K. j. a. WISHNIA – Red House.

St. Martin’s; paperback reprint, December 2002. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s, November 2001.

   This is the fourth in the series of mysteries solved by Ecuadorian ex-revolutionary and now fledgling private eye Filomena Buscarsela, single mom and philosopher slash social critic. Quoting from page 67: “And thus we see the dangers of post-Heideggerian rejection of history.”

   Since I haven’t read the previous three books, I don’t know exactly what career paths she may have been following up to now. She seems to have spent some time on the New York City police force — a police detective for only one day, as she puts it — but in this book, she’s a first year trainee at the PI firm of Davis and Brown, trying to work her way up to getting her own license.

   And rather than focusing on only one case, we get bits and pieces of a number of them — more of a private eye procedural, a la Joe Gores, street style, as Filomena tries to build up the Latino clientele for the firm.

   The mugging (murder?) of a local housing advocate is the main item on her agenda, however, with the plight of the illegal squatters in an abandoned tenement they refurbished themselves a close second.

   The pace is fast-moving, told in first person, present tense, and Filomena certainly knows her way around. The problem with the book is a subtle one, as I found it. According to the back cover, Wishnia (male) has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, and book reads as though it was written by someone having a Ph.D. in comparative literature.

   It does not read as though it was being told by a real-life Filomena Buscarsela, whose depth of knowledge seemingly knows no bounds, running the gamut from Heidegger (see above) to Marx (Groucho, waggle-waggle) to pulp novel covers (page 131) to nineteenth-century German chemist Friedrich Kekulé (page 226).

   I’m not saying that Filomena Buscarsela is not the person she says she is. What I’m saying is that K. j. a. Wishnia did not succeed in convincing me that she is. It’s his job, and so far (I’ve read only the one book) he hasn’t done it, at least not for me.

   The street scenes are fine, perhaps even more than fine. Otherwise? I’m skeptical, but I’ll leave myself open to opposing argument. (Even better, I’ll read the first three books.)

[UPDATE] 12-29-08.   That’s another promise I haven’t kept, I’m sorry to say. Not yet, I haven’t, but I will. For the record, expanded upon from her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of Filomena’s appearances in book form:

   BUSCARSELA, FILOMENA

      23 Shades of Black. The Imaginary Press, trade pb, 1997. Signet, pb, Nov 1998; Point Blank, trade pb, 2004.    [Edgar Award finalist for Best First Novel.]

      Soft Money. Dutton, hc, 1999; Signet, pb, May 2000.
      The Glass Factory. Dutton, hc, 2000; Signet, pb, Mar 2001.
      Red House. St. Martin’s, hc, Nov 2001; St. Martin’s, pb, Dec 2002.
      Blood Lake. St. Martin’s, hc, Dec 2002.

   Here are the first entries in the newly created D-H section of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

DALE, WILLIAM. One of many pseudonyms of writer Norman A. Daniels, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of three works listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   _Corpse, Hands Off! See The Terror of the Handless Corpse.
   John Doe–Murderer. Gateway, hc, 1942. United Authors, UK, 1946. Australian title: Murder Has No Name. Phantom, pb, 1955.

   _Murder Has No Name. See John Doe–Murderer.
   Outside the Law. Dodge, hc, 1938. Add setting: Denver, Wyoming. Leading characters: Jeff Tracy, thief, and Douglas Greer, detective.

   The Terror of the Handless Corpse. Gateway, hc, 1939. Australian title: Corpse, Hands Off! Phantom, pb, 1955. Setting: New York. Leading character: PI Loopy Jones.

DALEY, ROBERT.
   To Kill a Cop. TV movie: David Gerber, 1978 (scw: Ernest Tidyman; dir: Gary Nelson)

DANIELS, HAROLD R.
   House on Greenapple Road. TV movie: Quinn Martin, 1970 (scw: George Eckstein; dir: Robert Day)

DANIELS, NORMAN A. Pseudonyms: William Dale, q.v., Daniella Dorsett, Harrison Judd, Mark Reed, Norman T. Vane & David Wade; house pseudonyms James Clayford, G. Wayman Jones & Robert Wallace; ghostwriter for Dorothy Daniels; hence also Angela Gray, Cynthia Kavanaugh, Suzanne Somers, Geraldine Thayer & Helen Gray Weston. Prolific writer for the pulps as well as the author of many titles cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   Chase. Novelization of TV movie [pilot for series]: Mark VII/Universal, 1973 (scw: Stephen J. Cannell, dir: Jack Webb)

DAVIDSON, MURIEL (FRIEDLAND). 1923-1983. Correction of year of birth; add maiden name. A television executive and the author of three mystery novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. She was found murdered at her California home on September 27, 1983, her killer a man whom she had met at a hospital where she counseled alcoholics once a week.
   The Thursday Woman. TV movie: CBS, 2000, as The Wednesday Woman (scw: N. D. Schreiner; dir: Christopher Leitch). Note: In this semi-biographical suspense thriller, a woman, Muriel Davidson, writes a novel about a reckless affair with a dangerous criminal, then lives out the story she has created. Davidson is played by Meredith Baxter on the screen. No onscreen credit is given to the book as the source of the screenplay. [For more on the story, see this earlier post on the M*F blog.]

P. D. JAMES – Cover Her Face. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1962. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hc, 1966. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback.

   P. D. James is looked upon as the Sayers-Christie-Allingham of our time, and I have, I hope, made the mistake of reading her first book, Cover Her Face twice and her others not at all. I say I hope I’ve made a mistake, for this for this title is not a detective story and abounds in wrongheaded ideas.

   The book begins with 40-50 pages of foreboding in the best tradition of a gothic. The story revolves around Sally Jupp, who has been rescued from the local home for unwed mothers to be the housemaid at the country house Martingale by the materfamilias, Mrs. Eleanor Maxie.

   The rest of the household consists of the comatose Mr. Maxie; widowed daughter Deborah Riscoe; usually, her diffident suitor, Felix Hearne; son Stephen, when he can get away from his duties as resident at a London hospital; and Catherine Bowers, a nurse who keeps inviting herself in hopes of embarrassing a proposal out of Stephen.

   Sally makes herself unpopular by pranks against the loyal and long-serving housekeeper Martha and family members and produces the topper by announcing that Stephen has proposed to her. That night she is strangled in bed.

   Chief Inspector Adam Dalgleish arrives on the scene and has to unravel a below-stairs plot and, the unlikely presence of two outsiders on the scene at the time of death.

   All of this brings him little closer to a case that would convince a jury against the murderer, but Mrs. Maxie removes his difficulties by confessing she killed Sally to protect the family honor, adding that she had delayed her confession until her husband died, so he wouldn’t have to be taken to a nursing home.

   The female characters are pictured as admirable for their ability to understand and cope with domestic crises without panicking. Stephen, on the other hand, is looked down upon for his idealism and lack of interest in these domestic trivia as evidenced by the fact that he goes back to work during the investigation.

   That he is attempting to add to rather than live off, as they do, the family fund is ignored. Hearne is packed off to Canada, his fault being an understandable slightness of concern over the family’s difficulties after having had his fingernails extracted by the Nazis.

   Sally, it turns out, had been robbed by her guardian and was married all along to a “nice young man,” who was off making his fortune in Venezeula. She had gone the unwed mother route to save money. Would that she had been permitted to live to stick a few more pins in these stuffed blouses.

   The nice young man, poor devil, is allotted to the husband-seeking Catherine. Dalgleish, whom the author looks upon as God, is, aside from one reference to a dead wife and child, given as much personality as Dr. Priestly. At the end of the book we are led to believe he will mate with Deborah, his recommendation being, I suppose, that he sent her mother off to the Big House on the day her father died.

   Maybe there is something to the book to cause such a violent and lengthy reaction.

[UPDATE] 12-28-08.   I asked Bill earlier this month about the first sentence of his review. His reply:

    “I recall that I did indeed read this book twice, although why I should have persisted the second time beats me! I still recall how much I disliked the book, so much so that I never attempted another by her.”

W. T. BALLARD – Murder Can’t Stop.

David McKay Co., hardcover, 1946. Paperback reprint: Graphic #26, 1950.

   I had high hopes for this one. W. T. Ballard was a prominent Black Mask writer and a friend and contemporary of both Hammett and Chandler, and I found his first novel (Say Yes to Murder, 1942) to be a fine Hollywood tough guy mystery.

   Murder Can’t Stop was Ballard’s second book and, like the first, stars Bill Lennox, trouble shooter on call for General Consolidated Studios; a character Ballard had introduced in Black Mask in the early Thirties.

   Another promising feature was that this second Lennox adventure is a “corrupt town” novel, my favorite sub-genre of the hardboiled form (i.e., hero is in provincial community to unravel a murder and finds that the town is controlled from top to bottom by two or more criminal-political factions. Hero proceeds to solve the murder and almost incidentally clean up the town by the simple expedient of playing the various corrupt factions off against each other).

   But after all the high hopes, Murder Can’t Stop proved, unfortunately, to be a major disappointment. The book is just too busy to succeed.

   The setting is right: Lennox is in a one horse mining burg in northern California, nursemaiding a Consolidated star who’s been ordered to sober up by the head office. There’s murder — the body is found in Lennox’s own bed — and more murder (five in all) and the more Bill investigates, the more layers of corruption and deceit he uncovers beneath the town’s outwardly sedate veneer.

   Indeed, there are more plots and subplots here than in a Lew Archer story. And that’s the problem.

   What should have been a novel of pace and characterization becomes so preoccupied with the detailing of treachery and doublecrossing between the principals of the overpopulated cast that there’s little space left for the character development necessary for any of it to mean very much.

   This is most disappointing in the case of Lennox, who in Say Yes to Murder emerged as a likeable, believably complex hero of the medium-to-hardboiled type.

   Murder Can’t Stop is, sad to say, recommended for Ballard completists only.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT]   For a complete list of all of Ballard’s book-length mystery fiction, please see my review of Lights, Camera, Murder, a Bill Lennox novel that he wrote in 1960 as a paperback original by John Shepherd. It was posted here last year on the blog.    — Steve

MARGERY ALLINGHAM – Dancers in Mourning.

Manor, paperback reprint, 1976. First edition: William Heinemann, UK, 1937. US first: Doubleday Crime Club, 1937. Also published as: Who Killed Chloe? Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #17, 1943. Many other paperback reprints including: Jonathan Press Mystery J32; Macfadden, 1967; Bantam, 1990; Carroll & Graf, 1996; Felony & Mayhem, trade ppbk, 2008.

   One wonders how many other novels first published in 1937 are still in print. I’m not wondering hard enough to actually sit down at the computer and do some investigating, mind you, but in any case, and this is the point, Dancers in Mourning is one of them. (I also have a feeling that of the set of novels first published in 1937 but still in print, a sizable percentage of them would be mysteries.)

   I’ve read two of Allingham’s mysteries that I remember: one with Mr. Albert Campion and one without, and the one with Mr. Campion I remember more than the other. But I don’t remember Mr. Campion himself very well, and I think that Allingham rather wanted it that way.

   I remember large spectacles and a sometimes vacuous look on his face from that book (title not remembered off-hand) and now this one. Other than that many of the other characters in this book consider him “young,” I’d be hard-pressed to describe him further.

   There is a convergence of two worlds in Dancers in Mourning. First, the world of the theatre, or musical comedy, to be specific, the world of superstar dancer Jimmy Sutane and his sell-out production of The Buffer, based on the fictional memoirs of Campion’s friend, Mr. William Faraday (who also appeared in Police at the Funeral).

   And secondly, and more importantly, the setting changes to that of Sutane’s country home, where people in show business and with show business connections drop in and out, but the core of people around Sutane are all either good friends or family.

   But, and here is where Campion is drawn in, who is playing all of the small but nasty practical jokes on Sutane? And, as it happens, who killed Chloe, the aging songstress who invited her way down for the weekend? Or was it suicide, or a natural death before falling from a small bridge in front of Sutane’s automobile?

   Campion’s progress on the case is hampered by the discovery that is falling in love with Sutane’s wife, or that he could very easily, given any sign of reciprocation, even to extent of making several serious mistakes along the way.

   Some of the characters flit and out without being recognized as more than shadows of people, others I suspect I will remember for a long time. In terms of general atmosphere, I was reminded of John Dickson Carr more often than not, although the romance elements in Carr’s work were never as crucial (or real) as they are in this one.

   On the other hand, there is no locked room mystery involved in Dancers in Mourning. Only a murderer with no compunction about killing, including a home-made bomb at a railway station. Once again it is Campion’s preoccupation with other matters that make the ending work as well as it does.

   Of course the solution is obvious, and it should have been all along. And so help me, it wasn’t – all the way up the final two or three pages

BRIAN FREEMANTLE – Here Comes Charlie M. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1978; ppbk reprint: Ballantine, 1980. Published in the U.K. as Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie; Jonathan Cape, 1978; ppbk reprint: Arrow, 1987.

   Spies can easily outlive their usefulness. The new brooms of equally new administrations have moved in on both sides of the Atlantic, and Charlie Muffin, who proved to be so embarrassing a non-willing pawn in the preceding book in this series (a book called Charlie Muffin, or simply Charlie M. in the US) is the dirt that has to be swept out. Guilt-ridden and on the defensive as he is, however, it is his nature to fight back.

   And the nature of sequels being what it is, the keen edge of cutting commentary concerning the spy business is lost, or at least it takes a while for it to be sharpened up again. This time it seems almost too easy — the top minds of two huge intelligence organizations pose very little challenge to the intrepid Charlie M.

[UPDATE] 12-27-08. I had no idea at the time, but Charlie Muffin has turned out to be one of the most durable spy characters in hardcover spy fiction. He’s appeared in 14 books, listed below. Guys like Matt Helm, Joe Gall and Nick Carter have lasted longer in paperback, to be sure, and maybe you can think of others who might rival him in hardcover, but it’s quite a record.

   And one that’s passed below my own personal radar. Until coming across this review, I hadn’t thought of Charlie M. in ages, perhaps because so few of his adventures have come out in paperback. Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s the list:

   MUFFIN, CHARLIE

o Charlie Muffin. Cape 1977. [US: Charlie M.]

o Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie. Cape 1978. [US: Here Comes Charlie M.]
o The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin. Cape 1979. [US: same]
o Charlie Muffin’s Uncle Sam. Cape 1980. [US: Charlie Muffin, U.S.A.]
o Madrigal for Charlie Muffin. Hutchinson 1981. [No US edition]

o Charlie Muffin and Russian Rose. Century 1985. [US? The Blind Run]
o Charlie Muffin San. Century 1987. [US: See Charlie Run]
o The Bearpit. Century 1988. [No US edition]
o The Runaround. Century 1988. [US: same]
o Comrade Charlie. Century 1989. [US: same]
o Charlie’s Apprentice. Century 1993. [US: same]

o Charlie’s Chance. Orion 1996. [US: Bomb Grade]
o Dead Men Living. Severn 2000. [US: same]
o Kings of Many Castles. Severn 2001. [US: same]

   As for author Brian Freemantle, he doesn’t seem to have stopped writing, unless it’s been very recently. He’s been averaging a book or two a year over the past 30 years, either under his own name or as by one of his four pseudonyms: Harry Asher, Jonathan Evans, John Maxwell or Jack Winchester. For a long list of all the books he’s written, along with a large assortment of covers, see the UK Fantastic Fiction website.

THEY WERE SO YOUNG. US title of Mannequins für Rio. 1954-1955, Corona Filmproduktion [Germany]/ Lippert Productions [US]. Johanna Matz, Scott Brady, Ingrid Stenn, Raymond Burr, Gisela Fackeldey. Director: Kurt Neumann.

   One wonders, when one often does it situations such as this, why on earth Scott Brady and Raymond Burr found themselves in a German movie about (of all things) white slavery in Brazil. There is only one answer. The second and third do not count.

   The production code in the US would not even allow the movie to be shown over here, or so I’ve been told, until some scenes were added at the beginning and end to change the emphasis from prostitution to everyday ordinary racketeering. (The scenes are not included in its recent repackaging for DVD, thank goodness.)

   I’m referring to a box set called Forgotten Noir, Series 1, and I can tell you frankly that if one of the leading players weren’t in it, Raymond Burr, an absolute icon of film noir in his pre-Perry Mason days, this movie would still be forgotten, Scott Brady’s presence 100% notwithstanding. Brady made some good movies, but a heavyweight in the genre of film noir, he’s not.

   The idea is that young European women are enticed by ads in newspapers and magazines into becoming models for an agency that trains them, treats them well, then ships them off to Brazil while keeping their passports and other papers, then forcing them (in a high-class way) to becoming good friends with the male “buyers” who come to their staged and strictly phony fashion shows.

   One girl who rebels, Eve Ullmann (Johanna Matz), finds a friend and ally in American engineer Richard Lanning (Brady), whose boss Jaime Coltos (Burr) he does not realize is really behind the racket. Don’t worry. You’ll realize the same thing as soon as you see him (Raymond Burr, that is). Brady is a little slow on the uptake, but that’s OK. His intentions are good.

   So a noir film? No, not really, but if you wanted to stretch the point, I suppose you could make a decent case for it. All it really is is a low budget black-and-white crime thriller that’s moderately entertaining in its better moments, and having a plot twist or two in between. It falls to less than mediocre at other times, though, so it’s your dime, and you can call it.

PostScript. I see that I didn’t say much about Johanna Matz, who plays the innocent Eve Ullmann with a double-barreled combination of virtue and courage that the role required. I don’t think it was an easy task. (She’s the girl on the left in the photo just above.)

   In all honesty, the more I think about it, if she hadn’t been up to it, I don’t believe that the story would have been palatable at all. (According to IMDB she appeared in about 50 German movie and TV productions; this may be the only one she was in that was ever released in the US.)

   I’ve been too busy to do more than to finish up the C-authors today. You can also find these entries online in the A-C section of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

CREEKMORE, DONNA (R.) 1926?-1995? Pseudonym: Diana Campbell. Under her own name, the author of two romantic suspense novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV (and under her pen name, the author of one more).
   The Coachman’s Daughter. Dell, pb, 1979, pb; Linford, UK, 1992. “Her sister’s mysterious disappearance and rumors of the gruesome ‘Shoreditch Slasher’ filled violet-eyed Linnet Hamilton with terror…”
   The Silver Shroud. Manor, pb, 1978. Add UK edition: Linford, pb, 1992.

CROSS, NEIL.
   Mr. In-Between. Film: Verve, 2001 (scw: Peter Waddington; dir: Paul Sarossy); also released as The Killing Kind.

CUNNINGHAM, E. V. Pseudonym of Howard Fast.
   Sally. TV movie: CBS, 1971, as The Face of Fear (scw: Edward Hume; dir: George McCowan)
   Shirley. TV movie: ABC, 1971, as What’s a Nice Girl Like You…? (scw: Howard Fast; dir: Jerry Paris)

CURTISS, URSULA.
   Out of the Dark. TV movie: CBS, 1988, as I Saw What You Did … and I Know Who You Are! (scw: Cynthia Cidre; dir: Fred Walton)

CUSSLER, CLIVE.
   Sahara. Film: Paramount, 2005 (scw: Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, John C. Richards, James V. Hart; dir: BreckEisner) SC: Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey)

   I’ll soon be finished with the A-C section of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Through Parts I through III, that is.

CORBY, JANE (IRENITA). 1899- ? Pseudonyms: Laura Brighton, Jean Carew & Joanne Holden. Of some 24 novels published under her own name, many of them nurse romances, nine are included the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Of these, most are apparently gothic romances. (Those written under her various pen names fall in very much the same categories.)
   Peril at Stone Hall. Arcadia, hc, 1969. Also published as: Fall, Darkness, Fall! Leisure, pb, 1975, as by Laura Brighton. Add UK edition: Linford, pb, 1993. “Mystery lured her to the old castle. Death would show her the way out.” Shown is the US Macfadden paperback edition.

CORNWELL, BERNARD. 1944- . Clarification: This was his name at birth; as an infant he became Bernard Wiggins when adopted by the Wiggins family, but legally changed his name back to Bernard Cornwell when Joseph Wiggins died. Prolific British author of historical fiction; he has also written five contemporary thriller novels, many of them involving sailing, which are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Shown is the cover of the US edition of one of these; the UK title is Sea Lord (Michael Joseph, 1989).

COUGHLIN, WILLIAM J(EREMIAH).
   Shadow of a Doubt. TV movie: Scripps-Howard, 1995 (scw & dir: Brian Dennehy). SC: Charlie Sloan (Brian Dennehy).

COURTENAY, BRYCE
   -Jessica. Australia: Viking, hc, 1998. Joseph, UK, hc, 1999. Setting: Australia; ca.1914. (Add time frame to the setting.) TV movie: Umbrella, 2004 (scw: Peter Yeldham; dir: Peter Andrikidis)

COXE, KATHLEEN BUDDINGTON. Joint pseudonym of Amelia Reynolds Long & Edna McHugh. Under this pen name, the author of one mystery novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
   Murder Most Foul. Phoenix, 1946, hc. Setting: Pennsylvania; Academia. (Add precise location.) Leading characters: Buddie Cox, female undergraduate student, and Francis Thrush, psychology professor.

CRAIG, JOHN (ERNEST).
   If You Want to See Your Wife Again. TV movie: Brentwood, 1972, as Your Money or Your Wife (scw: J. P. Miller; dir: Allen Reisner)

CRANE, CAROLINE.
   Summer Girl. TV movie: Bruce Lansbury, 1983 (scw: A. J. Carothers; dir: Robert Michael Lewis)

HULBERT FOOTNER – Murder Runs in the Family.

Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1934 (shown without jacket). Hardcover reprint: A. L. Burt (shown with jacket). UK hardcover: Collins Crime Club, 1934.

   The novel opens with a classic situation. Lounsbery, CT, millionaire mill owner and all round rotter James Beardmore is blackmailing his lovely secretary Freda Rollin to force her to agree to marry him when his divorce becomes final.

   Lance McCrea, who lives at the same boarding house as Freda, has fallen for her and is comforting her after he hears her crying when her “fiance” arrives on the scene. Fisticuffs ensue wherein McCrea soundly thrashes the odious Beardmore.

   McCrea decides to force Beardmore to tell him what threat he is holding over Freda’s head and then deal with it in some way in order to save her, so he buys a gun for protection and sets out to have a little chat with Beardmore.

   Unfortunately for McCrea, he winds up locked in Beardsmore’s library with his body, having followed the captain of industry to his large estate outside town. The house had been shut up after Mrs Beardsmore went to Reno to establish residence and get her divorce, so what was Beardsmore doing there at night with a luncheon basket containing two servings of salad, lobster mayonnaise, sandwiches, champagne, and coffee?

   Could any one of a number of husbands and fathers in town with reason to hate the mill owner be responsible? Is there a connection between his death and that of his equally rotten father, shot and killed by a disgruntled mill employee twenty or so years before? Could one of the other Beardsmores be responsible? After all, they seem quite happy in upholding the family tradition of, well, rottennness.

   McCrea does not have time to ponder these questions as no sooner has he escaped from the locked library when a posse of police arrive and after an exciting chase through the house and across the estate he is suddenly assaulted by a man lurking in the dark countryside, only to be saved from being shot with his own gun by the arrival of a pursuing policemen, who gets into a fight with the would-be assassin.

   While this is under way McCrea seizes his chance to run off into the woods, but then hears the sound of a shot….

My verdict: Although the novel starts off as a mystery, it quickly develops into a well written thriller that reminded me more than once of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps inasmuch as most of the narrative is devoted to the protagonist while he’s on the run from the police and other enemies.

   McCrea proves to be a quick thinking and resourceful young man and ultimately justice is done. It’s an enjoyable read and I think would make a fine period film.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0801401.txt