LAWRENCE BLOCK – Mona

Gold Medal s1085. Paperback original; 1st printing, February 1961. [Reprinted in paperback as Sweet Slow Death (Jove, August 1986), as Mona (Carroll & Graf, 1994), and as Grifters Game (Hard Case Crime, 2004). Hardcover reprint as Mona: Five Star, 1999.]

   All my sources seem to indicate that this was Block’s first mystery novel, and you may have some trouble finding a copy. Mine is pretty well battered, but it’s the only one I’ve ever come across.

   Is it worth looking for? No, not if you’re a Michael Innes fan, say. Yes, if you enjoy your crime fiction both smooth and tough. It’s a familiar story — a smart alecky con man meets a girl he could love and leave, but he does and he doesn’t, and he ends up trying to get away with murder. The husband is an obstacle, you see, but he’s a crook, it turns out, which helps…

   But what about those last two chapters? Block suddenly jabs the reader with a bit of cruel desperation not expected even of his amoral but likable hero. Maybe crime is a dirty business, after all.    [B minus]

[UPDATE] 02-16-08.   Also published under Block’s own name in 1961 were Death Pulls a Doublecross (Gold Medal, Sept 1961) and The Case of the Pornographic Photos (Belmont). I don’t have a copy of the latter, I have just discovered, but since Mona came out in February, I am 99.99% sure that the first half of my first statement is correct, with only one possible reservation:

   There may have been a book published under a pseudonym that came earlier, one of those paperbacks considered sleazy at the time, but reprinted more recently by a line such as Hard Case Crime and considered respectable now, and rightfully so.

   But why don’t I have a copy of The Case of the Pornographic Photos? It was a paperback based on the PI character Roy Markham who had a TV show of his own called Markham. It was on ABC during the 1959-60 season, and I never saw it once. Ray Milland played Markham, and the book was reprinted later by Foul Play Press as You Could Call It Murder. For some strange reason, I don’t seem to have a copy of that one either.

   To get back to my first statement, the second half, it is no longer true that you will have trouble finding a copy of this book, as it has been reprinted so many times now that it has to be considered a classic in noir literature, the so-so letter grade that I assigned to it notwithstanding.

   One more thing. I’m going to quote Curt Purcell as to something he said on the rara-avis Yahoo group about three of Lawrence Block’s early books, Grifter’s Game, The Girl with the Long Green Heart and Lucky with Cards, all available under these titles from Hard Case Crime: “… in each of these three stories, the grifter debates how best to part the rich guy from his money and put him out of the way, and each time he arrives at a solution he rejects in the other two.”

   Now that’s pretty neat, isn’t it? (You can read my review of Lucky at Cards here.)

LUCIEN AGNIEL – Code Name: “Icy”

Paperback Library 63-310; paperback original, May 1970.

   Of the three books I have by Mr. Agniel, none are copyright in his name, only by either Coronet Publications, who owned Paperback Library, or Warner Brothers. (More about the latter in a minute.) That’s usually a fairly broad hint that the author didn’t exist, that it was a pen name or, more likely, a house name.

   Not so in this case. First of all, and I just noticed this, my copy of Code Name: “Icy” has a handwritten inscription on the first inside blurb page, dedicating the book to Elizabeth. I’ll refrain from repeating the entire inscription. It’s not embarrassing, but I think it should remain private.

   Then, looking in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, we find not only dates for Mr. Lucien (1919-1988), but a note that he’s included in Contemporary Authors. Pulling up the CA web page, I found that Elizabeth was his first wife, who died in 1973.

   Over the years Lucien Agniel served in World War II and was awarded a Bronze Star, among other honors; worked for the Charlotte News, the US Information Agency, Radio Free Europe, and US News and World Report, among other jobs and occupations.

   There are two books listed in CFIV for Mr. Agniel, this one in hand, plus Pressure Point, also from Paperback Library (November, 1970). Arguably there should be another, and I will send the suggestion on to Al in my next email to him: a book entitled Zeppelin (Paperback Library; May 1971), an adaptation of the Warner Brothers movie of the same title.

   I don’t know if you’ve seen the film, starring Michael York and Elke Sommer, but since I haven’t, I looked up the story line on IMBD, which reads as follows: [An allied spy who has pretended to defect to Germany in World War I] “finds himself aboard the maiden voyage of a powerful new prototype Zeppelin, headed for Scotland on a secret mission that could decide the outcome of the war.”

   Most of Code Name: “Icy” takes place in Paris, where the paths of the following characters converge: Eric Eis, an East German assassin who is working with the Russians but who apparently is a former American soldier presumably dead but whose body was never recovered. Fred Sherman of the CIA, who has received an anonymous letter reporting that Eric Hendricks, an American deserter, is still alive; Dr. Richard Hendricks of St. Louis, the brother of the man presumed dead; “Gloria,” who sent the anonymous letter to Fred Sherman; and Nicole, of Birmingham, England, working as a gold-digging stripper in a Parisian night spot, and whom Fred Sherman appears to becoming excessively fond of.

   There is one other incidental participant in the tale, one unnamed, but suitably snooty President of France. It will come as no surprise that he survives. None of the others’ plan work out exactly as they had planned, however, except perhaps Nicole’s.

   All in all, a rather modest affair, one that can be read in a couple of nights before turning off the light. Fred Sherman seems a fairly sappy guy for a CIA agent at first, but he redeems himself reasonably well toward the end. A quick skim through Pressure Point doesn’t turn up his name as an active participant, so it looks like this was his one and only outing – the only one worth recording in book form, that is.

   Following the recent review I posted of Catch a Killer, by Ursula Curtiss, also known as The Noonday Devil, a lengthy discussion has developed between Juri Nummelin and myself in the comments section.

   Part of the conversation deals with “female noir” as a subcategory of crime fiction — what is it and what books might qualify — and specifically if that’s what Ursula Curtiss’s early books might be called.

   And where do “gothic romances” fit into the picture, if at all?

L A. CONFIDENTIAL. Unsold television pilot, 2003. Keifer Sutherland, Josh Hopkins, Melissa George, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Eric Roberts. Director: Eric Laneuville. Based on the novel by James Ellroy.

   Filmed in 1999, says IMDB, as part of a deal with HBO in 2000 as the first installment of a 13-part mini-series. When that didn’t happen, Fox took interest, but in the end, they also turned it down. Their loss, and ours.

   The date 2003, by the way, is when the cable network Trio finally aired it as part of a long marathon of similar bankrupt and cancelled projects.

   I’ve not read the book, which is number three in Ellroy’s series of 1950s L.A.-based novels: The Black Dahlia was the first; number two was The Big Nowhere; and the fourth was White Jazz. I’ve also not seen the full-length movie version of L. A. Confidential (1997), a huge gap or gaffe on my part (take your pick), but at least you can say that this review of the TV version is unbiased in terms of any sort of comparisons, or any other kind of useful information.

   This TV film, all that was ever made, is only 50 minutes long, and it ends with a large TO BE CONTINUED across the screen. Just as all of the pieces were coming together! Utter frustration.

   Keifer Sutherland, not yet a 24-carat star, is Det.-Sgt. Jack Vincennes in this one, the role played by Kevin Spacey in the film. Melissa George is would-be movie starlet Lynn Bracken, played by Kim Basinger in the movie. I could go on and on like this, but the TV version is not the same story as the earlier version (or so I’m told), but essentially a different (and ultimately longer) adaptation of the book, produced and created by men with different ideas, limitations and goals in mind.

   Basic story: Vincennes, having killed an innocent man during a drug bust gone bad, tries to make up for it by anonymously sending money to the dead man’s widow. This means that he needs more money than he makes, which means in turn that he has to go on the take. Not a good idea when Internal Affairs is watching, not to mention the editor and publisher of Hush Hush Magazine.

   The TV version is visually striking in color, but in terms of overall production values, I doubt that it holds up in that regard to the movie. Note to self: watch the movie, and report back.

[UPDATE]   I haven’t found any images to add to this review, but for as long as it’s there, you can watch this short pilot online in five parts, beginning with http://www.truveo.com/Part-1of-5-LA-Confidential-TV-pilot-Kiefer/id/1356656397

[UPDATE #2] 03-07-12. As suspected, the video above is no longer there. See the comments, though, for information as to how to find a copy.

URSULA CURTISS – Catch a Killer.

Pocket 940; 1st pr., June 1953. Hardcover edition: Dodd Mead, 1951, as The Noonday Devil.

   It’s my guess that every time one of Ursula Curtiss’s books is reviewed today, it begins with the observation that her mother was mystery writer Helen Reilly, and that her sister was mystery writer Mary McMullen. (And equally obviously, I’m no exception.)

   It must have been in the genes, but during the time when all three were actively writing (Reilly from 1930 to 1962; Curtiss from 1948 to 1985, with a posthumous collection of short stories; and McMullen from 1951 to 1986), do you suppose that anyone ever asked them what was in the water they were drinking?

   While Helen Reilly had a series detective who appeared in most of her books – Inspector McKee of Manhattan Homicide – Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, from all I know, gained largely from reading about them, were heavy practitioners of (suburban?) domestic malice and/or romantic suspense, and neither of them used a repeating character in any of their books.

   For me, this is largely hearsay, especially as far as Curtiss is concerned, as this is the only book of hers I’ve read. So far. In any case, what you expect is not always what you get. In Catch a Killer, for example, I was surprised (although far from nonplussed) to discover that the leading character is male, and that the story begins in Manhattan. I had the uneasy feeling that I was leaning one way, and the book, with Curtiss in charge, was going another.

   In the second half of the book, the scene changes, however, and rather drastically. Under some pretext or another, all of the leading characters seem to find their way to the same small country town in New England, and when they do, everything seems to revert to normal. (By which I mean, closer to what was expected, if not anticipated.) And as a direct consequence, most probably with the characters’ closer proximity to each other, the action seems to pick up as well.

   The atmosphere is black, introspective and moody throughout. And as you well know, or you should, coincidences simply thrive in such climates – beginning as they do here, in Chapter One. When you walk into an unfamiliar bar for the first time, for example, you never know whom you’ll meet, and that’s where Andrew Sentry finds a man who’d been in the same Japanese prison camp as his brother Nick – an encounter occurring solely by chance.

   Nick had died in a subsequent attempt to escape, and his death, Andrew for the first time is now told, was no accident. There was an informer in the camp – someone Nick knew – who told their guards of Nick’s plans, which were then foiled. This is an unusual (if not unique) means of killing someone, but who was the mysterious man who called himself Sands? And what was his motive?

   More coincidences begin to pile up. Every male in Andrew’s small circle of friends and acquaintances suddenly seems to have been a Japanese prisoner in the Philippines at some time or another during the war. Nick’s fiancée Sarah Devany may have received a postcard in code from him just before he died, but when a simple question might have unraveled the mystery before it has even begun, there are barriers which by fate have carefully been laid in the way.

   When Andrew came to break the news of Nick’s death to Sarah, it is revealed, he found her kissing another man, and he has not spoken to her ever since. And since the case for murder is so flimsy, the police cannot be called in, which limits Andrew’s resources to himself and whoever he feels he can trust, the list of those in this category changing chapter by chapter.

   And in similar fashion does the reader’s grip on the story, or vice versa, the story’s grip on the reader. Excellent characterizations are mixed helter-skelter with a plot that’s held together with a strong, industrial brand of duct tape. Nonetheless, New England summer towns can be filled with as much malice as large population centers such as Manhattan, and the generally capable touch of Ursula Curtiss goes a long way in proving it.

[UPDATE] 02-13-08.   I read and reviewed this book four years ago, and do you think I remember it? If I hadn’t written this review, I don’t believe I would even have remembered reading it, if you’d asked me.

   But after reading and slightly revising the review, it all came back to me — everything, that is, except whodunit. I’m willing to wager that if I started to read the book again now, I still wouldn’t remember who the killer was.

   I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.

   But in any case, I mentioned in the course of the review that this was the first mystery I’d read that Ursula Curtiss had written. It’s also still the only one, not through any fault of hers!

THE LONE WOLF IN PARIS. Columbia, 1938. Francis Lederer, Frances Drake, Walter Kingsford, Leona Maricle, Albert Dekker. Director: Albert S. Rogell. Based on the character created by Louis Joseph Vance.

   Michael Lanyard, also known as The Lone Wolf, appeared in eight novels written by Vance between 1914 and 1934; in 24 movies between 1917 and 1949; in a 1948 radio show on Mutual; and in a 1954-55 syndicated TV series. (I didn’t want you to think we were talking about any old fly-by-night sort of character here.)

   By the end, he was essentially a good guy, almost but not quite a private eye, I believe, but he didn’t start out that way. In the beginning he was a gentleman European jewel thief, pure and simple, but his penchant for helping beautiful women in distress eventually convinced him that working for the law instead of against not only had the advantage of being able to continue his narrow-escape adventures, but without the disadvantage of always having the police close behind his heels. At least theoretically, anyway.

   In The Lone Wolf in Paris, suave Czechoslovakian-born Francis Lederer’s only opportunity to play him, Lanyard is on the edge of reform. He has letters from heads of police departments from all over Europe to vouch for him, but the hapless manager of the Paris hotel where he is staying immediately has a suspect in hand when robberies begin taking place in several rooms of his establishment.

   In the hotel at the same time, it seems, are three rich members of Arvonne royalty, who between them have the crown jewels of their country. (Arvonne is a small country found somewhere on the map near France, we are led to believe.) Princess Thania (Frances Drake) desperately needs them back. Once the people of Arvonne learn that they are missing – a good deed gone bad – the Queen will be forced to abdicate.

   There is a lot of pleasant thievery and derring-do packing into the 66 minutes of this movie. There are also a few brief opportunities for romance between all of the switches back and forth between the real gems and fake ones made of paste. It’s a minor film, but a very enjoyable one nonetheless. The hour and change in running time goes by very quickly.

NEXT. 2007. Nicolas Cage, Jessica Biel, Julianne Moore; Peter Falk. Director: Lee Tamahori. Based on the short story “The Golden Man,” by Philip K. Dick.

   When I was growing up in the middle to late 1950s, my favorite SF author was Philip K. Dick. I was way ahead of my time, I think, because nobody I knew had ever heard of him. Then I learned of SF fandom, that would have been in the early 60s, and suddenly I wasn’t alone any more. He wasn’t everybody’s favorite author then, but in that crowd at least he was read, and his stories were talked about.

   And now, ever since the movie Blade Runner, I would imagine – I’m talking now 1982 – everybody who goes to the movies and pays attention to the authors that wrote the stories that movies are made of has heard of Philip K. Dick. He had ideas – many of them solidly paranoiac and/or hallucinogenic – ideas that no one ever had then and no one seems to have now, and often questioning the meaning of reality itself. Is the world a stage, our surrounding only sets? And so on and et cetera.

   The premise of Next is that its hero, an obscure and not very successful Las Vegas stage magician named Cris Johnson [Nicolas Cage], has the ability to see exactly two minutes into his future. Now you know and I know that this can’t be done, but given the premise, how might a man having such a ability deal with it? Superheroes, says Stan Lee, have great responsibilities. Is it not so?

   Cris Johnson tries to hide his behind the facade of his magic act, performing before small audiences in rundown clubs. So far, up to the time the movie begins, he has succeeded. But this is a crime film, a top notch action thriller – some of it choreographed so well that I had to stop the DVD, backtrack and watch it again. [Insert a small “heh” here.] The second premise at work is that a very sophisticated gang of terrorists going to set off a nuclear bomb somewhere in the Los Angeles area.

   It is difficult to know exactly what they hope to gain from this – or maybe it was explained and I missed it – but that’s OK. I have an imagination, and I can use it. It is federal agent Callie Ferriss’s job – she’s played by Julianne Moore – to convince Cris Johnson to use his ability to save the lives of eight million people. Cris Johnson is sympathetic, of course, but he knows that once he does, his life as he knows it is gone forever.

   Not only is this an action thriller, but it is also a romantic film. Jessica Biel – oh so beautiful, and he, Nicolas Cage, such a magnificent scarecrow of a man – plays Liz Cooper, and somehow she is part of Cris’s future. He knows it, and he doesn’t know how, but of course she is… Have you seen the previews? Should I tell you? No, but keep in mind that this is also an action thriller, and she is very much a part of the action…

   …as an innocent victim. I just simply have to tell you that. No one as young and innocent and beautiful as Liz Cooper is could be anything but an innocent victim in a movie.

   The men who made this film did an absolutely smashing job of making the first part of it, the first two or three acts or so. It could not have been easy task in figuring out ways to make the science-fictional premise understandable to mainstream audiences, but they did.

   Unfortunately premises such this one lead easily to all kinds of unanswered questions, and I will not bore you with mine, largely because I do not have answers to them. If you watch the movie, I suspect you will come up with as many of yours as I did, and there may not even be any overlap.

   There is another “unfortunately” coming up here in my comments on the film, and unfortunately I am running out of wind, if not space. And this one involves the ending. All movies have to have endings. I wish this one didn’t, in one sense, and in another, I wish it didn’t have the ending it has. I have the feeling that I am not alone in feeling this way.

   [LATER ON THE SAME DAY.]   I have been thinking the ending over, and feeling an inch (perhaps a foot but probably not a yard) more positive about it, I think I would like to revise my comments a bit, or add to them in this fashion. If I am right, and I now believe I am, the ending of the movie is really rather clever.

   I am naturally reluctant to say that I was wrong before, of course. The fact remains that for the kind of audience who would be most attracted to this movie, I am sure the ending will disappoint them greatly. Action-minded audiences do not enjoy being taken lightly.

   [EVEN LATER.]   I was right. After posting my comments, I went to read what some of the people on IMDB had to say. I didn’t get far. Here are three. You can go read the rest for yourselves.

    “I DON’T WANT TO IMAGINE A FILM, I WANT TO WATCH IT!!!!!”

    “I see 4-5 movies a month in a theater, but when Next ended tonight, it was the first time I’d ever heard a crowd ‘BOO’ a movie.”

    “This is the kind of movie that doesn’t seem so bad until you find out that there are people who actually liked it.”

Dear Steve,

   I am aware of “Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range” by Emmett McDowell [mentioned in the comments posted after my last letter to you] and even have read it. The title, supplied by Fiction House, was derived from “Gun-Witch from Wyoming” by Les Savage, Jr., in Lariat Story Magazine (11/47). Based on the underlying correspondence, Malcolm Reiss was desperate to get another Señorita Scorpion story from Savage, and this was meant as an interim attempt to keep interest in the character because Savage at the time was writing his first novel.

   Savage’s first three Señorita Scorpion stories do work as a trio of interrelated stories, similar to the trios of short novels Max Brand had written for Western Story Magazine, and for this reason could be combined into a stand-along book as we did initially. After “Secret of the Santiago,” Savage no longer wanted to do more stories, and only “The Curse of Montezuma” preserved the principal characters introduced in the first three short novels. After the fourth story, Savage introduced other characters, excluded Chisos Owens as he went along, and the sixth story even has a first-person narrator who is a new character to the series. For this reason, among others, we never thought it a good idea to collect these later four stories into a single volume.

   The ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FRONTIER AND WESTERN FICTION (McGraw-Hill, 1983) is the primary reason Golden West Literary Agency came into being. Bill Regier, then director of the University of Nebraska Press, in 1989 proposed that Vicki and I prepare a second edition of this reference book. We set about contacting Western writers or their estates to update our bibliographies. We also added several authors who were not included in the first edition.

   T.V. Olsen, who I had known for years, urged me to include Les Savage, Jr., and lamented he had not been included in the first edition. He felt Savage was one of the most talented Western writers and deserved an entry. I read a number of Savage’s stories and agreed. I then contacted Marian R. Savage, Les’s widow, for biographical and bibliographical information. She pleaded with me to find an agent for Les’s work.

   The same thing happened with L. P. Holmes’s son. Lew Holmes had died after the first edition came out and he had been most helpful with his entry. Contacting New York agents, I was amazed that no one wanted to represent a deceased author unless he had been a client while alive. In the end we had such a number of client estates that needed representation that we founded Golden West to represent them. T.V. Olsen became our first living client.

   Until 1994 we still planned on doing the second edition, but Bill Regier had left Nebraska, and with the launch of the Five Star Westerns, our hardcover Western fiction series co-published by Thorndike Press, then a division of Macmillan, we no longer had the time to work on the second edition. Now it would be impossible to do it simply because there still is no time.

   We edit and co-publish twenty-four new Western titles a year in the Five Star Westerns and three new Western titles in the Circle V Westerns. Some of the material we prepared for entries in the second edition has been used instead as Forewords to Five Star Westerns editions, for example that which I wrote for RANGE OF NO RETURN: A WESTERN DUO by D.B. Newton, with a Foreword by Jon Tuska. [Dec 2005].

   In the end, I think this decision not to continue with the second edition was the right one. We both changed from the passive rôle of being literary historians to the active rôle of being publishers of and agents for Western fiction in the present and future.

   All Savage would have had would have been a first-time entry in the second edition. Instead, we have been doing one and two new books by him every year, beginning with FIRE DANCE AT SPIDER ROCK by Les Savage, Jr. with a Foreword by T.V. Olsen [Nov 1995]. Instead of being a footnote in the literary history of the Western story in the 1940s and 1950s, Les Savage’s work is being read and enjoyed by readers who were not alive when he was, and so has won a longevity for himself that his early death would otherwise have precluded.

   We have also introduced new authors to readers of Westerns and represent some of the most talented of the current generation such as Johnny D. Boggs, Stephen Overholser, and William A. Luckey. We have restored many of Zane Grey’s finest Western stories in authentic texts based on his holographic manuscripts and have several yet to go; we publish six new Max Brand titles a year (some of these also restorations), have launched publishing programs for Will Henry, Frank Bonham, Lauran Paine, Ray Hogan, T.T. Flynn, Peter Dawson, Robert J. Horton, Dane Coolidge, Lewis B. Patten, Wayne D. Overholser – the list goes on and on. Almost six hundred Western titles are sold by Golden West every year worldwide.

WILLIAM R. COX – Death on Location. Signet S2158, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1962.

    It begins with a baseball game, the championship series of the Las Vegas Strip Baseball League, which if you think about it, sounds like a lot of fun. Besides being a reformed gambler, however, Tom Kincaid is a shoestring movie producer as well, and when he moves his crew upstate to start filming an adventure epic starring his live-in girl friend, he unknowingly carries the dirt of big city dope traffic with him.

    The detection is a flabby effort, to tell the truth. The solution to the murder of the leading lady’s stand-in seems to flop out of its hidey closet of its own accord, but the message is that the movie business is really just plain hard work. The logistics of making a movie are staggering, to put it mildly, and they’re put together by honest, industrious people. Under the sophistication, folks, they’re just like us.    (C)

   
[UPDATE] 02-11-08. Cox was another paperback writer in the 1950s and 60s who began his career in the pulps, writing mysteries like this one — I’m almost positive that Tom Kincaid appeared in his short stories long before he started showing up in full-length novels — but Cox wrote a ton of westerns and sports fiction as well. Short or long, magazine or paperback, it didn’t seem to matter. The only books he wrote that appeared in hardcover, though, while he was alive, were sports stories for boys, with titles like Trouble at Second Base and Rookie in the Back Court.

   When there was a lull in writing books and short stores, Cox did TV screenplays, shows like Bonanza, Wagon Train and Tales of Wells Fargo, but according to IMDB, an episode of Route 66 as well, among many others.

   There were a couple of interesting characters to be found in his western paperback fiction. First was a guy called Cemetery Jones, about whom I know little more than his name, and second, although this may not count, after William Ard died, Cox wrote a bunch of the “Buchanan” books under the Jonas Ward byline.

   Thanks to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, here’s a list of all of the Tom Kincaid novels. Someone else will have to help me out on the pulp stories Kincaid appeared in. I can’t find any reference to specific titles or dates, but I’m positive I’ve read one or two of them over the years.

         Hell to Pay. Signet, 1958.
         Murder in Vegas. Signet, 1960.
         Death on Location. Signet, 1962.

   William R. Cox died in 1988, at the age of 87. Here’s a link to his obituary in the New York Times.

   Phyllis A. Whitney’s books have been great favorites of mine for as long as I remember. I discovered her juvenile mysteries about the same time that I discovered her adult suspense novels, and I read both groups of books with great pleasure. Growing up on a farm in Mississippi, I did all my world-traveling in those days through books. Miss Whitney took me to far-flung, exotic places that I could never hope to go on my own, and after I read one of her books I felt I had been to those locales, if only for a brief while.

   I found her address in a reference book, back in 1983, and I wrote her the first fan letter I ever wrote to an author. Within ten days, I received a reply. What she had to say in that letter told me that she had read my letter and thought about what I had to say, and I was touched by the time she obviously took to respond.

   Later on I had the great pleasure of meeting her in person, twice. First was in 1988 at the Edgar Awards Banquet; Miss Whitney had been named Grandmaster for that year. I found my way to her table before the festivities started, clutching one of my favorite of her books (Emerald, in case anyone is curious), and rather shyly introduced myself and told her how much pleasure she had given me over the years through her books. Her face lit up, and she was obviously so delighted by talking to a reader, she charmed me completely.

   I saw her again a few years later at Malice Domestic, and Dorothy Cannell (another big fan of hers) and I stood in line waiting to get books signed, happily discussing our favorites. Once again, when I had the chance to speak to her, I received that same beaming smile and obvious joy she had when talking to readers. She was over 90 by that time, and her body might have been frail, but her mind was still razor-sharp. She delighted many people that day during the panel she did at Malice.

   Sometime last year I decided it was time to reread some of her work, and I was just as enthralled with it as I had been when I read the books for the first time. Despite the fact that she was (by this time) considerably older than her heroines, she had this uncanny ability to understand what hurdles young women of that particular decade were facing and write credibly about them.

   She told me in her letter, back in 1983, that the reason she had stopped writing historical novels was that she was far more interested in the problems of women of the present, and I think she did it with great compassion and understanding. Emerald is a prime example of this.

   Phyllis A. Whitney was a wonderful storyteller, and I will always relish the time I spent reading her books, and the times to come when I will read them again.