marie Devereux. Screenwriters: John Hunter & John Gilling, based on a story by Jimmy Sangster. Director: John Gilling.

   Hammer is known mostly for their horror films, of course, but over the course of the years, they did many other kinds of movies, including noir — I have several on tap to watch, and you’ll see them reviewed here soon enough, I hope — and action-adventure films, such as this one. I even had to create a new category for it, as I’m sure you’ve already have noted.

   There’s no “crime” involved in pirate films, per se, except of course, piracy is a crime, and a rather glamorous one at that, movie style. Another small crime of sorts is that this is a pirate film without any boats in it, except stock footage at the beginning and the end, and hardly any water.

   Blame this on small, tight budgets that the production people at Hammer had to work under, but worked wonders, they did. There are basically only four sets: the exterior of the tropical village on an island where a group of 17th century Huguenots have settled, fleeing religious persecution; the interior of their primary meeting place; a small jungle surrounding the compound, complete with one river leading to the sea; and a gravel pit doing double duty as a site for a penal colony.

   And in spite of financial considerations, the movie is beautifully photographed in color, and populated as if with a cast of thousands, although in reality there may have been perhaps no more than 40 or 50 involved.

   Where this island actually is is not explicitly stated, although you (the viewer) are supposed to believe that it is somewhere in the Caribbean and one that has not been discovered by anyone else. Let me get back to river, though, for a minute. Whenever it’s convenient for plot line purposes, the river is filled with hungry, ferocious piranha fish. Piranha fish and quicksand, that’s what I remember of jungle epics when I was a kid. I thought there was going to be quicksand in one scene in this movie, but apparently I was wrong. Too bad. They missed one there.

   On to the story line. If there’s a moral to the story, it’s that groups fleeing religious persecution quickly revert to the tactics of their enemies, and quickly become religious zealots themselves. Jonathon Standing (Kerwin Matthews) is the son of one of the village’s board of selectmen (you might say), but that does him no good when he’s convicted of adultery and sentenced to hard labor at the aforementioned penal colony.

   From which he eventually escapes, only to land in the hands of Captain LaRoche (Christopher Lee) and his men. Here, taken from the audio commentary for the film, is author Jimmy Sangster‘s original description of the man:

   Sangster, whose voice is one of those we hear, admits that he had Lee in mind for the part from the very beginning. Dressed all in black, with a patch over his left eye, Lee is one of those actors who commands the the viewer’s attention film from the moment we very most see him.

   Another moral of the story. Don’t make deals with pirates. They don’t keep their end of the bargain. Never have, never will. I’ve known that ever since I was eight years old. Too bad that Jonathan Standing doesn’t.

   The plot could have about as easily served for a good old-fashioned western melodrama, and I shall refrain from saying very much more about it. (Did Hammer Films ever make westerns? Probably not, but if you were to say yes, how surprised would I be? Not very much at all.)

   But I do want to mention one highlight of the film for me — a blindfolded swordfight to the death between two of the pirates, played by Peter Arne and Oliver Reed (the latter, as intense as usual, seen above). Whether choreographed or ad lib, it’s completely over the top, and it was worth the price of admission to me right then and there. (Surprisingly enough, the commentators stop talking to watch, but they say nothing as to how it came to be done.)

   I’d also like to point out a job well done by Michael Ripper, who plays a henchman named Hench (a nice touch). Ripper usually played bartenders, innkeepers, coachmen and grave robbers in Hammer films. This time it was a much larger part, worthy of his talents, and more — he looks as though he’s enjoying himself immensely.

   But is the movie worthy of your time? I enjoyed it, and if you’ve read this far, you very well may too. Vince Keenan tells me that the second movie on this disk, The Devil-Ship Pirates, also with Christopher Lee, is the better of the two. I won’t dispute that, yet. As soon as I feel like watching another pirate movie, I know exactly which one it will be.

R. CHETWYND-HAYES – The Psychic Detective. London: Robert Hale, hardcover, 1993.

   The psychic detective is Frederica (“Fred”) Masters, a young woman both phenomenally endowed with looks and psychic powers, who hooks up with an occult specialist, who convinces her that he can help her “achieve her potential.” He does, with results that almost destroy both of them, as they venture into twilight zone realms where no sane person goes.

   The jacket sports the information that the book is to be a Hammer Film, a promise that was never fulfilled, to my knowledge. It’s just as well, since this is a far-fetched, pseudo-humorous caper that strains the imagination and collapses under its own weight. This won’t go on my short shelf of novels featuring psychic sleuths.

[COMMENT] 06-29-08.    R. Chetwynd-Hayes, who was born in 1919 and died in 2001, was a British author and anthologist known best for his ghost stories and tales of “sedate” horror.

   Although the two are not identified as series characters in Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, I’ve discovered that Francis St. Clare and his assistant Frederica Masters appeared in eight short stories besides this novel. I’ve not yet been able to identify them all; any assistance would be welcome.    —Steve

[UPDATE] 07-13-08.   Thanks to Jerry House and the comment he left as a first step in putting a list together of the Francis St. Clare–Frederica Masters short stories.

   Doing a little more searching on the Internet, I’ve come up with the following list. John Llewellyn Probert is the person who did the research. All credit goes to him.

   Unredeemed male chauvinists will tell you that woman’s place is in a castle — preferably one depicted with a single light shining. Yet, the Gothic form lends itself to considerably more variety than that. There is the domestic variety in which the setting is an ordinary house, and the heroine’s tribulations have nothing to do with mysterious strangers wandering the moors.

   Ursula Curtiss is one of the best writers in this category, and The Menace Within may be the archetypal Curtiss mystery. Heroine Amanda Morley has to contend with:

      1. An aunt who has just suffered a stroke.
      2. A missing dog.
      3. A runaway horse.
      4. A jealous boy friend.
      5. The care of a neighbor’s two year old baby, a child with a serious vitamin deficiency.
      6. A house to care for.
      7. Escaped convicts in the area.

   Does she also need a psychopathic killer in her bomb shelter? Not really, but without him, we’d only have a soap opera. Instead, we have a slightly unbelievable, fairly exciting book with good descriptions of New Mexico in December.

   The domestic setting of Theodora Du Bois’ The Listener (1953) is unusual, a convent on New York’s Staten Island. Her heroine, Sister Genevieve, joined the religious order when here fiancé was killed in Greece. Now, still depressed at his loss, she also has a problem of spiritual doubt and, more important for the plot, involvement in a series of crimes related to the tunes played on a woodwind instrument during the night.

   Though she wrote more than twenty books, Du Bois is relatively unknown – undeservedly so. She develops The Listener effectively, and her resolution is generally satisfying, though somewhat dependent on coincidence. I’m grateful to her for a well-written book. I’m also grateful to the type-setter for the Ace paperback edition who included this amusing “typo” in a book about the Sisters in a religious order (one of whom is very ugly): “I can see there are some very unattractive angels to this.”

   In a promising first novel, The Rembrandt Decisions (1979) by Anne V. Badgley, the author presents a realistic Gothic heroine. Dr. Catherine Gordon, recently widowed at 35 (“recycled by fate”), returns to the labor market to pursue her skill as an art expert. She takes on the cataloging of a valuable print collection and becomes involved with a mysterious Scottish widower whose hobby is said to be installing burglar alarms.

   The book begins subtly, and the dialogue between the two protagonists crackles. Unfortunately, the second half is disappointing, depending more on breakneck action than on logic and character development.

    Books reviewed or discussed in this installment:

URSULA CURTISS – The Menace Within. Dodd Mead, 1979. Ballantine, pb, 1979.

THEODORE DU BOIS – The Listener. Doubleday Crime Club, 1953. Ace G-550, pb, 1964.

ANNE V. BADGLEY – The Rembrandt Decisions. Dodd Mead, 1979. [This was her only crime novel.]

RICHARD ELLINGTON – It’s a Crime. Pocket 756; 1st printing, Dec 1950. Hardcover: William Morrow, 1948.

   Richard Ellington (1914-1980) wrote only five mysteries, and all five featured a Manhattan-based private eye named Steve Drake. This is the second of them, and for the record, using Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV as a basis, here’s a list of all five, along with (eventually) paperback covers for all of them:

      Shoot the Works. Morrow, 1948; Pocket #624, 1949.

      It’s a Crime. Morrow, 1948; Pocket #756, 1950.

      Stone Cold Dead. Morrow, 1950; Pocket #813, 1951.

      Exit for a Dame. Morrow, 1951; Pocket #941, 1953.

      Just Killing Time. Morrow, 1953; Bantam #1286 as Shakedown, 1955.

   Thanks to the Cook-Miller index to digest mystery magazines, we learn that Ellington also published three short stories in Manhunt and one in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine:

       “Fan Club” Manhunt, April 1953.
       “The Ripper” Manhunt, August 1953 .
       “Shadow Boxer” Manhunt, February 1954.

       “‘Good-By, Cora'” Mike Shayne, February 1968

   At least the first of these is a Steve Drake yarn as well. I’m not sure about any of the others. According to the brief biography of Ellington inside the front cover of this paperback edition, he was heavily involved with radio both before and after the war: acting, announcing and writing. What he ended up doing after the career in writing mysteries ended I don’t yet know; perhaps writing for television? (A later search on www.imdb.com turned up nothing.)

   The cover of the paperback edition of It’s a Crime will give you an idea of the kind of mystery it is, or if not, at least it’s a portrayal of the one scene that the people at Pocket thought might sell the book. Paul Kresse is the artist, and in the center foreground is the butt end of a gun being grasped by the barrel (only part of the fingers showing) and being used to clout a man in the head. Side view, tie askew, he’s obviously in excruciating pain.

   Quoted from the text: “My gun-butt smashed his skull.”

   Granted that the scene is in the book, and so is another in close proximity of the same guy with a tommy gun, firing away at Drake before he gets away, only to turn the tables, as shown on the cover, but …

   Steve Drake is really only medium-boiled, about 6 or 7 on a standard HB (hard-boiled) scale ranging from 1 to 10. I’ll quote Mr. Drake, who tells his own story, from pages 60-61:

   Drake actually has two cases in this adventure. The first is a wandering husband caper. The second is a case of blackmail, the victim being the male half of a famous Broadway husband-and-wife duo. That the two cases are connected comes as no surprise to anyone who has read as many mysteries as you and I, but Drake himself takes it in with a slightly perplexed stride.

   What is surprising, and it really shouldn’t have been, is that this prime example of lower-echelon tough-guy fiction turns out to have a complex and finely tuned detective story plot to go with it. There are many, many people with access to the dead girl’s apartment, and before her death there were enough of them going in and out that it would take a minute-by-minute timetable to keep it all clear.

   After the non-essentials have been eliminated, all of the suspects that remain have iron-clad alibis, and takes a huge effort in deduction on Steve Drake’s art to crack one of them. It’s a plot worthy of Ellery Queen, say, without quite the same finesse — relying on what seems like sheer chance on the part of the killer, and of course the aforementioned coincidence that involves Drake in both cases to begin with.

   It’s a neat double combo, in other words, and very much worth seeking out. I’d especially like to locate my copy of the next book in the series. The love affair that Drake seems to find himself in as this one goes along seems to bloom very quickly, and if I read the last couple of pages correctly, Drake proposes marriage and the same time he says he going to be spending the money he made on this case on a trip to St. Thomas. Does she go too, or will she wait for him patiently at home?

   These are things an inquiring minds like to know.

[UPDATE] 06-28-08.    Prompting my posting this review from the past was an email this morning from SF writer Robert Silverberg:

   Then from a follow-up email:

VICTOR APPLETON – Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery, or Autoing in the Land of the Caravans

Grosset & Dunlap; c.1925.

   Here’s the first paragraph. Read this and see how you could possibly resist reading on:

   On the next page:

   And of course off they go, and besides having a fine adventure, there are also a few more tangible goals: to locate the famed Cemetery of the Elephants, to view the fabulous City of Brass, and to find the fantastic Cave of Emeralds.

   Not to mention finding missing father of Don’s new friend Brick, who has been kidnapped by natives and is being held for ransom. Their means of transportation out across the desert, as I pictured them, are three early SUV prototypes, equipped with tank treads (and side curtains).

   Along the way they encounter numerous dangers: landslides, tarantulas, sandstorms, a band of thieving Arabs and more. It certainly made me feel fourteen again. I read a lot of the early Hardy Boys mysteries when I was a kid, the older thicker ones that belonged to my great-uncle, but never one of the Don Sturdy books, until now. What fun!

   But the adult that’s also inside my head found a bit of wonderment at the pacing. On page 209 they are trapped in a cave surrounded by the combined forces of the native kidnappers and the band of Arab thieves. Things indeed look black, as black as they could be.

   Not to worry. By page 211 they have escaped, and not only that, they’ve made their way back clear across the desert, and they’re busily making plans for their next adventure. Whoosh! And whoo-wee!

[UPDATE] 06-27-08.    Copies in dust jacket are a bit scarce, although certainly not overly expensive ($20 and up on ABE). At any rate, I’ve not been able to come up with a decent one to show you. I think as a young boy I automatically threw the jackets of my books away. So did every other kid, except the smart ones.