Q. PATRICK – Return to the Scene.

Books, Inc.; hardcover reprint, March 1944. First edition: Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum, 1941. Paperback reprint: Popular Library #47, ca. 1945. Serialized previously in The American Weekly as “The Green Diary.”

   I don’t know how long this website will stay up, but it presently contains loads and loads of the beautiful (if not exquisite) artwork that filled the covers of The American Weekly in its heyday. While the examples are all from 1918-1943, the magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement for the Hearst chain, continued on through the years until the title changed to Pictorial Living in 1963, then folded for good in 1966. (Information obtained from Phil Stephensen-Payne’s magnificent Magazine Data File website.)

   Which is not relevant to anything more than the fact that this novel by Q. Patrick first appeared there, nothing more, but you really ought to see those covers.

   (I couldn’t resist. The one shown here is from 1941, the artist Joe Little, and as you see, one of the authors who had a story in that issue was Max Brand.)

   As for Q. Patrick, there is no way I am going to try to completely untangle the web of real names that lie behind that pen name and that of Patrick Quentin (and Jonathan Stagge). Suffice it to say that Return to the Scene was the result of the primary two collaborators who used that pseudonym, Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler. On other Q. Patrick titles, Webb had as partners, at various times, Martha Mott Kelley and Mary Louise Aswell — pairwise, mind you, not in triple tandem.

   It is interesting to note that Mary Aswell’s two efforts with Webb took place in 1933 (S. S. Murder) and 1935 (The Grindle Nightmare), and her single solo effort did not appear until 1957 (Far to Go).

   As for Patrick Quentin (and Jonathan Stagge), we’ll leave any discussion of who they were (and when) for another time, but as well known as practitioners of the Golden Age variety of detection, none of the various aliases, nor their books, are very well known today.

   Nor of course is Quentin/Patrick alone in this category. The rise and fall in popularity of various authors over the years is a subject that is likely to come up often in these pages in the days to come. Why, for example, are Agatha Christie’s books so timeless, and Borders has nothing on the shelves by Ellery Queen or Erle Stanley Gardner, and only a handful of titles by Rex Stout? John D. MacDonald’s books may be in print, but only from Amazon. I’ve not seen them on any actual bookstore shelves, new, in quite a while.

   Not that answers are likely to be very forthcoming and/or definitive, but the question at least will be something that will turn up in one of these review/commentaries every once in a while.

   Case in point. Return to the Scene, by Q. Patrick. Is it a book very likely to be published today? Answer, possibly, but not by a major publisher. Maybe by a small independent publisher like the Rue Morgue Press, which specializes in reprinting classic (and obscure) mysteries from the Golden Age, of which Return to the Scene is obviously one — and if you have gotten this far into this (which eventually will turn into a review), you really should be supporting them, and if you aren’t, then shame on you — or one of those publishers that specializes in large print editions for libraries, under the obvious assumption that only older people who can’t see so well any more will have any interest in reading them any more.

   It starts out like a romance novel — this is now the review — with Kay Winyard rushing to back to Bermuda to stop her niece from marrying the man she once thought she was in love with, before she discovered what kind of man he was and walked out on him. And in her purse is her weapon, a diary. A very revealing diary written by the woman who did marry him, in spite of Kay’s warning, and who subsequently killed herself because of him.

   It very quickly becomes instead a murder mystery, however, and there is no surprise to learn who the victim is. The rich, the powerful Ivor Drake, who is soon also very dead. And with a huge house of possible suspects, all of whom (it is also quickly discovered) had reasons to wish him that way.

   The police investigate, and for one reason or another, no one tells them the truth. Alibis are created out of happenstance and convenience. Every one has their own package of facts that they do not wish to be known, and webs of intrigue and would-be (and only reluctantly admitted) love affairs make learning the complete truth next to impossible even for Kay, who is an insider, much less Major Clifford, the ultimate outsider.

   Here’s a long quote from pages 116-117. It begins with Terry talking to his sister, Elaine. Elaine is the girl whose marriage Kay came back to Bermuda to stop:

   Alliances are built, along with the stories the players tell the police, then collapse, and bit by bit the truth gets put together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Delicious! There are clues aplenty, and the alibis so spontaneously constructed eventually cannot stand up under the pressure, and they begin to fall apart. Not one of the alibis, as it happens, is any good.

   The ending is disappointing, a little, but this (it seems to me) is what almost always happens. The explanation is so mundane, so unworthy, so why-didn’t-I-think-of that, but only, you realize, in comparison to the mystery itself.

   Another problem is that when the victim is so dastardly as this one is, one hates to see anyone found guilty of the crime, although of course someone must be, and in the end, all of the pieces fit together. (At least without a careful re-reading, all the way through, they do.)

   Not a classic, but in the Golden Age, even the non-classics came close.

PostScript: A preliminary checklist of titles in the Books, Inc., line of Midnite Mysteries, of which this book is one, can be found by following the link provided.

RICHARD BURKE – The Frightened Pigeon.

Unicorn Mystery Book Club; hardcover reprint, June 1946. First Edition: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944. Paperback reprint: Dell 204, mapback edition, 1947.

   Back when Victor Berch, Bill Pronzini and I did our annotated bibliography of the Ziff Davis line of Fingerprint Mysteries , we included a short profile of Richard Burke, which of course you should go read. Many of his books, we said, involved a Broadway private detective named Quinny Hite, but as it happens, this is not one of them. In fact The Frightened Pigeon takes the reader to another part of the world and (one imagines) another kind of mystery altogether.

   But first a word on the covers that are shown below, though, before getting down to details. This is, of course, the Dell mapback edition, not either of the other two, and in case you can’t make out the details, the map on the back is that of the city of Marseilles, which is where the last eighty percent of the story takes place.

   The setting of the first fifty pages is Paris, 1942, with the Germans solidly in control of the city. An American dancer named Valerie Bright is still there, however – the pigeon of the title – and very determined to stay non-political. From page 8, of the Unicorn edition:

    “Of course after the Axis had decided to include the United States in the war, she had regarded them as enemies, but there wasn’t anything personal about her feeling.”

   Her close male friend, Charles John Dillon, nicknamed “Ching,” is working closely with the French underground, however, and events, beginning with a stolen German diary, bound to be embarrassing if it falls into the wrong hands – as, for example, into Ching’s hands – soon make the light-hearted Val realize how dirty – and dangerous – war really is, not knowing what will happen next nor whom your friends really are. By page 40, she is one frightened pigeon indeed, as off to Marseilles they and a small group of displaced others go, hoping to find a way out of France and its closed borders.

   The diary appears and disappears with amazing regularity. It is, in fact, amazing, how much mileage an author (Burke) can make of one small important object. Otherwise here is a novel one can learn a large amount from – supposing, that is, that one has never been in a place controlled by Nazi-like enemies one is trying his or her best to avoid – both in term of locale (well-described) and people, especially those like Valerie, whose mind is soon brought down to earth in satisfying (but not very surprising) fashion, but also the large number of others who find themselves caught up in events far beyond their say.

   Don’t get me wrong. This is by no means a major work. It’s no more than ordinary at best, in the overall scheme of things, but what it does have is atmosphere, and plenty of it.

NGAIO MARSH – Spinsters in Jeopardy

St. Martin’s, paperback reprint; 1st printing, November 1998. First edition (UK): Collins Crime Club, 1954. First edition (US): Little, Brown & Co., 1953. Digest paperback: Mercury Press, 1955, as The Bride of Death (abridged). Other paperback reprints: Berkley, 1961, and Jove, 1980, each with several followup printings.

   Among the list of mystery authors who are considered as being among the best at what they did or currently do, Ngaio Marsh is the one I’ve perhaps most neglected. Before reading Spinsters in Jeopardy over these past few evenings, I have to confess that I’d read no more than two of her mystery novels, totaling 32 in all, not a very high percentage. In all 32 of her mysteries was Inspector (later Superintendent) Roderick Alleyn, whose career at Scotland Yard lasted from 1934 (A Man Lay Dead) to 1982 (Light Thickens), quite a long time in anyone’s book.

   This particular edition, the one recently published by St. Martin’s, was part of quite a publishing feat, and they should be commended for it. Back in the late 90s, St. Martin’s put out all 32 novels with uniform covers and in chronological order. (If only someone would do they same for other authors I (or you) could think of, but as far as I’m concerned, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books come to mind first, now that Bantam seems to have let them drop.)

   But to return to Ngaio Marsh and me, I don’t know why it is that I’ve not read her work any more often than I have. I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, for example, and Marsh seems to have been Christie with personality, someone may have said, or if they didn’t, maybe they should have. For me, Marsh has been one of those authors whose work has always been available, so perhaps there hasn’t been any urgency in picking one of her books up to read.

   Unfortunately, Spinsters in Jeopardy wasn’t the first one I should have picked up to read in quite a while, since I don’t believe that it’s in any way typical of Marsh’s other mysteries. It’s a thriller, first of all, and not a detective story, even though Inspector Alleyn is in it, and so’s his wife, the former Agatha Troy, the famous artist he’d met and wooed in previous adventures, along with their precocious six-year-old son Ricky.

   All three are in France, in part on a vacation trip to meet Troy’s cousin, whom she’s never met; and in part business, as Alleyn has been assigned an undercover liaison job with the French authorities trying to crack down on a narcotics gang operating in the very same area.

   A bad idea — using his family as cover on a criminal assignment, that is. Alleyn is required to assist on an emrgency appendectomy operation for a woman who had been on the same train they were on, in the heart of the enemy’s strong stronghold, the Château de la Chévre d’Argent. Ricky is kidnapped and luckily found, but a book in which not only drugs but a vicious religio-erotic racket is the central focus is probably not a book for a young lad to be in anyway.

   Ngaio Marsh does manage to make the scenes in which Ricky appears as light-hearted as possible, mitigating against that particular discomfort, but the rest of the occult-based plot, with its mystical (and apparently) deadly rituals, is not one that’s designed to lead to any sense of ease on the reader’s part. Not that there’s anything wrong with mystical rituals, of course, but there didn’t seem to be any need to witness them as far as Alleyn does, which is to nearly their conclusion. Not in a detective mystery, which once again I remind you, this one was not, except at the very end, when it was all but too late.

   As a thriller, there are simply too many coincidences to contemplate, and the villains, as successful as they are, are simply too dumb to survive, especially once Alleyn’s ire is fully aroused and he’s well on their trail. All in all, although not without some interest, this is not one of Marsh’s best books, I’m sure.

   If the weather doesn’t interfere — a final blast of winter weather seems to be headed straight for CT — I’ll be on my way to NJ and PA tomorrow, doing some bookhunting with Paul Herman and aiming for the Bordentown NJ Pulp & Paperback show on Saturday. I imagine I will see some of you there.

   I’ll need a couple of days after that for R&R and for doing my taxes, which somehow haven’t found a way of doing themselves this month. So the not-so-good news is, if all goes as planned, this will be my last post until I surface again sometime next week. I hope you all have something to read while I’m gone!

          — Steve

   The print version is still waiting to be published, but I’ve just received the good news that the new Revised Crime Fiction IV for 2008 is now available on CD-Rom. The author, Allen J. Hubin, has just informed me that he’s received his copies from Bill Contento, and I’m looking forward to obtaining mine from him.

   The price remains the same, $49.95, and can be ordered from Bill through the Locus Magazine website. (Follow the link.) Bill says he hasn’t had a chance to update the ad, but if you order, which of course I think you should, it is the Revised 2008 Edition that you’ll be getting.

   And don’t forget that Al continues to update the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Even though the content is restricted to authors and books from the year 2000 and before, new information keeps coming in. This data consists largely of corrections and additions, but even some deletions are included, when — for example — it’s discovered that some books thought to have been published never were. As for me, I’ve been adding images, web links and more, which of course you know if you’ve been reading the Mystery*File blog for any length of time. Coming soon: Part 26 of this ongoing project…

   Posted this morning on Reading the Past, my daughter’s historical fiction blog, is some sad news, that of the recent death of Karen Swee, the author of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Murder (Bridge Works, 2004), a historical mystery taking place in New Jersey during the American Revolution.

   From the back cover: “Karen Swee, whose ancestors fought in the American Revolution, lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, where her novel is set. She is a former psychotherapist who grew up in Chicago then moved to Seattle, where she was educated at the University of Washington. She has also lived in Iowa, Toronto, Mexico, and Nova Scotia.”

   Also from the back cover, describing the book: “During the winter of 1777, tavernmistress Abigail Lawrence discovers the body of an overnight guest pinned to the floor with an upright sword. She must find the killer before the occupying British army uses the murder as an excuse to take over her Raritan tavern in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Against a backdrop of wartime tension and hardship, Abigail unravels a puzzle that involves stolen diplomatic papers, captivating spies and avaricious traitors.”

   The book received high praise from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and more in the series were expected, but apparently this is not to be.

   Go first to Reading the Past for more, then to her obituary in the Newark Star-Ledger.

VICTORIA LAURIE – Crime Seen.

Obsidian; paperback original. First printing, September 2007.

   This is the 5th in this series of “Psychic Eye” mysteries, all featuring Abby Cooper, a professional psychic who dabbles in solving mysteries. For the record, here’s the list:

      Psychic Eye Mysteries:

1. Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye (Signet, December 2004)
2. Better Read Than Dead (Signet, June 2005)
3. A Vision of Murder (Signet, December 2005)
4. Killer Insight (Signet, September 2006)
5. Crime Seen (Obsidian, September 2007)
6. Death Perception (Obsidian, September 2008)

   … a list of mysteries written by Victoria Laurie which has recently been expanded by a new series of …

      Ghost Hunter Mysteries:

1. What’s a Ghoul to Do? (Signet, April 2007)
2. Demons Are a Ghoul’s Best Friend (Signet, March 2008)

   … in which M. J. Holliday and her partner Gilley are, as advertised, ghostbusters who also come across mysteries to solve in the course of their daily routine.

   I suppose I sound slightly dismissive there, and if I did, I probably meant it, just a little. Psychic detectives have been around a long time — since the days of Weird Tales and Seabury Quinn’s detective Jules de Grandin, and probably even before that.

   The fact is, in spite of what you may have seen or heard about on TV, according to Wikipedia, “no psychic detective has ever been praised or given official recognition by the F.B.I. or US national news for solving a crime, preventing a crime, or finding a kidnap victim or corpse.”

   And another fact is — or is this just my opinion? — solving crimes by psychic means takes all of the fun out of solving mystery puzzlers. Well, OK. It’s just my opinion.

   What Abby Cooper has the ability to do is to wave her hand over her FBI boy friend’s “closed case” files, get pictures from them in her mind and give him hints as to who the culprit is or how he got away with it. Or she can accompany her PI girl friend to interview suspects and give her a kick under the table when she know the suspect is lying.

   In Crime Seen she helps Dutch — that’s her boy friend — catch Dutch’s new partner’s former partner’s killer. Or rather, what she’s asked to do is to help prevent the confessed killer from getting parole. In doing so, she risks her life at least once, when a enemy Hummer runs her and her PI friend Candice off the road into a deep ravine.

   And she doesn’t tell Dutch. There are some issues involved. Go figure. The characters are otherwise pleasant enough, and the psychic abilities just unreliable enough, that the book is easy and — in spite of my statement above — fun to read. Just don’t take it too seriously, and my own personal pre-judgments aside, you’ll see why this is a popular series that’s doing well.

   The news of mystery writer Arthur Lyons’s unexpected death appeared quickly on the mystery blogs today. First to report was Jiro Kimura’s The Gumshoe Site, followed up soon after by Jeff Pierce at The Rap Sheet, with a long and personal homage to Mr. Lyons. The latter died on March 21st of complications from pneumonia and a stroke; he was only 62.

   Arthur Lyons’s primary character, the one who appeared in all the novels he wrote on his alone and not as part of a twosome, was a LA-based private eye named Jacob Asch. Borrowing Kevin Burton Smith’s words:

    “JACOB ASCH was a glib, cynical, half-Jewish reporter for the L.A. Chronicle until he got sent to jail for refusing to reveal a source. He did six months on a contempt of court beef, and when he was sprung, the glamour of journalism, for some reason, had lost its appeal for him. So now he’s a glib, cynical, half-Jewish LA private dick who gets involved in some very nasty murders, instead.”

   From an interview that Jeff Pierce did with Arthur Lyons some time ago, here’s the author’s take on his character:

    “You’ll never find Asch doing anything unlikely. He will not usually find stuff through coincidence. He’s a plodder. That’s what private detection is, going through papers. All of Asch’s cases come out of paper. He works with paper more than he does people, whereas in Ross Macdonald and with most of those guys, they do it with information people tell them. But there aren’t too many people out there who are going to spill their guts to an investigator, unless the guy has a handle on what’s going on.”

    Here’s a complete list of Arthur Lyons’s work, at least in printed form. Taken and expanded upon from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, I’ve been able to find covers from all but one of the Jacob Asch books. I apologize that it’s a mixture of hardcovers and paperbacks, nor have I made note of the various reprint editions in which his books have appeared.

LYONS, ARTHUR (Jr.) (1946-2008)

* The Dead Are Discreet (n.) Mason/Charter 1974 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* All God’s Children (n.) Mason/Charter 1975 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* The Killing Floor (n.) Mason/Charter 1976 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* Dead Ringer (n.) Mason/Charter 1977 [Jacob Asch]

* Castles Burning (n.) Holt 1980 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* Hard Trade (n.) Holt 1981 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* At the Hands of Another (n.) Holt 1983 [Jacob Asch; California]

* Three with a Bullet (n.) Holt 1985 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA; Idaho]

* Fast Fade (n.) Mysterious Press 1987 [Jacob Asch; California]

* Unnatural Causes [with Thomas T. Noguchi, M.D.] (n.) Putnam 1988 [Los Angeles, CA; Dr. Eric Parker]

* Other People’s Money (n.) Mysterious Press 1989 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

* Physical Evidence [with Thomas T. Noguchi, M.D.] (n.) Putnam 1990 [Los Angeles, CA; Dr. Eric Parker]

* False Pretenses (n.) Mysterious Press 1994 [Jacob Asch; Los Angeles, CA]

Films:

       Slow Burn, based on Castles Burning. Starring Eric Roberts as Jacob Asch.

Non fiction:

       The Second Coming: Satanism in America (1970)
       Satan Wants You: The Cult of Devil Worship in America (1971)
       The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime (1991) (with Marcello Truzzi)
       Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (2000)

[UPDATE] 03-26-08. For an insightful essay by Jeff Pierce on both Lyons and Jacob Asch, may I suggest a return visit to The Rap Sheet. It was written in 1981 or thereabouts, but its age does not diminish the timeliness of this followup post in any way whatsoever.

    Any assistance toward answering any of these questions would be greatly appreciated. Leave a comment or reply to me directly, and I’ll pass the word along to those who are asking.

(1) From John Herrington in the UK:

    “I have been doing some research on the elusive Dorothy Feilding/A. Fielding and have discovered that papers relating to her are held in the collection of papers of UK literary agent A.P. Watt which are held in the library of the University of South Carolina.

    “I asked the library but they are not willing to look themselves!! A pity as there might be vital clues about her. They suggested using a professional searcher, but I don’t want to pay up front for possibly a zero result – plus paying anyone might be difficult as I do not use credit cards.

    “Don’t suppose you know anyone who might have access to the library who might be willing to have a look?”

(2) From Ken Johnson:

    “I believe I mentioned previously that I am working on an addition to my Digest Index which will index the contents of the anthologies and collections therein. I have everything I need except for two books that are eluding me. I am writing to you in the hope that you can help me with these, or network me to someone who can.

    “The hardest book to find is the Bonded Mystery edition of This Is Mr. Fortune by H. C. Bailey. The only documentation on this book is the listing in Kevin Hancer’s Price Guide. No library on the web has it and no one ever seems to be selling one.

    “The most frustrating book is the Bestseller Library edition of The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie. Several libraries on the World Catalog have it but my attempts to get information through inter-library loan have been frustrated by the response that the book apparently does not have a contents page. It would seem I need to convince a friendly librarian to actually look at it and jot down the contents for me. I am optimistic on this score by the discovery that one of the libraries that has a copy is Bowling Green University.

    “So, my first question is: do you know anyone, or can you network me to anyone, connected to Bowling Green University or their Popular Culture collection who might be willing to accommodate my request for info on the Christie book?

    “The second question is: would you be willing to mention my quest for the contents of these two books in one of your blog entries, in the hope of drawing the info out of some collector?

    “Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. The completed index will document several abridged mystery collections whose exact contents are not otherwise known and therefore will be potential annotations for the Addenda to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. I also be glad, after it is posted, to share with you my documentation for these collections.”

    That edition of the book by H. C. Bailey may not exist. My copy of Hancer’s guide isn’t handy at the moment, but a quick check reveals that Graham Holroyd does not include it in his. Neither fact, that it’s in one and not the other, is entirely convincing. It would be nice to know for sure.

(3) This question’s from me. As everyone reading this already knows, I’m sure, Phyllis Whitney died not too long ago at the age of 104. While doing some research in CFIV over the weekend, I came across the following entry:

EMERY, (Russell) GUY (1908- )
       Front for Murder (Macrae-Smith, 1947, hc) [San Francisco, CA] Boardman pb, 1948.

   I asked Al Hubin whether he had any updated information about Mr. Emery. His reply: “Probably Guy Emery is not still alive, but he’s not in ssdi under any combination of his name, and peoplefinders doesn’t turn up anyone born in 1908.”

   And that’s as far as I’ve gotten with this, except that it does give me a good chance to add a cover image that I’ve always thought was quite nice:

[UPDATE] 03-26-08. Results so far:

(1) One tentative offer to do the library research has been tendered so far, but if you live in that part of the country and are willing to do the required digging into some archives, please check to see if things have worked out as we hope they have.

(2) Ken has been in touch with a Popular Culture librarian at Bowling Green, and the titles of Mr. Quin stories are now known. As for the H. C. Bailey title, here’s what Dan Roberts has had to say:

Steve: Please pass this on to Ken Johnson or post it on your blog.

I can’t speak to the Christie Bestseller title, but no library or bookseller has the Bonded This is Mr. Fortune title because I’m virtually certain that it does not exist. Hancer is not the only reference that lists it — R. Reginald and M.R. Burgess also list it in Cumulative Paperback Index 1939-1959, Gale Research Co., Detroit 1973 page 9.

It is well-known that Reginald and Burgess (actually only Reginald — Burgess is a fictitious name) salted his compilation with a number of books that do not exist in order to nail plagiarists, and Hancer did indeed plagiarize and was successfully sued by Reginald. Since I’m familiar with the Bonded series (having once had them all and now having about 90% of them — some are digest size, others are pb size), I’m virtually certain the Fortune title is one of Reginald’s fake listings. H.C. Bailey’s The Twittering Bird Mystery (Bonded No. 8 ) does exist, however.

Hope this helps. Dan Roberts.

(3) Nothing yet on Guy Emery.

[UPDATE] 03-27-08. A reply from Ken Johnson, re the H. C. Bailey mystery:

Steve,

Actually I disagree. The intro to Reginald’s Cumulative Paperback Index mentions the check entries and states that none of them involve real authors, which is definitely the case for all the ones so far known. While Reginald lists both the Susan Wells ((Footsteps in the Air)) and the H. C. Bailey (which Hancer identifies as #s 15 and 16) he does not supply the book numbers, so Hancer could not have cribbed them from him. It is also my understanding that all of Reginald’s check entries were purged from Hancer’s later editions.

I looked again at my copy of Bonded Mystery #13. The inside back cover has an ad for both the Wells and Bailey books, with black and white drawings of the covers, stating that they will both be on sale next month. Since I cannot find any other confirmation of their existence, they were probably never issued. Hancer may very well have assigned them book numbers as a way of generating his own check entries, which he seems to have done a lot of after Reginald sued him for repeating his check entries.

I will have to update the entry in my Digest Index. If I hadn’t gone looking for the contents I might never have spotted this. Please thank Dan for his comments; I would appreciate any other comments he might have that would improve my index. I still have a lot to learn.

All my best,

Ken

NORMAN DANIELS – The Deadly Ride.

Lancer; paperback reprint, no date stated but stated elsewhere to be 1968. Original title: The Marshal of Winter Gap, as by Peter Grady (Avalon Books, hc, 1962); paperback reprint: Airmont Books, 1963.

   I’m not too sure of the date for the hardcover edition, which I found online in several places, since the copyright date given in this Lancer edition is 1963. A trifling matter, I suppose, and I guess it ought to bother me more than it does.

   Nor have I done much research into the western fiction that Norman Daniels wrote. I found two more he did as by Peter Grady, but his overall output – hundreds of books, mostly mysteries, but romances too, including gothics as by Dorothy Daniels – is too large for me to start sorting out which is which right now. Suffice it to say, I’m sure, Daniels could write anything that someone paid him to do, beginning in the era of the pulp magazines, and for the most part he made it come it out right and professionally done.

   This western at hand is a perfect example of that. It’s slight and in the beginning a not very promising story of a rancher who used to be a gunman, emphasis on the “used to be,” especially now that he has a nine-year-old son.

   But when his wife is killed by a stray bullet in the lawless town of Winter Gap, he’s sorely tempted to revert to his old ways, which doesn’t quite do. Prodded on, though, by the urging of Louise Amister, whose father was the last marshal the town ever had, what he does do is appoint himself town marshal, daring any of the rougher elements in town to tell him no.

   Characterization is slim – I’ve outlined about 80% of it already – but there’s just enough here, along with a surprise or two, and a semi-sappy, soapy sort of ending, to make for a couple of hours of reading and a story that’s surprisingly hard to put down.