LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Girl with the Long Green Heart.

Hard Case Crime; reprint paperback, November 2005. Previously published as a paperback original: Gold Medal k1555, 1965. Other reprint editions include: Foul Play Press, ppbk, 1985; Carroll & Graf, ppbk, July 1994; Five Star, hc, May 1999.

   What a perfect title and what a perfect McGinnis Carter Brown-type cover! One of Lawrence Block’s minor distinctions is that he may be the only writer to have set a crime novel in Olean, N.Y.

   This is a grafter noir narrated by an erstwhile con man who’s been jolted into the straight life by a prison sentence. But when an old pupil comes to him with a clever con that plays on the resentment of a big deal small town businessman who’s been conned on a Canadian land deal, our boy is in.

   His interest is perked in no small way by an impromptu inside player: the mark’s secretary/mistress, a woman who picks up things (including the narrator) quickly and seems born to the grift.

   Well, there aren’t a lot of unexpected twists and turns here, at least not to an audience that’s grown up with variants of the Big Store con ranging from Mission: Impossible to The Sting. But the pleasure is in the smooth narrative voice Block provides, the confidence trickster detail that’s laid out and an ending with a quiet twist that’s based on character.

   Nice job.

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment: Zoraya.

Gold Medal #979. Paperback original; first printing, March 1960. Reprint editions include Gold Medal T2616, 1972, with a new cover (shown).

   Now this. Not putting down any of the other books reviewed this issue, this is the real thing. The eleventh of CIA agent Sam Durell’s violent around-the-world adventures, it possesses a drive and story-telling intensity unmatched by very few writers today.

   I have mentioned before that I don’t read spy thrillers at all any more, but that wasn’t really true. I don’t read today’s bloated novels of Nazi hunts or nuclear conspiracies, and I seldom read convoluted LeCarrean tales of cold war intrigue, but I do read Edward S. Aarons.

   One wonders if Aarons ever travelled to all the places he describes so well. This story takes Durell from sunny Geneva to the picturesque Mediterranean island of Elba to the hot burning deserts surrounding the small Arabian port city of Jidrat, and in each place we get the unmistakable feeling that we are actually there. One suspects it is because Aarons also had a sense of history as well.

   Durell’s mission in this book: to return decadent Prince Amr al-Maari to his homeland, in a last-ditch attempt to provide leadership to a country about to undergo a bloody revolution. Zoraya is his wife, married when she was but eight years old, but repudiated ever since by Amr, she has spent her life simply waiting for him. If anyone can assist Durell in forcing the Prince out of his present life of drunken debauchery, it is she.

   Coincidence is very much a part of every good writer’s stock-in-trade, but unlike the whopping one leading off Nick O’Donohoe’s book [reviewed here not so long ago], only one of Aarons’ characters — the Jewish-Hungarian wife of Major Kolia Mikelnikov, Durell’s Russian counterpart — comes on the scene solely by accident, and even that is made plausible.

   When the stage is set, the drama that then plays itself out on the blood-splattered streets of Jidrat and the besieged palace of Amr’s grandfather is clearly not fun and games.

   Here’s a description of Sam Durell that sums him up pretty well (page 130): “…you do things in the name of duty which you really do not have to do.”

[UPDATE] 12-03-08. Nope, I don’t remember this one either. I could easily read it again, after reading what I had to say, but I haven’t yet read all of the other Sam Durell adventures, so I probably won’t. Not right away, anyway.

   I wonder why I was so down on John Le Carré at the time. I still don’t read bloated novels of Nazi hunts or nuclear conspiracies, but I while I haven’t recently, I have no aversion to reading anything by the man who wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. That’s a book I definitely do remember, and I read it when it first came out.

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS – R. Holmes & Co: Being the Remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes, Esq., Detective and Amateur Cracksman by Birth.   Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1906. Paperback reprint: Otto Penzler Books, 1994.

   The family of writer Jenkins is temporarily out of town. On a blistering hot night he is dozing in a hammock on the fire escape when a nocturnal visitor climbs up it and pops into his flat.

   Surprised to say the least, Jenkins follows the burglar to his library, where he finds him perusing royalty statements. The visitor is Raffles Holmes, son of Sherlock and grandson of A. J., and he is there to suggest, if he finds these statements satisfactory, that Jenkins record some of his exploits for mutual financial gain. Besides which, he says, Jenkins needs some new ideas for his fiction. Ouch!

   Here follow a few lines about the various adventures related by Jenkins, hopefully without giving too much of their plots away.

   ● The Adventure of the Dorrington Ruby Seal relates how Raffles Holmes’ parents met during the hitherto unrecorded case of a jewelry theft from Lord Dorrington stately home, the swag including an immensely valuable ruby seal given to the family by George IV. Raffles Holmes’ mother’s name is Marjorie, daughter of A.J. Memo: who was her mother? Though Bunny did hint Raffles’ had a number of escapades with the ladies…

   ● The Adventure of Mrs Burlingame’s Diamond Stomacher underlines the constantly warring nature of Raffles Holmes — an insistent desire to pinch things and the equally strong wish to bring malefactors to justice. When Mrs B’s highly valuable stomacher is stolen, her dinner guests, despite being the cream of society, are under a cloud of suspicion. To say more would be to reveal Raffles Holmes’ cunning plan to collect the reward money for its return.

   ● The Adventure of the Missing Pendants involves a theft from Gaffany & Company, whose craftsmen are cutting a section of a fabulous diamond into four pendants. Two pendants go missing, and the solution involves Raffles in disguise and a water cooler.

   ● The Adventure of the Brass Check comes about because everyone expected Mrs Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has a rope of enormous pearls and everyone knows it. Raffles Holmes hatches a clever plan to claim a reward for its return without actually stealing the pearls.

   ● The Adventure of the Hired Burglar involves an attempt to save the reputation of a man who has been up to no good with someone else’s bonds and must produce them in a very short time when their owner reaches majority, Raffles Holmes agrees to help out, but this leads to a triple cross…

   ● The Redemption of Young Billington Rand is necessary because while Rand is an honourable man he is also weak, and as a result is now more or less bankrupt and owes money right, left, and at the club. Raffles Holmes intervenes to save him from taking a criminal step.

   ● The Nostalgia of Nervy Jim The Snatcher is for his cosy jail cell, preferably for ten or more years, as the old lag cannot cope with life outside prison. To help him achieve his wish, Raffles Holmes and Jenkins sing in the chorus of Lohengrin at a performance at which Mrs Robinson-Jones’ valuable necklace is stolen.

   ● The Adventure of Room 407 involves an intercepted telegram and a man masquerading as a member of the nobility, but despite a promising start it is perhaps the least of the stories related by Jenkins.

   ● The Major-General’s Pepperpots are a massive golden pair, a gift from the King of Spain, as now General Carrington Cox relates. Stolen some years before, Raffles Holmes sees one on a friend’s dinner table and he has the other by way of a sentimental event. After hearing why Carrington Cox was given the pepperpots, Raffles Holmes decides he must do something….

My verdict: Fans of Holmes and Raffles will find this collection amusing and some of the planning and execution worthy of old Hawkface himself. The criminal collation tends more to the Rafflian turn of phrase than the Holmesian, and I must admit I laughed out loud when, after Raffles Holmes whacks Jenkins on the shoulders and almost topples him into the fireplace, the former declares “Don’t be a rabbit. The thing will be as easy as cutting calve’s-foot jelly with a razor.”

   It’s well worth spending an hour or two with Bangs when readers fancy something a little lighter than usual in the criminous literary line.

Etext: http://manybooks.net/titles/bangsjoh2055920559-8.html

JOHNNY RYAN. Made for TV. 1990. Clancy Brown, Julia Campbell, Jason Beghe, Robert Rossilli, J. Kenneth Campbell, Teri Austin, Robert Prosky. Director: Robert E. Collins.

   So far my research hasn’t turned up which network or cable channel first telecast this very much retro-1940s cops-against-organized-crime show, but IMDB says the date was 29 July 1990. My copy came from Encore’s Mystery Channel some time later on, but that’s no help.

   IMDB also says the story takes place in 1949. Could be, but it felt more like 1946 to me, just after the war, when old Model T’s were still on the road and little else but old coupes and boxy sedans were available.

   As far as the cast is concerned, they’re all pretty much unknown to me. Clancy Brown plays Johnny Ryan, the stalwart new head of a special task force against the mob in Manhattan, very much in the Robert Stack mode, complete with pulled down brim.

   His broad features (but still good-looking) and Bronxish accent (at least in this film) hardly made for very many other leading roles. Most of his subsequent career has been as a voice artist for superhero cartoons.

   The picture you see of him here is not from this TV movie, I’m sorry to say, but it’s from the same time period. I also apologize that it’s in black and white. The film’s in color.

   Johnny’s job in the movie is to break the stories of the two cops supposedly watching an important witness in a hotel room. (The witness is thrown from the window when their backs are turned.)

   Night club owner Steve Lombardi (either Jason Beghe or Robert Rosilli – IMDB lists them both) is in on the killing. When Johnny tries to find a way to get at him, he uses Lombardi’s girl friend and club entertainer Eve Manion (Julia Campbell), not expecting the next obvious plot twist, but the avid viewer of movies of this type certainly will. (The photo here of Julia Campbell is not in 1940s mode, but it’ll give you an idea.)

   There are a few other plot twists, but none of them are particularly earth-shattering, or even bending. Well, maybe bending. I certainly didn’t mind the 95 minutes or so it took to watch this movie. If it happened to be a pilot for a projected series, which is a strong possibility, I’d have wanted to see more, but I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. Maybe nobody else is.

ED GORMAN – Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Berkley; paperback reprint; December 2002. Hardcover edition: Carroll & Graf, January 2001.

   Not to make it too personal, but September 1959 was the month I started my senior year in high school, and that’s the very same autumn in which this nostalgic trip back to small-town America takes place. I was younger then than Gorman’s private eye protagonist, Sam McCain, but I remember drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, drugstore lunch counters, Gold Medal paperbacks, and Edd “Kookie” Byrnes.

   I also remember some of the darker sides of life in the late 50s: polio; segregation; Khrushchev’s threats; the remnants of McCarthyism. And it’s the Communist menace, or threat thereof, that forms the background for this latest of three mysteries Gorman has placed in Black River Falls, Iowa.

   The first death is that of a liberal former member of Truman’s administration, and the body count slowly but surely begins to climb from there. As good as the mystery is, even more enjoyable is Sam’s love life, which to put it mildly, is a mess, and I identified with every awkward moment of it.

   Along with an unerring sense of that not-so-long-ago period of American history, Gorman’s quiet but sarcastically obvious sense of humor is what makes this book worth looking for. Very enjoyable.

[UPDATE] 12-02-08. After a gap of three years — too long! — Sam McCain made his seventh appearance last year in Fools Rush In, which I haven’t read yet. I will have to do something about that.

      The Day the Music Died. Carroll & Graf, Jan 1999; Berkley, pb, Apr 2000.

      Wake Up Little Susie. Carroll & Graf, Jan 2000; Berkley, pb, Feb 2001.
      Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Carroll & Graf, Jan 2001; Berkley, pb, Dec 2002.
      Save the Last Dance For Me. Carroll & Graf, Feb 2002; Worldwide, pb, July 2003.
      Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Carroll & Graf, Dec 2002; Worldwide, pb, June 2004.
      Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. Carroll & Graf, Feb 2004; Worldwide, 2005.
      Fools Rush In. Pegasus, Mar 2007; trade paperback, Mar 2009.

DOWNHILL. US title: When Boys Leave Home. Gainsborough, 1927; Alfred Hitchcock, director; Claude McDonnell, cinematographer; Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Robin Irvine, Sybil Rhoda, Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter. Shown at Cinecon 41, September 2005.

   Ivor Novello stars in a film adaptation of his own play, and is once again directed by Hitchcock, whose previous film was The Lodger in which Novello played the prime suspect.

   Although Novello is best known as a consummate stage performer and composer of popular songs, the screen persona I’ve seen in at least three films shows a darker, risk-taking side.

   In Downhill, he’s a popular public school student, from a wealthy family, who takes the blame for a friend’s indiscretion with a barmaid and slides downhill after his father throws him out.

   The film shows the influence of German expressionism on Hitchcock, with some striking photography in an extended dance-hall sequence that, although it takes place in Paris, recalls images of decadent Berlin settings in the 1920s.

PAULA PAUL – An Improper Death.

Berkley, paperback original; first printing, November 2002.

   The second mystery adventure of Dr. Alexandra Gladstone has much the same virtues and flaws as the first (Symptoms of Death, May 2002). The problems of being a female doctor in Victorian England are abundantly illustrated. Trying to do surgery on a male patient’s privates, for example, takes a good amount of strategic planning.

   And in general Ms. Paul does a more than credible job in re-creating the life and times of the lower classes; it was a hard life. Where she falters is in the mystery itself, that of the death of a former British admiral, found drowned on the beach near his home, clad only in women’s undergarments (hence the title).

   Constable Snow’s mysterious behavior which follows seems strained and forced, and so do several other incidents. Worse, though, is the killer’s behavior, totally unexplainable, making any attempt to follow the clues all but hopeless.

   So, definitely a mixed bag. Read this for the characters, not for the detective work.

[UPDATE] 12-02-08.   There were only three books in the Dr. Gladstone series:

      Symptoms of Death. Berkley, pbo, May 2002.

      An Improper Death. Berkley, pbo, Nov 2002.
      Half a Mind to Murder. Berkley, pbo, Oct 2003.

   In a series coming before the Gladstone books were three adventures of Hillary Scarborough & Jane Ferguson, a mismatched pair of Southern belle decorators, all as by Paula Carter:

      Leading an Elegant Death. Berkley, pbo, Feb 1999.

      Deathday Party. Berkley, pbo, Oct 1999.
      Red Wine Goes with Murder. Berkley, pbo, July 2000.

   Under her own name and as Catherine Monroe, Paula Paul has also written a number of other books, most of them historical fiction or romantic suspense.

WALTER SATTERTHWAIT – Dead Horse. Denis McMillan Publications, hardcover, 2006.

   Sattherwait’s novel speculates on the private relationship of [pulp author] Raoul Whitfield and his socialite wife, Mrs. Emily Davies Vanderbilt Thayer Whitfield, who was found dead of a gunshot wound in 1935, a death that was never explained to anyone’s satisfaction.

   Satterthwait’s extensive research only serves to strengthen the plausibility of his depiction of the doomed marriage and ill-matched couple, and the terse, finely honed prose is a fitting tribute to a mystery writer of uncommon stylistic gifts.

      ___

   Bibliographic data: RAOUL WHITFIELD.   Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Criminous novels and collections only:

WHITFIELD, RAOUL (Falconia). 1896-1945; pseudonym: Temple Field.

      * Green Ice. Knopf, 1930; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Hardcover reprint: Grosset & Dunlap, early 1930s. Reprinted in 3 Star Omnibus: Trent’s Last Case, Green Ice, The Middle Temple Murder, Knopf, 1936. Later hardcover reprint: Gregg Press, 1980. Also published as: The Green Ice Murders. Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #46, pb, 1947. Later paperback reprints: Avon PN373, 1971; Quill, 1986.

      * Death in a Bowl. Knopf, 1931; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Paperback reprints: Avon PN337, 1970; Quill, 1986.

      * The Virgin Kills. Knopf, 1932; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Paperback reprint: Quill, 1986.
      * Jo Gar’s Casebook. Crippen & Landru, hc, 2002. Story collection. RD = Originally published as by Ramon Decolta:

FIELD, TEMPLE. Pseudonym of Raoul F. Whitfield, 1896-1945.

      * Five. Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.
      * Killer’s Carnival. Farrar & Rinehart, 1932.

NICK O’DONOHUE – Wind Chill.

Paperjacks, paperback original, 1985.

   By rights, in a world that was absolutely perfect, this would have followed my review of L.A.Taylor’s Only Half a Hoax, as here is another book taking place in the twin cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul. And if that weren’t connection enough, in 180 degree contrast (well, at least well over 60), this one takes place in the dead of winter, whereas what happened in that earlier book occurred instead in the balmy breezes (relatively speaking) of April.

   Ice fishing on a Minnesota lake on New Year’s Day is not my idea of a lark, nor that of private eye Nathan Phillips either. Especially when the first catch he and his fishing buddy, homicide lieutenant Jon Pederson, make that day is that of a waterlogged corpse which has been mutilated beyond recognition.

   And as a coincidence beyond belief, the body is somehow related to a case Pederson and the FBl have been working on, and now Phillips is involved too. As is the IRA, and a host of new clients for Phillips, attracted by the publicity, he guesses, but all of them, strangely, with Irish-sounding names.

   There is also a great deal of blackmail going around. You would not believe who is blackmailing who — and that is the problem with this book. I didn’t believe it. While O’Donohoe tries hard, he never did convince me. He has a nice easy style, for the most part, but every once in a while I found myself stopping short with a passage that simply stumped me for a moment.

   It is like listening to someone who is either afflicted with a faulty (or very selective) memory or (less seriously?) with an incurable habit of going off at wrong angles.

   Angles, at least, I wasn’t expecting. I don’t know if the problem was in the editing and the proofreading (or lack thereof), or if it was just me. Simply say that something failed to click — but when Phillips admits on page 194 that “I’d been stupid,” I could only nod my head, in complete agreement.

[UPDATE] 12-01-08.  Even with my review notes on the book, I don’t remember anything more about it than what I said back then, over 20 years ago. I may not have sounded very positive about it in my comments, but if I’m willing to give him another try, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t.

   I also don’t have a cover image to show you, since my own copy is buried away somewhere and essentially inaccessible. We’re therefore making do with the cover of another of Nathan Phillips’s adventures, as you’ll see here to the right:

   Besides the three of them in the same series (see below), O’Donohue has one other entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, an SF-fantasy novel with some criminous content. He also wrote a small handful of other fantasy paperbacks, but none of them cry out to be mentioned here.

O’DONOHOE, NICK   [i.e., Nicholas Benjamin O’Donohoe].   1952-  .

      * April Snow. Raven House, 1981. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Wind Chill. PaperJacks, 1985. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Open Season. PaperJacks, 1986. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Too Too Solid Flesh. TSR, 1989. [New York City, NY; Future]

MAD DOG AND GLORY. Universal Pictures, 1993. Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Bill Murray, David Caruso, Mike Starr, Kathy Baker. Screenwriter: Richard Price; director: John McNaughton.

   I’d never heard of this movie until I accidentally stumbled across it on HBO one late night last week. Figured I’d watch 10 or 15 minutes, then on to Cinemax or TCM to see what else was on, but the funny thing is, I kept watching.

   It’s not a dump-in-the-time-slot sort of filler at all, but an mostly entertaining “where was I when this film came out” type of pleasant surprise.

   Most of the R-rated violence comes at the beginning, then things settle down to an edgy nervous-comedy sort of picture, with Robert De Niro playing Wayne ‘Mad Dog’ Dobie, a mild-mannered (if not timid) police photographer who is rewarded for saving the life of a tough guy in the crime business (Bill Murray). Frank Milo – that’s his name – is not a crime lord per se, but a stand-up comedian who is also one of those guys who has connections and a carful of even tougher thugs who obey his every command.

   The reward? Glory (Uma Thurman), who stops by Wayne’s apartment to treat his injured hand, and in some obvious discomfort informs him that she is supposed to stay for a week. Now this would ordinarily be delightful, but it’s also unseemly – being in debt, that is, to a guy with connections to the mob like this.

   The usual complications ensue. What makes this movie entertaining, when so many other movies made on smaller budgets would fail, is the level of acting on the part of all the players involved. The characters’ smallest facial expressions and their slightest gestures and body language add enormously to a plot that seems silly but is eventually made as real as tomorrow’s news. Uma Thurman is especially delightful; visibly nervous when she first knocks on Wayne’s door, she gradually gains confidence and begins to tell him the proverbial story of her life.

   Where the edginess comes in is Wayne’s unanswered question of how much he should believe her, and in fact what it is that she feels for him, as he (against his better judgment) begins to respond to her in turn. The ending, unfortunately, dissipates all of this edginess – too wacky perhaps and (also perhaps) not as true to the story as it should have been, no matter (once again perhaps) it may (or may not) be what we (the viewers) are (and have been) anticipating.