GLORIA WHITE – Murder on the Run.

Dell, paperback original. First printing, July 1991.

   According to page one, Ronnie Ventana is the half-Mexican daughter of a pair of jewel thieves. Somehow she is now a PI. According the short bio at the end of the book, this is Gloria White’s first novel.

   Of these two statements, the first one is more than a little unusual, but it’s actually the second one that’s harder to believe. This is a very good book, and if I had any say in the matter (which I don’t, since I’m not involved in voting for any book for any award) I think it could easily be nominated for Best First Novel in anybody’s league.

   It begins like this. Ronnie is out running near Golden Gate Bridge one morning, when she spots two men struggling. One pushes the other into the water, and then she is pursued by the one who did the pushing. Luckily she gets away.

   Two problems follow right away: (1) the body is not discovered immediately, and (2) she recognizes the person who did the dumping as Pete August, a PI who once worked for the D.A.’s office, and who was also once on the police department — and in brief, a fair-headed, high profile boy with all his former connections still intact.

   Snubbed by the police, Ronnie keeps on the case. More deaths follow, and she manages to get a homicide detective named Philly Post interested. Ronnie is a lady who doesn’t give up, and the story has both ginger and snap.

   There is even an unexpected twist ahead. The only problem is the ending. It’s too predictable. A little too obvious. I saw it caning. One good twist deserves another, as the saying goes, and I didn’t get it.

   Don’t get me wrong, though. This book is as good as any of the other female PI novels I’ve read in recent months, and some of them were as good as some of the males of the species. (A number of them were even better.)

[UPDATE] 12-20-08. This is the first review I’ve reprinted since I announced the new focus for this blog posted last weekend but revised earlier today. I was doing movie reviews back in 1991 as well as now, and the ones in this old issue of M*F will soon be showing up here also.

   As for Gloria White, her PI character Ronnie Ventana didn’t have as long a career as I was hoping when I wrote this review. In spite of a slew of award nominations, which I’m pleased to have anticipated, Dell dropped her books after only four outings. Luckily, and this doesn’t always happen, two more books in the series have come out in recent years, and in hardcover to boot.

   Expanded from her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of Gloria White’s mystery fiction:

WHITE, GLORIA.    Series character: PI Ronnie Ventana in all.
      * Murder on the Run. Dell, pbo, 1991. [Anthony Award finalist]
      * Money to Burn. Dell, pbo, 1993.
      * Charged with Guilt. Dell, pbo, 1995. [Edgar Award Finalist, Shamus Award Nominee, Anthony Award Finalist]

      * Sunset and Santiago. Dell, pbo. 1997. [Edgar Award Finalist, Shamus Award Finalist]
      * Death Notes. Severn House, hc, April 2005.
      * Cry Baby. Severn House, hc, June 2006; trade paperback, June 2007.

   More authors from the online Addenda for the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. What I had in mind was that the last grouping of such authors, also from the “C” section, was going to be the last I was going to be double-posting. But the extra exposure seems to help; the comments that were left were extremely useful.

   So I’ve decided to continue posts like this one for a little while longer. Cutting down on the number of of authors will help. It’s quite a mixed batch this time around, as I think you’ll agree, about as different from each other as a group of five can get.

CHADWICK, JOSEPH L. Pseudonym: John Conway, q.v. Other pseudonyms: Joselyn Chadwick, Janet Conroy, Jo Anne Creighton, John Creighton and Elizabeth Grayson. Under his own name, the author of one crime novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   The Golden Frame. Gold Medal, pb, 1955. “She was as old as Eve, as young as love, as warm as life – and as cold as death.”

CONWAY, JOHN. Pseudonym of Joseph L. Chadwick, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of six titles published by Monarch as paperback originals between 1959 and 1961, including the one below. Besides one book in the Revised Crime Fiction IV under his own name, other titles appear under five additional pseudonyms.
   A Sin in Time. Monarch, US, pb, 1961. Add setting: Pennsylvania. “She lived hard and fast until her sins caught up with her.”

CONYERS, (MINNIE) DOROTHEA (née BLOOD-SMYTH). 1863-1949. Born in Limerick, Ireland; married Lt. Conyers, who was killed in 1915, then married Captain White. Author of more than forty sporting novels and collections. Of these, seven of a criminous nature are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Add the following:
   Kicking Foxes. Hutchinson, UK, hc, 1947. Setting: England. A novel of the “changing fortunes of a lady in the Leicestershire hunting set.”

COOK, KENNETH.
   Wake in Fright. Joseph, UK, hc, 1961; St. Martin’s, US, hc, 1962. Setting: Australia. Film: NLT, 1970; also released as Outback (scw: Evan Jones; dir: Ted Kotcheff). [Add alternative title.] “The story of John Grant, a young school teacher, stranded in a brutal and menacing town in outback Australia.” [Reputed to be Australia’s great lost film.]

COOK, ROBIN.
   Acceptable Risk. TV movie: TBS, 2001 (scw: Michael J. Murray; dir: William A. Graham)
   Harmful Intent. TV movie: David Schneider, 1993 (scw: James Steven Sadwith; dir: John Patterson)
   Mortal Fear. TV movie: ACI, 1994 (scw: Rob Gilber, Roger Young; dir: Larry Shaw)
   Outbreak. TV movie: NBC, 1995, as Virus; also released as Formula for Death (scw: Roger Young; dir: Armand Mastroianna)
   Terminal. TV movie: NBC, 1996 (scw: Nancy Isaak; dir: Larry Elikann)

COOKE, L(AWRENCE) A(LFRED) B. Add/correct his first two names in full. Brother of mystery writer Rupert Croft-Cooke; educated at Oxford; tutor in Switzerland for two years; antiquarian bookseller; later prep school teacher. Author of a single title listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   War in the Gates. Geoffery Bles, UK, hc, 1937. Setting: England. [Could the fascist movement in England have tried to impose a dictator on the UK Government?]

MILES BURTON – The Secret of High Eldersham. Collins, UK, hc, 1930. Mystery League, US, hc, 1931 (shown). Also published as The Mystery of High Eldersham, Collins, UK, pb, 1933 (also shown).

   Retired Metropolitan Police sergeant Samuel Whitehead is landlord of the Rose and Crown public house in the East Anglian village of High Eldersham. Hitherto the pub has not been a paying concern but since Whitehead took over as mine host it has done well, despite the fact the locals are not the friendliest of folk and outsiders who take up residence in the village tend not to prosper.

   Then late one evening village bobby Constable Viney finds Whitehead murdered in the pub. Given the till has not been rifled, it seems robbery was not involved. What then could the motive have been?

   Chief Constable Bateman has hardly been on the scene five minutes, much less interviewed any of the villagers except Constable Viney, when he decides to call in Scotland Yard.

   Enter Detective-Inspector Robert Young of the Yard. Taking up residence at the Rose and Crown next day, he soon senses there is something, well, odd about the village and writes to his friend Desmond Merrion asking him to come to High Eldersham to discuss the case.

My verdict: Alas, I found this entry in the Merrion series less entertaining than some of his other adventures. One secret of High Eldersham will leap out at the alert reader a few chapters before it is revealed by the author and the other telegraphs itself in similar fashion. In all fairness it is possible these matters were considered much more shocking at the time the book was published than nowadays.

   Questions such as the identity of the lady who shows up in the village in a Rolls Royce and why the publican was murdered and by whom are solved in a satisfactory manner, and there’s even romantic interest for Merrion.

   While generally slow-paced there are several gripping episodes, but to avoid spoilers their nature had best remain shrouded in thick fog rather than trumpeted forth in this short review. On balance, then, if I had to assign a grade, I’d mark it as a B.

Etext: http://www.munseys.com/diskfour/helddex.htm

LIBELED LADY. MGM, 1936. Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly. Screenplay: Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George Oppenheimer. Director: Jack Conway.

   A movie with four lead stars in it was quite the thing in 1936, and it still is today, especially if the four stars are the first four listed just above. Jean Harlow, alas, was to make only two more movies after this one (or is it one and a half?). She died way too young – only 26 years old.

   She was engaged to William Powell at the time of her death, but in the movies that seemingly semi-sozzled but always debonair leading man will be forever linked with the supremely beautiful Myrna Loy. One arched glance my way, if it were ever to have happened, would have made me putty in her hands, as it did audiences from her time to now.

   Spencer Tracy, as Haggerty, the beleaguered editor of the newspaper that jet set debutante Connie Allenbury (Loy) is suing for libel, is teamed up with Jean Harlow in this one.

   Her role is that of Gladys, the girl he always keeps waiting at the altar, but in a magnificent but totally grandiose plan to even the odds, he marries her off instead to Bill Chandler (Powell) whose job is to woo Connie as a “married man” with a private eye with a handy camera in attendance.

   So that’s the story. The delight is in the telling, and I’ve given full credit to the screenwriters who came up with some of the wittiest dialogue I can recall listening to in recent weeks. Samples, courtesy of IMDB:

   As always, I suppose you have to be there, and I recommend most heartedly that you do. The only displeasure that I might pass along to you is the ending, which wraps itself up far more quickly than I would have liked, with one major scene taking place off-screen, plus a couple of other events that are brought up in fast-paced fashion with nary a hint to the audience ahead of time that small gimmicks like this are going to be sprung upon them.

   Otherwise, as I’ve previously suggested, a pure joy and delight.

THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD. TV movie/episode of Agatha Christie: Poirot. First shown in the UK on 2 January 2000 [Season 7, Episode 1]. David Suchet, Philip Jackson, Oliver Ford Davies, Selina Cadell, Roger Frost, Malcolm Terris, Nigel Cooke, Daisy Beaumont, Flora Montgomery. Based on Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name. Screenwriter: Andrew Grieve. Director: Clive Exton.

   It’s been a long time since I first read the book — something like 55 years ago — and it was also the last time. This is one of only two detective novels for which I remember the ending and who did it, and the other was by Agatha Christie also.

   Which is why the book has been only a one-time affair for me. The details I don’t remember, but I do remember Hercule Poirot — it was probably my introduction to him, but I couldn’t swear to that — and once you’ve read a novel he’s in, if you’re a detective story fan of any kind, he’s a character you’ll also never forget.

   Confession time. I’ve never seen David Suchet as Poirot until now. Pure negligence on my part, or a certain lack of resolve, whatever. Right now, at the moment, I am typing this, I’m a convert. 100 percent. Suchet is Hercule Poirot, to the ultimate and finest detail.

   If you know the story about Roger Ackroyd’s murder, and without my saying more, I am assuming that you do, you might wonder how it could be filmed. If it were up to me, I’d do as direct an adaptation as I could, but Andrew Grieve goes at it sort of sideways and this misses the point of the tale entirely. (At the beginning of the film Poirot is reading from the killer’s diary.)

   The characters in this film are among those that are also in the book, but some research into other reviewers’ commentaries say that not all of the characters in the book are in the movie, present and accounted for.

   There is also an extra murder that is not in the book (or again, so I’m told). And on my own, with no help from others, I certainly did not recognize the shootout in the chemical factory between the killer on one side at the end, and Poirot and Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) on the other. Good grief. What were they thinking?

   I also wondered about the scene in Poirot’s old semi-abandoned city apartment (the movie begins as he’s “enjoying” his retirement far out in the country). Poirot seems choked up about the place, the furniture covered in sheets, with bad memories flooding his mind. What was that all about? (Perhaps it has to do something with the fact that I started watching the Suchet series with Season 7?)

   All in all, I suppose one could easily enjoy this made-for-TV movie if one did not know the story, nor the character, ahead of time. I can usually tune things out so that I can watch the film the screenwriter and director want to tell while I’m watching, which I did just fine. But why on earth did they want to tell this one?

   I exclude David Suchet from blame. Even if he had something to say about the story, I’m going to say he didn’t, and I’m looking forward to his next outing in the boxed set I just bought myself as an early Christmas present.

BRUCE ZIMMERMAN – Thicker Than Water.

Detective Book Club; reprint hardcover [3-in-1 edition]. First edition: HarperCollins, 1991. Paperback reprint: Harper, 1993.

   In the five year period from 1989 to 1994, Bruce Zimmerman wrote four mystery thrillers featuring phobia therapist Quinn Parker, but since then he seems to have disappeared. Or at least I’ve found nothing more about him than what’s in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction III, even using a quick search on the Internet. The four books and nothing more.    [See also the UPDATE below.]

   From the book at hand, the second in the series, Zimmerman seems to have been aiming at the moderately-boiled Travis McGee market. Treating phobia patients as a profession seems to be a good way of getting the San Francisco based Parker into all kinds of scrapes, but in this book, nothing is made of it.

   Parker gets involved this time when he gives a good buddy a hand after he inherits a half-million dollar estate in Jamaica and finds there are exceedingly dangerous strings attached.

   Zimmerman is very good at thumbnail dead-on descriptions of the people found in his books, and more than once I was brought suddenly to attention by a plot twist that was (to say the least) unexpected. But as a detective, Quinn Parker is — well, if inept is not quite the right word, then to say the least, he’s not very good at it. One additional death, if not two, can be attributed directly to Parker’s entirely unsavvy approach to the business at hand.

   Worse, he seems all but blithely unaware of it. He swallows hard, and it’s on to the next chapter. Nor is the ending particularly neat and tidy, with one explanation in particular producing (in my mind) many more questions than answer.

   From mind-boggling turns of plot to mind-blowing maladroitness, that’s the mix. Worth spending an evening’s reading time on, but not likely to be remembered strongly by more than a few of those who do.

[UPDATE] 12-18-08. First of all, notice that I referred to Crime Fiction III in this review. The latest edition of Al Hubin’s book (but available only on CD) is the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   Secondly, either the Internet contains more than it did six years ago, or I’m getting better at Google. Was Google around six years ago? Maybe not. Either way, I found out why there were four Quinn Parker mysteries (as stated in the review) and only four.

   Bruce Zimmerman, as it turns out, discovered Hollywood, or Hollywood discovered him. To his lasting great fortune, Zimmerman started writing for TV in 1998, and in 2000 he turned producer. Series to his credit in the latter capacity (thanks to IMDB) include The District, Judging Amy, Desperate Housewives, CSI: NY, and K-Ville. (I really liked that last series, a cop show taking place in New Orleans, but I think I was the only one. After last year’s writers’ strike, it never returned.)

   And thanks to the previously mentioned Crime Fiction IV, slightly expanded, here’s a list of the mystery novels that Bruce Zimmerman produced:

ZIMMERMAN, BRUCE. 1952- . Series character: Quinn Parker, in all four.
      Blood Under the Bridge. Harper, hc, 1989; St.Martin’s, pb, 1990.   [Nominated for an Edgar in the Best First Novel category.]

      Thicker Than Water. Harper, hc, 1991; ppbk, 1993.
      Full-Bodied Red. Harper, hc, 1993; ppbk, 1994.
      Crimson Green. Harper, hc, 1994; ppbk, 1995.

MADE MEN. Decade Pictures, 1999. James Belushi, Michael Beach, Timothy Dalton, Steve Railsback, Carlton Wilborn, Vanessa Angel, Jamie Harris, David O’Donnell. Director: Louis Morneau.

   I found James Belushi’s performance in this fine shoot-em-up comedy crime caper to be a work of art, and I’m not kidding. Rated R for good reason (language and flying bullets), I enjoyed every minute of it. (Well, not every minute, but you have to allow me a small bit of exaggeration in the first paragraph of a review, don’t you?)

   Belushi plays Bill “The Mouth” Mannuci, a guy on the run from the mob, and he’s not the only reason the mob’s after him. He took a stash of 12 million dollars with him.

   I’m not sure where the small country town is that he’s holed up in, along with Debra, his ultra-shapely girl friend (Vanessa Angel), but it might be Iowa (lots of corn), Oklahoma (crooked small-town sheriff, played by Timothy Dalton), or Michigan (hidden meth labs way out in the sticks), but it probably doesn’t matter. I’m sure you have the idea already.

   It is the kind of country where blacks (including Michael Beach as Miles, one of the more intelligent mobsters after him) stick out like sore thumbs and have to mind their manners every step of the way.

   One wishes that Vanessa Angel might have had more screen time, but Timothy Dalton in his more immediate post-Bond days is a revelation of his own, playing against type, you might say, in more ways I might have thought possible.

   But James Belushi plays his part to perfection: a crook, a liar, a thief, and a guy possessed with a natural gift of gab, talking away incessantly, possessing the mouth of a pure-born salesman, selling his various stories to anyone who would believe him along the way. Including me. He sure had me leaning the wrong way more than once.

   In any case, a combination of better-than-average dialogue and production values with a minimum of actual bloodshed (in comparison with all of the shooting) makes this movie the top half of a drive-in double feature by far, not the bottom. If there were drive-in theaters any more.

   I miss them.

    Included in this post are authors in the A-C section of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   In all likelihood, this will be the last of these posts I’ll do on the blog. While I’m pleased with the results, it takes more time that it should to double post them. From now on, annotated additions and corrections like these will be found only on the primary CFIV website.

COEN, FRANKLIN. 1912-1990. US movie & TV screenwriter with many credits between 1936 and 1974. Add the second of the two books listed below. This now constitutes the author’s complete entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   The Plunderers. Coward McCann, US, hc, 1980. Severn House, UK, hc, 1981. “A high-speed, high-stakes thriller – Nazi greed against all the pride of Paris.”
   -Vinegar Hill. Rinehart, 1950. Setting: US South. TV movie: Art & Anne, 1995, as Deadly Family Secrets (scw: Brian Taggert; dir: Richard T.Heffron)

COFFEY, BRIAN. Pseudonym of Dean R. Koontz.
   The Face of Fear. TV movie: CBS, 1990 (scw: Dean R. Koontz, Alan Jay Glueckman; dir: Farhad Mann)

COLE, ALEXANDER. Pseudonym of Justin Scott, q.v. Other pseudonym: J. S. Blazer; add new pseudonym: Paul Garrison. As “Alexander Cole,” the author has only one entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
   The Auction. Jove, US, pb, 1983. Add British edition: Granada, hc, 1985, as by Justin Scott. “Kidnapped. The most valuable man in the world. The bidding starts at $5 million…”

COLE, MARTINA
   The Jump. TV movie: BBC, 1998 (scw: Martina Cole; dir: Richard Standeven)

COLLINS, JACKIE. Pen name of Jacqueline Collins Lerman, 1941- . Prolific bestselling author; much of her fiction has criminous components. Add the second of the two novels below.
   Chances. Partial basis for TV movie [mini-series]: NBC, 1990, as Lucky/Chances (scw: Jackie Collins; dir: Buzz Kulik). SC: Lucky Santangelo (Nicollette Sheridan), Gino Santangelo (Vincent Irizarry)
   Lucky. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1985; Collins, UK, hc, 1985. SC: Santangelo family; setting: Las Vegas, NV. Partial basis for TV movie [mini-series]: NBC, 1990, as Lucky/Chances (scw: Jackie Collins; dir: Buzz Kulik). SC: Lucky Santangelo (Nicollette Sheridan), Gino Santangelo (Vincent Irizarry)

COLLINS, MAX ALLAN
   The Road to Perdition. Film: Dreamworks, 2002 (scw: David Self; dir: Sam Mendes)

COLLINS, WILKIE
   Basil. Film: Kushner-Locke, 1998 (scw & dir: Radha Bharadwaj)
   The Moonstone. TV movie: BBC/PBS, 1996 (scw: Kevin Elyot; dir: Robert Bierman)
   The Woman in White. TV movie [series episode/Dow Hour of Great Mysteries]: NBC, 1960 (scw: Frank Ford; dir: Paul Nickell)

CONDON, RICHARD
   The Manchurian Candidate. Film: Paramount, 2004 (scw: George Axelrod; dir: Jonathan Demme)

CONNELLY, MICHAEL
   Blood Work. Film: Warner, 2002 (scw: Brian Helgeland; dir: Clint Eastwood)

CONRAD, JOSEPH
   The Secret Agent. TV movie [mini-series]: BBC, 1967 (scw: Alexander Baron; dir: Gerald Blake). Also: BBC, 1992 (scw: Dusty Hughes; dir: David Drury)
   -Victory. Doubleday, 1915; Methuen, 1915. Silent film: Paramount, 1919 (scw: Jules Furthman; dir: Maurice Tourneur). Sound film: Paramount, 1930, as Dangerous Paradise (scw: William Slavens McNutt, Grover Jones; dir: William A. Wellman). Also: Paramount, 1940 (scw: John L. Balderston; dir: John Cromwell). Also: Miramax, 1995 (scw & dir: Mark Peploe)

CONROY, A. L. This is this author’s only entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. [In spite of the similarity of names, there is no evidence to suggest that the author was Al Conroy, aka Marvin H. Albert.]
   Storefront Lawyers. (Bantam, pb, 1970) Novelization of TV movie [series episode/Storefront Lawyers] entitled A Man’s Castle: CBS, 1970 (scw: unknown; dir: Lee H. Katzin)

SCOTT, JUSTIN (BLAZER). 1942- . Pseudonyms: J. S. Blazer, Alexander Cole, q.v. Add pseudonym: Paul Garrison. His father, A. Leslie Scott, was the author of approximately 250 western novels, including many under several pen names; his mother, Lily K. Scott, wrote novels, many of them romances, as well as short stories for the slicks and pulp magazines. Also a novelist is his sister, Alison Scott Skelton. Under his own name, the author of many crime and detective novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   The Auction. Grafton, hc, 1985. Add: This is the British edition of a book published in the US earlier as by Alexander Cole, q.v.

I CONFESS. Warner Brothers, 1953. Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, O. E. Hasse. Screenplay: Paul Tabori, based on a play by Paul Anthelme. Director: Alfred Hitchcock.

   Every movie director has a film or two that the general consensus is that they’re not among his best. That seems to be the case for I Confess, the last black and white movie that Hitchcock made, except for Psycho, as everybody who comments on this fact is equally quick to point out.

   Filmed in Quebec and largely, if not entirely on location, it may be the subject matter that wasn’t fully understood, say some.

   Montgomery Clift plays Father Michael William Logan, who’s put in a moral and ethical dilemma when a handyman for the church where he’s a priest confesses to a murder that he’s just committed.

   Unable to reveal the killer’s identity to the authorities, represented primarily by the overly adversarial Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden), nor even a hint, Father Logan’s predicament becomes personal when he ends up accused of the crime himself, and still not able to say a word. (It may not have been intended, but I think Malden looks awfully devilish in the photo below. What do you think?)

   While I’m reluctant to say more, it seems that there was a girl in his past, and the girl knew the dead man.

   And the real killer (O. E. Hasse), while panicky and frightened in the beginning, seems to take more and more pleasure in reminding Father Logan that he is not allowed to say a word.

   The connections between the primary characters are in fact probably too complicated — there’s an over-reliance on coincidence, required only to make the story work — and Father Logan is probably too committed to his principles for audiences to understand. “Why doesn’t he … ?” they had to be thinking back then, when the movie first came out.

   Not only then, but now, I admit it. Questions like these were certainly in my mind, and I didn’t have to work hard at it.

   This, quite naturally, led to growing frustration with Mr. Hitchcock when there wasn’t (I felt) enough explanation or spelling out why indeed Father Logan doesn’t do this or that, or more correctly, can’t, even when the case goes to trial.

   Most courtroom cases in the movies do not seem all at real, and this is another of them. I also didn’t care for the shootout scene at the end. Anything else? No, but other than the reservations I’ve already stated, I did like the movie, and maybe more than other people have. I even recognized Mr. Hitchcock’s portly profile at the beginning of the film, so I was also happy about that.

   I’ve recently split the previous A through H page of the online Addenda to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV into two sections, A through C and D through H. These entries obviously come from the A-C page, falling immediately after Agatha Christie’s entry:

CHRISTMAN, ELIZABETH. Add as a new author. 1914- . Ref: CA. Literary agent, 1946-69; faculty member at DePauw University, University of Notre Dame, 1969- .
   -A Nice Italian Girl. Dodd Mead, hc, 1976. TV movie: Brut Productions, 1977, as Black Market Baby (scw: Andrew Peter Marin; dir: Robert Day)

CHRISTOPHER, MATTHEW F. Prolific author of sports novels for boys. The title below is his only entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
   Look for the Body. Phoenix Press, hc, 1952. Add setting: Midwest. Leading character: Brooks Carter, physician.

CHURCHILL, EDWARD. 1895-1972. Author of many stories in the pulp fiction magazines between roughly 1929 and 1952, plus one hardcover mystery novel cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
   Menace of Death. Dodge, hc, 1937. Add settings: New Jersey, Washington D.C. Leading character: Captain Kirkland Crane of US Army Intelligence.

CLANCY, TOM
   The Sum of All Fears. Film: Paramount, 2002 (scw: Paul Attanasio, Daniel Pyne; dir: Phil Alden Robinson). SC: Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck)

CLARK, MARY HIGGINS
   ● All Around the Town. TV movie: PAX, 2002 (scw: Peter Mohan; dir: Paolo Barzman)

   ● The Anastasia Syndrome and other stories. TV movie Lucky Day, based on ss in this collection: PAX, 2002 (scw: Peter Mohan; dir: Penelope Buitenhuis)

   ● Before I Say Goodbye. TV movie: PAX, 2003 (scw: Jon Cooksey, Ali Marie Matheson, John Benjamin Martin; dir: Michael Storey)

   ● The Cradle Will Fall. TV movie: Cates Films, 1983 (scw: Jerome Coopersmith; dir: John Llewellyn Moxey)

   ● A Cry in the Night. TV movie: Telescene, 1992 (scw & dir: Robin Spry)

   ● I’ll Be Seeing You. TV movie: PAX, 2004 (scw: John Benjamin Martin; dir: Will Dixon). [No writing credit given to Mary Higgins Clark.]

   ● Let Me Call You Sweetheart. http://imdb.com/title/tt0129198/: Family Channel, 1997 (scw: Christopher Lofton; dir: Bill Corcoran)

   ● Loves Music, Loves to Dance. TV movie: PAX, 2001 (scw: Peter Mohan; dir: Mario Azzopardi)

   ● Moonlight Becomes You. TV movie: Family Channel, 1998 (scw: David Kinghorn; dir: Bill Corcoran)

   ● My Gal Sunday. TV movie A Crime of Passion, based on ss in this collection: PAX, 2003 (scw: John Benjamin Martin, Carl Binder; dir; Charles Wilkinson)

   ● Pretend You Don’t See Her. TV movie: PAX, 2002 (scw: Donald Hounam; dir: Rene Bonniere)

   ● Stillwatch. TV movie: CBS, 1987 (scw: Laird Koenig, David E. Peckinpah; dir: Rod Holcomb)

   ● We’ll Meet Again. TV movie: PAX, 2002 (scw: Michael Thoma, John Benjamin Martin; dir: Michael Storey)

   ● Weep No More, My Lady. TV movie: CBS, 1992 (scw: Michel Andrieu, Leila Basen, Robert Levine; dir: Andrieu)

   ● While My Pretty One Sleeps. TV movie: Hallmark/Family Channel, 1997 (scw: David Kinghorn; dir: Jorge Montesi)

   ● You Belong to Me. TV film: PAX, 2001 (scw: Irina Diether; dir: Paolo Barzman)

CLEWS, ALAN. Add as a new author. British television and film screenwriter.
   A Child of Air. Headline, UK, hc, 1995. Setting: Scotland. [“An old-fashioned ghost story of rolling mists, Scottish lairds, and something nasty behind the curtains.” Storyboards for a proposed film can be found online.]

COE, CAPTAIN. Joint pseudonym of Edward Card Mitchell and Lincoln Springfield, 1865- . Author of one title cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Add year of birth of the latter author; death date unknown.
   The Coroner’s Understudy. Arrowsmith, UK, hc, 1891.