JEFF VanderMEER “Fixing Hanover.” Short story. First published in Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology, edited by Nick Gevers (Solaris, paperback, 2008). Collected in The Third Bear (Tachyon, softcover, 2010). Reprinted several times, including: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books, softcover, 2009); Year’s Best SF 14, edited by Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell (Eos, softcover, 2009); The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, softcover, 2010); The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace (Running Press, softcover, 2012).

   Whew. Look at those credits. I knew this story was good as soon as I read it, but it’s a nice feeling to know that other people have thought it a good one, too. As far as what “steampunk” is, as a particular sub-genre of both science fiction and fantasy, here’s a description taken from Wikipedia, cut down to as short as I can make it. “Steampunk is a retrofuturistic subgenre of science fiction that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery […] Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American “Wild West”, where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. [Stories may include] presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.”

   I’ve generally found steampunk novels tough going – they seem to focus more on the “technology” than on the people in them – but in shorter form, that’s a lot less so, and Jeff VanderMeer’s story is especially good in both regards. The hero of the tale is a man who has made a home for himself fixing things in a small enclave of survivors of the latest cataclysmic end of civilization, presumably this planet.

   His latest challenge is a strange metal contraption shaped vaguely like a man, filled with wires, bulbs, gears and lots of other unknown parts. Can he put it back together and make it work again? Blake, the former lover of Lady Salt, who is now the close companion of the fixer, insists he do so. But should he? There is a nascent Empire rising again in the distance, but more importantly, perhaps, the romantic tensions in this all-too-human triangle are as important as the right or wrongness of his decision.

   As I said up above, this is a good one.

FLAXY MARTIN. Warner Brothers, 1949. Virginia Mayo, Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Douglas Kennedy, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Fowley. Monte Blue. Director: Richard L. Bare.

   Speaking of Douglass Fowley, he plays a snide cop with an exaggerated opinion of his own brains in Flaxy Martin, one of those great Warner’s B’s like they just don’t do no more. Zachary Scott is an underworld lawyer who wants to quit working for gangster Tom D’Andrea, but can’t tear himself loose from chanteuse Virginia Mayo, who — unbeknownst to Scott — has a business/pleasure relationship with D’Andrea herself, and is being well-rewarded for keeping him on the string.

   Tom D’Andrea [later best known for playing Chester A. Riley’s close buddy on TV] does a fine job as a virile, half-sharp gangster, kind of in the nasty-Ronald-Reagan mode, and stands up quite nicely against noir archetypes Scott and Elisha Cook Jr., who is a bit scarier than usual here as a sawed-off wanna-be who keeps calling Scott “Shamus” – shouldn’t it be Mouthpiece?

   Director Richard Bare is best remembered for his work on 77 Sunset Strip, but he does a workmanlike job here, making the most of bits like Scott being stalked through the streets by Cook Jr., a roof-top fist-fight, and a really memorable scene of our hero leaping from a speeding train and plummeting down a ravine.

   Anyway, the story offers no surprises whatever, and the characters seem motivated by nothing so much as a need to move the plot along, but there’s enough old-fashioned Style here, backed up by a syrupy echt-40s Musical score, to make it lotsa fun.

   Among things I didn’t know until now is that in 2015 (according to Wikipedia) Grammy winner John Mayer joined three former members of the Grateful Dead and two other musicians to form the band Dead & Company. It is the latest of several reunions of the band’s surviving members since Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995.

   This song was recorded live at Boston’s TD Garden on 19 November 2017:

BLOOD & TREASURE. “The Curse of Cleopatra: Parts I & II.” CBS, 2 hours, 21 May 21 2019 (Season 1, Episode 1). Matt Barr as Danny McNamara, a former FBI agent who now works as a lawyer specializing in repatriating stolen art; Sofia Pernas as Lexi Vaziri, a thief and con woman partnered with Danny despite their tortured past; Oded Fehr as Karim Farouk, an Egyptian terrorist leader; Katia Winter as Gwen Karlsson, an Interpol agent assigned to the Farouk case; Michael James Shaw as Aiden Shaw (né Dwayne Coleman), an arms dealer with ties to Farouk; John Larroquette as Jay Reece, a billionaire and father figure to Danny who oversees his effort to stop Farouk’s plans to reunite the sarcophagi of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony to aid his cause. Directors: Part I: Michael Dinner; Part II: Alrick Riley.

   Thanks once again to Wikipedia for allowing me to summarize what’s going on in what’s really the first two episodes in last year’s first season of this new adventure series on CBS, or at least the players therein. But I imagine there’s enough meat there in the summary that I needn’t say more about the story.

   It seems to have done well enough in the ratings that it warranted renewal for a second time around, but on the basis of what I saw, it’s rather unlikely that be riding along with them. The production values are high, which as it should be, given that filming was done on location: in Montreal, Canada, Rome, Turin, Venice, Italy, Marrakesh, and Tangier, Morocco. The story is mediocre, however, being nothing more than watered down Indiana Jones, and while Sofia Pernas is extraordinarily adequate as eye candy, Matt Marr, her co-star in this venture, other than the inevitable stubble, has no screen presence whatsoever.

   I also think the idea of carrying one limp as dishwater story over twelve episodes was a bad idea, but I understand both the logistic and financial reasons for doing so. But carving a pie that’s luke warm at best into twelve slices, all you have is a semi-solid artificially flavored mess, no matter how you cut it.

MICHAEL COLLINS – Freak. Dan Fortune #11. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1983. Worldwide Library, paperback, 1990.

   One-armed Dan Fortune is hired by Ian Campbell, president of a computer firm, to find his recently-married youngest son and daughter-in-law. The couple have sold the house he gave them, cashed in some bonds and vanished. The only clue left behind is one word, “Freak”, written several times on a pad by the telephone. On starting his search, Fortune discovers he has competition in the hunt from someone leaving a trail of bodies.

   A pretty good effort, with interesting characters and a surprising (at least to me) twist at the end. Sometimes I suspect, though, that Collins forgets his hero has only one arm. The conclusion takes place in the wilds of Arizona, and Fortune has rented a rifle, which he doesn’t get a chance to use. While I’m sure that with proper time to set up his sights, a one-armed man could make a perfectly acceptable marksman, but I couldn’t help wondering if a rifle would have been Fortune’s weapon of choice for a running shoot-out.

   Truth be told, this is not a great movie. Far from it. The trailer definitely shows the highlights. The exciting parts. The chilling parts. But I have to confess, despite its low production values, I happened to enjoy this quirky late 1950s horror picture for what it was. First of all, the title alone is intriguing. The movie had been on my “to watch” list for years, but I only recently got around to watching it.

   Directed by Edward L. Cahn, whose Curse of the Faceless Man I reviewed here, the movie is rather talky at times, with numerous characters either sitting or standing around talking about ancient curses, Amazon tribes, and what not. But there are some good scenes, such as the ones in which the large and lanky witch doctor (clearly seen in the trailer) surreptitiously enters houses at night to do his dirty deeds.

   Speaking of dirty deeds, this one is – if you really think of it – pretty gruesome. I mean, the whole movie revolves around the concept of beheading the descendants of a man who purportedly mistreated a tribe. Neither groundbreaking nor a snoozer, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is a moderately entertaining low budget horror movie. Which likely explains why it aired so often on television in the 1960s.

IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Made for TV movie. ABC, October 16, 1971. Running time: 74 minutes. Richard Boone (Tony Chappel), Suzanne Pleshette (Kate Todd), Stella Stevens (Elizabeth Chappel), John Marley (Lt. Bergman), Fred Beir (Alex Crawford), Whit Bissell (Capt. Moss), Paul Smith (Charlie). Producers: Robert Mirisch and Aaron Spelling. Writer: Larry Cohen. Director: Robert Day.

   It’s graduation day for retired actor Tony Chappel as he signs an autograph and leaves the rehab center. Kate Todd has been assigned as his personal assistant and sees nothing sinister in Tony’s vigorous efforts to reacclimate himself to a more or less normal life, as Tony insists on taking cabs and buses all around town from his beachfront home until he knows the routes by heart.

   Certainly his faithless wife Elizabeth isn’t alarmed, but there’s good reason why she should be: Tony plans to kill her and her lover at the earliest opportunity. Only three things stand in Tony’s way: a common object found in most American households, a smart police detective, and probably the biggest obstacle between Tony and his goal, a fact which we’ve known since the first scene, that he is totally and irremediably blind . . . .

   In a Wikipedia article about In Broad Daylight we learn that writer Larry Cohen thought Richard Boone was miscast, but we couldn’t disagree more. Boone is excellent, watchable in every scene, and interest never flags as the story unfolds, which, considering too many made for TV films, is saying something.

   Richard Boone is remembered primarily for his TV series, Have Gun – Will Travel (1957-63; 225 episodes), but if the script called for it he could be the meanest sonuvagun around (e.g., the John Wayne opus Big Jake, 1971).

   The supporting cast is filled with faces you might know but couldn’t put a name to. You probably remember Suzanne Pleshette and Stella Stevens, of course (who wouldn’t?), but there are great character actors here as well: John Marley (e.g., Cat Ballou, 1965), Fred Beir (well over a hundred guest shots, mostly in television), Whit Bissell (over three hundred appearances!), and, next to Bissell, possibly the most familiar face, Paul Smith, who specialized in memorable bit parts everywhere but did have steady work in The Doris Day Show (1969-71; 33 episodes) and a completely forgotten superhero sendup series, Mr. Terrific (1966-67; 17 episodes), as well as No Time for Sergeants (1964-65; 13 eps), The Gertrude Berg Show (1961-62; 18 shows), and Fibber McGee and Molly (1959; 4 episodes).

   Veteran television director Robert Day would go on to work on one of our favorite Levinson & Link efforts, Murder by Natural Causes (1979), which we hope to get to soon.

   Despite the writer’s misgivings, we unhesitatingly recommend In Broad Daylight. It’s a worthy installment in “The Perfect Murder” subgenre.

   To my mind, Judy Roderick was one of the finest blues/acoustic folk singers of her time. From her LP of the same title, released in 1965, this song has been recorded by many artists since, including The Grateful Dead, usually as “I Know You Rider.”

THE FUGITIVE “The Other Side of the Mountain.” ABC, 01 October 1963 (Season 1, Episode 3). David Janssen. Guest Cast: Sandy Dennis, Frank Sutton, Ruth White. R.G. Armstrong, Barry Morse, Bruce Dern. Narrator: William Conrad. Screenwriters: Alan Caillou & Harry Kronman. Director: James Sheldon.

   A few nights ago, I watched “The Other Side of the Mountain,” a season one episode of The Fugitive. In this episode, Richard Kimble aka The Fugitive (David Janssen) runs afoul of the local authorities in a dying West Virginia coal mining town. The sheriff is portrayed by R.G. Armstrong, while his deputy is played by a youthful Bruce Dern who, as of the time, had not yet appeared on the big screen. The episode is a fairly strong one, bolstered by the presence of stage actress Sandy Dennis, who plays a local girl who provides sanctuary to Kimble. She also, not surprisingly, falls in love with him and all but begs him to take her with him.

   I enjoyed the episode quite a bit. Seeing Dern as a smarmy lawman eager to pick a fight with Kimble was something else. Dern, unlike Armstrong, Dennis, and two others, was not given guest star status. He really was a supporting TV character looking for bit parts at the time.

   Fast forward six years. Or, in my case, one day. And I sit down for an episode of Lancer (“A Person Unknown”), the CBS oater recently brought back into public consciousness for its “appearance” in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). In this episode, Johnny Madrid Lancer (James Stacy) runs afoul of a powerful man and his son. He not only is wounded in a fight. But is falsely accused of murdering his Mexican friend. A crime he did not commit. As it turns out, the injured Johnny has to hide out in an out of the way farmhouse in which he is provided succor by a young girl (Quentin Dean in her final acting role). Sound somewhat familiar?

   One more thing you should know. The person hot on his trail, the very same person who is the real murderer is portrayed by none other than Bruce Dern. One could not help but compared Dern’s performance in the 1963 episode of The Fugitive with that from this Lancer episode from 1969. Dern had, by this point, definitely come into his own as an actor. Here he had all but perfected the sneering, quasi-psychotic villainy that was so disturbingly effective in The Cycle Savages (1969) which I reviewed here.

   His scenes with Quentin Dean, who had appeared with Charlton Heston in Tom Gries’s excellent Will Penny (1967) which I reviewed here are just as effective as his first scene in which he taunts Johnny’s Mexican friend before killing him. All told, it’s a solid episode from a Western TV series that did not last very long, but benefited immensely from having some of the best character actors from its era as guest stars.
   

NOTE: Dern makes his first appearance in the video above at roughly the 7:00 mark.

JON MESSMANN – A Bullet for the Bride. Ed Steel #1. Pyramid N2792, paperback original, September 1972.

   Once again what we have here is a PI hero who doesn’t have a PI license, but that doesn’t make him any less of a PI, does it? When he’s approached by a would-be client and after hearing her story, tells her to go find a private eye, guess what? That’s when we know that he really is one. She needs him to investigate the woman who’s gotten herself engaged to her father – one of the richest men in the world – and she doesn’t think she’s on the level.

   To back up a little, Steel is retired, lives in Miami on a boat, but a fellow named Byron Ryberg, who was his boss during the Korean War when they both worked for the CIA, still sends jobs his way, such as this one. Ryberg is concerned that the girl is right, and if she is, and maybe if she’s working for the wrong hands, maybe the good guys would like to know about it – given that, as I said, the father is one of the richest men in the world.

   On the downside of this story is that Steel is one of those men who, when they meet a woman for the first time, measures their worth by gauging the size and bounce of their chest. On the other hand, he’s a whiz at running a boat, which comes in very very handy several times during the course of this book.

   Which is a case of Travis McGee (as you may have already noted yourself) meets James Bond. The stakes are, as it so happens, a whole lot higher than in any of the McGee books, but yet Steel has nowhere near the innate suaveness of Mr Bond. The book consists of long periods of introspection and talkiness, punctuated by short bursts of violence. He does bed the lady, but thankfully without going into details.

   The ending strongly hints at a followup adventure, but it never happened. Messmann did go on write six book in his Jefferson Boone, Handyman, series, and 15 books in the Nick Carter series. His largest claim to fame, perhaps, is writing most of the first 200 books in the adult western series, The Trailsman, as Jon Sharpe.