REGINALD DAVIS – The Crowing Hen.

Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1936. UK edition: Gordon Bles, hc, 1936.

   The first thing you notice about Davis’s writing is his nicely wry sense of humor, you know, the kind that sort of sneaks up on you. Consider, for example, the superstitious reaction of the villagers of Hayes Coombe to the crowing of hens – wholesale slaughter in the feathered world! – and what one of a pair of real estate agents fears that this will do for the price of poultry….

   Precipitating this crisis is the impending sale of the mansion Danes Priory, said by some to be haunted, to a young couple about to be married. Warnings like footprints of blood and a dead Buff Orpington – or was it a Speckled Wyandotte? – are ignored, and mysterious death strikes, not once, but twice.

   Complicating matters is a fortune in unfenced stolen diamonds, but what Davis is more concerned with is his mystery-horror show that in no way is as intellectually gripping as a solid detective puzzle would have been. With facts as fragile as these, and a story that seems always to be heading off in the wrong direction, atmosphere just isn’t enough.

   The early promise of a reading treat in store is not kept. This was Davis’s first mystery novel. He wrote only one other.   [D]

[UPDATE] 05-20-08.  I knew this day was coming, and to tell you the truth, I’ve been putting it off for quite a while now. I wrote this review nearly 30 years ago, and I have the strongest feeling that if I were to read this book again, I’d have a strong quarrel with myself on the merits of this book.

   To me now, and from what little I remember of this book, it sounds exactly like something I’d love to read, little emphasis on the detective end of things or not. If only I could locate my copy, I’d let you know for sure.

   But since I haven’t – located my copy, that is – I’ve decided to let my younger self have his say, with only this one small hint to suggest that I may have been wrong.

   There’s one thing that I was definitely wrong on, and that’s how many mysteries Reginald Davis wrote. It must be that reference books back in 1979 hadn’t caught up with one of them, since in Crime Fiction IV now, here’s what Al Hubin lists for him:

  DAVIS, REGINALD

      * The Crowing Hen. Bles, UK, hc, 1936. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1936.
      * Nine Days’ Panic. Bles, UK, hc, 1937. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1938.

      * Twelve Midnight Street. Bles, UK, hc, 1938.

   The latter is a scarce book. I found no copies offered for sale on the Internet when I searched just now.

   There’s no biographical information about Davis I can tell you about, neither from CFIV nor the Crime Club jackets, so says Bill Pronzini about the latter. It was he who provided both of the covers you see here in this post.

   Here’s Bill’s opinion on The Crowing Hen, cobbled together from a couple of emails as we were discussing the book. (This is just his end of the conversation, you understand.)

   So there you have it. Two opinions, one of which the author is only partially standing behind. If you’ve read the book, why not add yours? I’d love to hear from you.

   A week or so ago thriller writer Ian Mackintosh was mentioned in one of the Addenda updates to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. A correction was made to the spelling of his name, from MacKintosh to Mackintosh. A minor matter, perhaps, but some of us care. There is, after all, a difference between John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald, and how they spelled their respective names.

   The matter was settled, I thought, since on all of the covers of Mr. Mackintosh’s books that I’ve been able to locate so far, that is the way his name’s been spelled. But UK mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has sharp eyes. He has an inscribed copy of one of the author’s books — see above — and while I am right and his name is spelled Mackintosh on the cover, lo and behold, he spelled his name MacKintosh in the inscription.

   Take a look and see if you don’t agree:

[UPDATE.]   Later the same afternoon. Al Hubin points out that: “On the other hand, as I recall, Ian’s brother has a web page for him and there it’s Mackintosh … I think I’ll stick with the name as presented on his books.”

   The web page that Al refers to [follow the link above] is worth your time looking into. Ian’s brother Lawrie talks about not only Ian’s early life and his work for the BBC, but also Ian’s mysterious disappearance over the Kodiak Islands in July 1979.

   The past few weeks have busy if not increasingly hectic for me, and I have in hand an ever-growing amount of email that I’ve not replied to or to followed up on as I’ve agreed to. To remedy the situation, I think I’ll take this week on the blog to get catch up on as many of these as I can.

   Some of these have been inquiries, and if I’ve been able to answer, I have. Some I haven’t been able to answer, such as this from John Herrington, over in the UK:

>> I asked John for more details, and (if I understand correctly) his question concerns a mystery novel that was (apparently) never published, but later became the subject of a court case brought by the author’s widow against publishers Ward Lock and Gilbert Collins.

   Here’s John again:

   If anyone’s in a position to help, please email me, and I’ll pass the word on to John, who can then provide you with more details.

   John has also asked me to repeat a similar request from him posted in late March. One tentative offer to help seems to have fallen through, thus this second posting:

Hi there,

   Given the books you’ve reviewed on mysteryfile.com in the past, I thought I’d let you know about ThrillerFest 2008. The 3rd annual gathering is a chance for devotees of thriller books to come together, not only for professional guidance and counsel, but for fun. Providing opportunities for mentoring, education and collegiality among thriller authors and industry professionals, it brings more than 200 of the best loved and bestselling authors to The Grand Hyatt in New York from July 9-12 for an unprecedented four-day extravaganza.

   ThrillerFest includes author signings, a complete bookstore on premises, reader’s reception and cocktail party, music by the Killer Thriller Band, giveaways of 20 thrillers months before publication and four days of events. Meet the usual suspects attending including such thriller writer as James Rollins, Lee Child, Gayle Lynds, Heather Graham, David Morrell, David Liss, M.J. Rose, Steve Berry, Doug Preston, Joe Finder, David Hewson, Michael Palmer, Katherine Neville, D.P. Lyle, Chris Reich, Maxine Paetro, Joan Johnston, F. Paul Wilson, Alison Brennan and many more.

   One highlight of the event is the coveted ThrillerMaster Award, whose previous recipients include Clive Cussler and James Patterson. This year’s winner is Sandra Brown, who is being recognized for her legendary career, 56 New York Times best sellers and more than 70 million copies of her books in print worldwide. Additional bestselling spotlight guests that will attend are Steve Martini, Eric Van Lustbader, Dr. Kathy Reichs, and Brad Thor, David Baldacci, R.L. Stine, and Andrew Gross.

   Awards will also be given for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Paperback Original. Registration for ThrillerFest is open to everyone (ITW members and non-members), with three separately-priced events packages this year: CraftFest on Thursday, July 12; the ThrillerFest Conference from Thursday, July 12 – Sunday, July 15; and the Thriller Awards Banquet at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 14. Day passes are available. Complete details and a date/rate schedule can be found at www.thrillerfest.com.

    If you’re in the area, I encourage you to attend and gain access to countless potential interviews and many reviews of as-yet-unreleased thrillers. If you can’t make it, I’m sure your audience would love to hear a bit more about it on your site.

      Thanks so much, Lauren Levy   (Lauren @ mediamuscle.com)

THE D.A. TV mini-series. ABC, 2004. Cast listed below. James Duff, executive producer; Gil Garcetti, consulting producer.

   This was one of the best shows about the inner workings of the legal system of a large US city (Los Angeles) that viewers, for whatever reason, never saw. The ratings were bad, and any hope that this short term, pre-summer series would come back in the fall was nipped at once in the bud.

   Only four episodes were made, and all four were telecast. Thank goodness for small favors:

         19 March 2004. Episode 1: The People vs. Sergius Kovinsky

         26 March 2004. Episode 2: The People vs. Patricia Henry

         2 April 2004. Episode 3: The People vs. Oliver C. Handley

         9 April 2004. Episode 4: The People vs. Achmed Abbas

                  Cast:

         Steven Weber … Distrist Atty. David Franks

         Bruno Campos … Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Camacho

         Sarah Paulson … Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Patterson

         J. K. Simmons … Deputy Dist. Atty. for Major Crimes Joe Carter

         Peter Outerbridge … Deputy Mayor Jerry Weicker

         Felicity Huffman … Charlotte Ellis, noted defense attorney, formerly of the D.A.’s office

         Michaela Conlin … Jinette McMahon, Mr. Franks’ media and campaign assistant

         Cheryl White … Kathy Franks, the D.A.’s wife

   I’ve not burdened you before now by commenting on the television shows I’ve watched while this blog has been active, but in this case, I thought I’d make an exception. The show came and went very quickly, so I’m willing to wager that most of you did not see it when it was broadcast, including myself. Before last week, I’d never even heard of it.

   I happened to come across someone who had all four episodes on DVD, and I obtained them from him. And the last four nights I’ve spent watching them, one after the other. Time well spent, in my mind.

   I’ve found only two images to show you. The first is the one above of the major players in the cast, the second that of David Franks below as he opens a suicide note in episode 3, and immediately recuses himself from the case and refuses to talk about it, to the consternation of his staff. It turns out that the dead woman’s husband had died of leukemia because their HMO had refused to pay for a bone marrow transplant, part of a pattern of similar denials.

   In episode 4, a case of terrorism is reopened when the suspected killer’s body is found under a parking lot — one that had been paved over two days before the killing. The only problem? He can’t be conclusively identified.

   Episode 2: A well-known comedy entertainer is gunned down as he enters his home. His wife pleads spousal abuse. Defending her is Charlotte Ellis (Felicity Huffman), one of two possible contenders for Franks’ job in an upcoming election. The deputy mayor is the other.

   Episode 1 [and I seem to have done this wrong] centers on the shooting of a prosecution witness while in seclusion. Question: Where did the leak come from?

   While the detective work conducted by young Mark Camacho (Bruno Campos) is extremely well conceived — and I do not say that lightly — what makes this series of cases all the more watchable is the peek it provides into the power politics that goes on behind the scenes in the offices of a most highly politically motivated district attorney’s office and his staff, some of whom dislike him very much. Camacho, who’s new on the job, walks right into the midst of it. Who’s loyal to who? That’s what he needs to know, and soon.

   One of the few reviews I found of the show called it dull. A typical TV-beat hack reporter at work here. Because there is little actual gunplay (well, now that I think about it, there was once a fairly graphic scene, but all of the other deaths were well after the fact) nor car chases in any of the four episodes, it is therefore dull? Not on your life. The total combined intellectual level is as high or higher here than in any other full-season series I have ever watched. (Admittedly there are very few that fall into that category, but the statement is still true.)

   Steven Weber as D. A. David Franks is man of contradictions. Derided by his staff as a hack, he also has a bent for justice, the word “bent” used deliberately, as bending the rules sometimes is exactly what is needed to make the wheels of justice go around. Gil Garcetti, mentioned in the credits, was himself the D.A. for Los Angeles County at one time, as some of you may remember. I’ll bet he wishes some of his cases could be finished in 45 minutes at a time, that’s what I bet.

   Note to self: Both Garcetti and James Duff have been involved with another television series, The Closer, shown on TNT. I’ve not been watching it, and perhaps I should have been.

   Perhaps the limitation of only four shows was a Good Thing, as certainly there was not enough time in the few episodes The D. A. was on to have the stories to become predictable in any way, for they were not. I was caught leaning the wrong way more than once.

   Don’t you just love it when that happens? I do.

   A visit to the Book Barn in Niantic, one of Connecticut’s few surviving bookshops, netted me well over 100 mysteries yesterday, including a few recent hardcovers in nice shape. Of the paperbacks, so far I’ve found two (indicated with an *) from which I’ve gleaned information that Al Hubin did not have in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. He does now. These entries will appear in Part 28 of the online Addenda.

   Need I add that any additional information is always welcome? It is, and I just did.

ALLAN, STELLA. British author of six mystery novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Many of her books seem to focus on unhappy marriages and/or bad love affairs. See below.
      Arrow in the Dark. Collins, UK, hc, 1982.
      * The Communicating Door. Love Stories, UK, 1986. Avon, US, pb, 1981. Add setting: London. “Divorce is one way to end a marriage… Another way is murder.”

      A Dead Giveaway. Collins, UK, hc, 1980. St. Martin’s, US, hc, 1981. Setting: England; theatre. [A successful playwright visits the country retreat of her wealthy ex-lover on the behalf of her new lover and finds herself embroiled in kidnaping, and murder.]
      An Inside Job. Collins, UK, hc, 1978. Scribner, US, hc, 1978. Setting: London. Scribner, 1978. “It was a plan so perfect they could get away with murder..He would do anything to get rich, and she would do anything to keep him.”
      A Mortal Affair. Collins, UK, hc, 1979. Scribner, US, hc, 1979. [The lover of a woman married to a doctor is exposed as a criminal.]

      No Marks for Trying. Macdonald & Janes, UK, hc, 1975. Avon, US, pb, 1981. Setting: Spain. [A married couple’s vacation in Spain turns into a nightmare of murder and intrigue when they meet a man with whom the wife once had an affair.]

KRAUSE, KATHALYN. Author of several works of romantic fiction, two of them included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      * The Blue Key. Belmont, pb, 1980. Add setting: Los Angeles CA. “A piece of stone jade unlocked the door to violence and death.”
      Mellona. Belmont, pb, 1979. Make setting more specific: California, 1901. [A young woman, new to a close-knit coastal resort community, resembles a woman who disappeared 30 before.]

Hi Steve,

   Regarding your recent posting, in the interests of perhaps useless footnotes and trivia, I’d like to add some further film and TV notes to the following names:

      Stephen COULTER

Film: Embassy (UK, 1972) d. Gordon Hessler. Screenplay by William Fairchild, based on the novel by Stephen Coulter. Story revolves around the efforts of a U.S. diplomatic mission in Beirut to smuggle out Max Von Sydow’s Russian defector. For followers of the absurd, this Mel Ferrer production cast Chuck Connors as a KGB assassin impersonating an American Air Force colonel.

      Ian MACKINTOSH

TV: Warship (BBC, 1973-77) co-creator with Anthony Coburn of this 45 eps x 50 mins. drama about Royal Navy life onboard a frigate.

TV: Wilde Alliance (ITV, 1978) producer and occasional scriptwriter of the 13 x hour comedy-thriller featuring the amateur sleuthing adventures of a thriller novelist and his busybody wife (the latter in the Pamela North, Jennifer Hart vein).

TV: The Sandbaggers (ITV, 1978; 1980) creator and main writer (until his death in 1979) of this tightly made and occasionally grim espionage saga.

TV: Thundercloud (ITV, 1979) creator/writer/executive producer of the 13 half-hour comedy series featuring a group of sailors operating on a shore-based station that the Admiralty thinks is a destroyer in the North Sea.

      William MARSHALL

TV: Yellowthread Street (ITV, 1990) was a 13-episode series adapted from the novel by William Marshall focusing on British detectives in the Hong Kong force; a costly, on-location production attempting Miami Vice on the seemingly Triad-ridden streets of steamy Hong Kong. Marshall also scripted the episode “Spirit Runner.”

      James MAYO

Film: Hammerhead (UK, 1968) d. David Miller. Screenplay by William Bast, Herbert Baker, based on the 1964 novel by James Mayo. Features Vince Edwards as U.S. secret agent Charles Hood. The Variety review in July 1968 suggested that it ‘might be dubbed a junior edition of Goldfinger without any of the sock elements of the James Bond film’.

      Alfred MAZURE

Film: Secrets of Sex (UK, 1969) d. Antony Balch. Screenplay by Martin Locke, John Eliot, Maureen Owen, Elliott Stein, Antony Balch; ‘Lindy Leigh’ segment based on the story by Alfred Mazure. Exploitation sex film featuring a collection of titillating stories connected by the view that sex is less often fun than funny (with truckloads of 1969 nudity for the furtive front-row viewer).

   Mazure’s story tells of Agent 28 Lindy Leigh’s assignment by the British Home Office to rob the safe at the Moravian Embassy; she succeeds in her mission to enter the safe, only to discover that it’s a harem housing female agents who have failed in the same mission. The topless Maria Frost plays the topless Lindy Leigh.

      Alan WHITE

Film: The Long Day’s Dying (UK, 1968) d. Peter Collinson. Screenplay by Charles Wood, based on the 1965 novel (US: Death Finds the Day) by Alan White. Men trained in the art of killing, in this instance three British paratroopers somewhere in occupied Europe during the Second World War, as skilled practitioners in nothing more than a competitive game (war) is the core of this film, starring David Hemmings, Tom Bell and Tony Beckley. The director takes some 95 dreary minutes to make his point.

   Now, if only Secrets of Sex was available on DVD (for research purposes, of course)…

               Regards,

                  Tise

>>> Thank you very much, Tise, and do I have news for you. Secrets of Sex is available on DVD in this country, subtly disguised as the following:

DAVID FROME – Homicide House. Popular Library; paperback reprint. No date stated, but circa 1969. First edition: Rinehart, 1950. British title: Murder on the Square. Robert Hale, 1951. US hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club (3-in-1 edition), July 1950. Previously serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in seven parts between September 24 and November 5, 1949.

   Since the subtitle of the hardcover edition is “Mr. Pinkerton Returns,” I’ll begin by listing all of the Evan Pinkerton books. While David Frome was byline listed on all of the books, you might better know “him” as Leslie Ford, author of the Grace Latham and Colonel John Primrose mysteries. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

The Hammersmith Murders (n.) Doubleday 1930 [England]
Two Against Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1931 [England]

The Man from Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1932 [England]
The Eel Pie Murders (n.) Farrar 1933 [England]
Mr. Pinkerton Finds a Body (n.) Farrar 1934 [Oxford]
Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard (n.) Farrar 1934 [England]

Mr. Pinkerton Grows a Beard (n.) Farrar 1935 [England]
Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue (n.) Farrar 1936 [England]
The Black Envelope (n.) Farrar 1937 [Brighton]
Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel (n.) Farrar 1939 [England]
Homicide House (n.) Rinehart 1950 [England]

   As you see, there was a gap well over ten years long between this, the last book in the series and the preceding one. There were 10 or 11 Grace Latham books that appeared in the interim. It wasn’t as though the author, whose real name was Zenith Jones Brown, 1898-1983, wasn’t doing any writing in the meantime. As Leslie Ford, her last book appeared in 1962 (Trial by Ambush) a non-series book.

   My review of Ford’s The Woman in Black appeared here on the M*F blog a while back, in case you’d like to go back and take a look.

   There are a couple of ways I could continue from here, and by flipping a mental coin, I’ll say something first about Mr. Pinkerton, whose adventures in murder mysteries I’ve now read the first I ever have. I’d assumed he was a stalwart sort of fellow, confidently solving crimes by the dozens as a friend and chief confidant of Chief Inspector Bull of Scotland Yard.

   Wrong, all the way around. Evan Pinkerton is the meekest, most afraid-of-his-own shadow detective sleuth there has to be ever been. Now a widower and owner of an small apartment building in Godolphin Square, he is afraid to tell the landlady that he is indeed the owner, disbelieving as he does that he is himself. Perhaps his penny-pinching wife will come back from the grave and take it away from him, he fears. (This is being hen-pecked to the extreme, one thinks, and rightly so.)

   And so he is stuck in a miserable room on the third floor, sharing a bath with the cook, who fortunately enough, is very seldom seen. The crimes he has solved, they must have been more or less by accident, as Bull has forcefully demanded that he quite positively stay away from any futures brushes with murder cases that need looking into.

   Which leaves the current one at hand to tell you about. What struck me most, from the very first page, is that here is a mystery that is centered about a building that has been damaged by the bombing during the war. It’s now a few years after the war, and about all that is standing in the home across the square from Mr. Pinkerton’s are a few walls and the charred remains of a stone staircase. Nerves are often still shattered and decent food is still a problem.

   I may be wrong about this, but I am pointing this out because I do not believe that very many British mysteries written during or just after the war actually dwell on how difficult a time it really was for the general population. This is one of the few exceptions I can actually think of at the moment, the other being Anthony Gilbert’s Death in the Blackout (1942). I’m sure there are more, but if there were many, it would seem that the opening scenes of this book would not have struck me as being so unusual.

   What I also found very striking is that how strong a Woolrich-ian sense of the sudden infatuation, coincidence and/or disorientation there is in the first few chapters. On page 7 Mr. Pinkerton meets Daniel McGrath hunting for the house that was damaged, seeking for the girl who had once lived there and whom he had met in a bomb shelter during the war, and here he is, six years later, having just come from America and planning to ask her to marry him, not even knowing her name.

   Of course she now lives in the same building as Mr. Pinkerton, and of course she is not yet married, and of course she recognizes him immediately, but of course she slaps his face when she learns his name, his name being the same as a noted detective she assumes has come to find and arrest her father.

   Whew. This makes for terrific reading, to be sure.

   Here from page 43 is a passage that I hope illustrates exactly what I am saying. It describes their first meeting in six years, from McGrath’s point of view, as she is getting off a train:

   No mere mystery story could top a passage like this, and while Homicide House tries, it is doomed to failure. True love prevails — is it OK if I tell you that? — but with difficulty, some by purely natural causes, and some by authorial hand only — or if not the latter, then the wonderfully funny fickleness of fate.

   Mary Winship’s father has disappeared, many years before — she now lives with her sickly mother and a truly formidable aunt in Mr. Pinkerton’s building — and vanishing at the same time was a valuable painting. And with Daniel McGrath unwittingly stirring things up, dead bodies begin to accumulate in Mr. Pinkerton’s abode.

   The latter’s not much of a detective, or at least he’s not in this book, but his activities toward that end also initiate worry and concern on the part of a blackmailer and a killer, not (it is eventually discerned) one and the same. It all works out in the end, but the first seven chapters are what I’ll remember from this book, and not the last two (with a connecting bridge of largely filler material in between).

JO DERESKE – Final Notice.

Avon, paperback original. First printing, November 1998.

   This is the sixth in Dereske’s “Miss Zukas” series, and as usual in my random, non-systematic way of doing things, the only one of them that I’ve read before this one is the one that follows this one.

   And in fact, the incident that initiates that very same next one, Miss Zukas in Death’s Shadow, occurs on pages 18 and 19 of this one – she’s given a traffic ticket on the way to the airport to pick up her elderly aunt who’s coming in from Michigan for a visit.

   Being a reference librarian either reinforces Helma’s sense of what is correct and proper, or it is what caused her to become a librarian in the first place. And being given a summons for turning right on a yellow light definitely does not fit her sense of what is correct and proper. Allow me to quote:

   Sure enough, at the beginning of the next book, the only one before this one that I’ve read, Miss Zukas is doing community service at a homeless shelter. I hope you don’t get the wrong idea, though. Miss Zukas is in her 30s, I believe, perhaps almost 40, but unfortunately I didn’t make a note of where I saw a reference to her age. If I have it wrong, I’ll change this small piece of data, and unless you remember, you’ll never know I had it wrong.

   But the point is, she’s not a dottering old lady librarian, and while she’s not married, she does have a sort of boy friend in Bellehaven’s chief of police, Wayne Gallant. (Bellehaven is a fictional town, I believe, in Washington state.) This romance, if indeed that is what it is, is the strangest romance I’ve ever read about, as they are both rather reticent to speak about their relationship, even to each other.

   When Wayne Gallant’s ex-wife comes to town in Final Notice to reclaim her former husband, though, things between them (Helma and Wayne Gallant) begin to come to a boil. If a relationship can boil at less than room temperature, this one does. (He is always referred to Wayne Gallant, by the way, and when he calls Helma on the telephone, he says, “Helma, this is Wayne Gallant.” I found that … strange. In a nice sense, mind you.)

   The dotty old lady in Final Notice is actually Helma’s Aunt Em, who back in Michigan (where she has lived her entire life, so far, or so Helma believes but soon discovers that it was not so) she had a “brain incident” and has become in behavior rather, shall we say, eccentric. And talkative. About her past. A past that Helma’s family had never talked about. Especially the time Aunt Em spent in Chicago during the rum-running days of Al Capone.

   Dead in Helma’s apartment building parking lot is the same man who tried to steal Aunt Em’s purse at the airport. The identification is clinched by the three stab wounds in his arm produced by Aunt Em’s hat pin. Coincidence? Not very likely, but who? And why?

   I enjoyed this, indeed I did. The detective work is minor, but it’s not dislodged, disrupted and disposed of completely. The characters are only mildly wacky and perhaps just as normal as any other group of people, including Miss Zukas’s fellow librarians, especially the director, a lady who believes that psychological color testing is a good way to maintain staff morale. Miss Zukas refuses. Naturally.

   Here’s a list of all of Jo Dereske’s novel-length mystery fiction. Ruby Crane is a graphologist by profession, a forgery expert at a California detective agency. I’ve not read any of her adventures, but I’m sure that I read somewhere that she may be a cousin of Miss Zukas. If so, I imagine the cases she solves may be as much of a sneaky pleasure to read as this one.

    Miss Zukas. All are Avon paperback originals.

1. Miss Zukas and the Library Murders (1994)
2. Miss Zukas and the Island Murders (1995)

3. Miss Zukas and the Stroke of Death (1995)
4. Miss Zukas and the Raven’s Dance (1996)
5. Out of Circulation (1997)
6. Final Notice (1998)
7. Miss Zukas in Death’s Shadow (1999)
8. Miss Zukas Shelves the Evidence (2001)
9. Bookmarked to Die (2006)

10. Catalogue of Death (2007)
11. Index to Murder (2008)

    Ruby Crane. All are Dell paperback originals.

1. Savage Cut (1996)
2. Cut and Dry (1997)

3. Short Cut (1998)

   The entry for Tom Barling in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, has been extensively revised, and corrections, deletions and other changes appear now as you see below in Part 19 of the online Addenda.

   The other entries in this post come from Part 27, the paperbacks chosen largely because I had copies on hand to obtain cover images from. These are the ones you’ll also find below.

BARLING, TOM. 1936- . Add year of birth and full name: Thomas F. R. Barling. British author of eleven crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Series character: Charlie Dance, an ex-London gangster who in three books battles various crime syndicates and his own former mob. Tom Barling is also well-known as a comic illustrator and an animator on the 1973 TV series of The Addams Family. [Thanks to Steve Fearn for pointing out that the two Tom Barling’s are one and the same.]
      _Dance with Death. Pocket, pb, 1988. US reprint of Smoke Dragon (Corgi, 1988). Correction: Previously stated to to be the US edition of God Is an Executioner.
      _Dance with the Devil Pocket, pb, 1988. US edition of Smoke Dance (Corgi, 1991).
      God Is an Executioner. Corgi, UK, pb, 1987. Correction: There is no US edition and SC: Charlie Dance does not appear. Delete the previously stated setting. [A ruthless gang of terrorists explodes into Matthew Pepper’s new life and kidnaps his wife and son, leaving no trace of them. ]
      The Smoke. Corgi, UK, pb, 1986. Add US edition: Bantam, pb, 1986. (Delete conjecture that the US title was Dance with the Devil.) SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s.
      Smoke Dance. Corgi, UK, pb, 1991. (Correct date.) Add SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s. (Add the time period.) US title: Dance with the Devil (Pocket, 1988). [Book 3 in the series: Charlie awakens the day after his birthday party to find that his wife has been killed and his illegally accumulated fortune has been stolen.] Note: Shown is the cover of the 1991 hardcover UK Severn House edition.

      Smoke Dragon. Corgi, UK, pb, 1988. Add US title: Dance with Death (Pocket, 1988) and SC: Charlie Dance. Setting: London, 1960s. (Add the time period.)

DEPTULA, WALTER (J., JR.) ca.1934- . Series character: Frank Arrow, born Franco Arronelli, a professional thief who steals what others have stolen and returns it to its rightful owner for a fee. [This is a complete entry for the author. Numbers in brackets indicate the correct chronological sequencing.]
      The Death List of Rico Scalisi. Curtis, pb, 1974. Add setting: New York City. [#3.] [Arrow’s estranged father is the target of a vengeance-mad mafioso.]

      Naked Mistress. Curtis, pb, 1974. Setting: Hawaii, Mexico. [#2.]
      Wine, Women … and Death. Curtis, pb, 1974. Setting: Hawaii. [#1.] “He had hot jewels and broads on his hands and every cold killer in Hawaii on his tail.”

FREEMAN, MARY E(LEANOR) WILKINS. 1852-1930. See author’s entry under Wilkins-Freeman, Mary E(leanor).

KAYLIN, WALTER. 1921- . At one time a resident of Old Lyme, CT. Occasional short story writer in the 1950s; author of one crime novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      Another Time, Another Woman. Gold Medal, pb, 1963. Muller, UK, pb, 1964. Add setting: California. “… I had covered up manslaughter then. Now I had to cover up a murder.”

WILKINS-FREEMAN, MARY E(LEANOR). 1852-1930. Add as a new author entry. Ref: CA. Born in Randolph, Massachusetts; married Dr. Charles M. Freeman in 1902. (Her name is sometimes given as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.) Noted American writer, known best for her stories centering around New England life.
      -“Doc.” Gordon. Authors and Newspapers Association, 1906. Published in the UK as Doctor Gordon (Unwin, 1907).
      _Doctor Gordon. Unwin, UK, hc, 1907. See “Doc.” Gordon.

WILLIAMS, ALAN (EMLYN). 1935- . Son of actor-playwright (George) Emlyn Williams, 1905-1987, q.v. Brother of actor Brook Williams; briefly married to Maggie Noach, noted literary agent for children’s authors. Newspaper correspondent and author of eleven espionage-adventure novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
      The Brotherhood. Blond, UK, hc, 1968. US title: The Purity League (Putnam, 1969). Also published in England under the US title (Panther, 1970). Add setting: Europe. [Journalist Magnus Owen and a beautiful undercover agent named Maya take on a sinister network called the ‘Brotherhood of Virtue.’]
      _The Purity League. Putnam, US, hc, 1969. Panther, UK, pb, 1970. See: The Brotherhood (Blond, 1968).

WILLIAMS, (GEORGE) EMLYN. 1905-1987. Father of author Alan (Emlyn) William, 1935- , q.v. , and actor Brook Williams, who appeared in numerous films and London stage productions. Noted Welsh actor and dramatist; author of two criminous novels cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, along with three crime-related plays.