ROUTE 66. “Black November.” CBS, 60m, 07 Oct 1960 (Season 1, Episode 1). Martin Milner (Tod Stiles), George Maharis (Buz Murdock). Guest Cast: Everett Sloane, Patty McCormack, Keir Dullea, Whit Bissell, George Kennedy. Musical theme: Nelson Riddle. Screenwriter: Stirling Silliphant. Director: Philip Leacock. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

   Chronicling the adventures of two roving buddies making their way across the width and breath of the United States, this was arguably the iconic TV shows of the early 1960s. Of its kind, while I personally missed it entirely, it was certainly the most successful. I was off in college at the time, and I think I had time to watch television at most two or three, with the choice limited to one TV channel.

   I knew about it, of course, even without access to our family’s subscription to TV Guide, which I was addicted to all though high school. (Who in the early 60s did not?) So when I learned that Amazon Prime was streaming it free to subscribers, I thought it high past time to catch up on a serious lack in my cultural heritage.

   I’m glad I did. This first episode’s a good one. The two buddies with a brand new car and two pair of restless feet to drive it find themselves in quite a predicament – at one time with ropes around their necks waiting to be lynched. This is not anything the Mississippi Tourist Bureau would want anyone to see! I suppose that in 1960, backward places such as the small town of Garth might exist, just like the most secluded rural parts of England, where strangers never come, and when they do, they are looked on by residents as Demons from Hell.

   One man rules the town with a iron thumb, and his name is Garth (Everett Sloane). The town also has a secret, but absolutely no one will talk about it. The daughter (Patty McCormack) of the local storekeeper is the only one who offers them a timid, shy smile. Everyone else has dark sullen faces, constantly staring at the pair with dark hostility. There is also, of all things, but it fits in perfectly, a creepy scene in which the townsfolk storm the grocery store with torches blazing away in the darkness.

   As the pilot episode, this certainly is an effective one. It starts, however, after they’ve already been on the road for a while, and it’s only in their conversation that we get hints of who they are and what set them on their way. If you are puzzled why they were heading for Biloxi before they got lost, a town nowhere near Route 66, I have often wondered that about the series myself. They ended up all over the US during the four years the program was on the air. I have finally assumed that the cross-country Route 66 was only a metaphor for anyone traveling here and there at whim and will, with no particular destination in mind.

KIERAN SHEA “The Lifeguard Method.” Charlie Byrne #1. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 2009. Probably never collected or reprinted.

   This is both Kieran Shea’s first published story and (of course) the first recorded case of PI Charlie Byrne. Although most of the story takes place in a room at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, Byrne seems to be permanently based in Philadelphia. Most of his work is for hotshot litigator there, having saved his son Andy from drowning while working as a lifeguard at a beach when the boy was only six.

   Andy is now in his early 20s and is foolishly trying to scam his father out of fifty grand by faking his own kidnapping. Byrne is having none of it, but makes the initial mistake of taking everything for granted, a mistake he doesn’t make twice.

   In her introduction to the story, the editor points out that it was difficult to decide whether to put this tale in their Department of First Stories, or in their “Black Mask” section. They chose the latter, and it was a good choice. Without being able to say more, this is one of the most hard-boiled stories I’ve read in a long time.

   It was also stated in the introduction that the author was working on a novel involving Charlie Byrne, but if so, it may have never been completed. There was one more appearance for this otherwise one-shot PI, that being “Shift Work,” which was serialized in three parts in an ezine titled Crime Factory, March, May & July 2010.

DONNA LEON – Trace Elements. Commissario Guido Brunetti #29. Atlantic Monthly Press, hardcover, March 2020. Setting: Contemporary Venice.

First Sentence: A man and a woman deep in conversation approached the steps of Pone dei Lustraferi, both looking hot and uncomfortable on this late July afternoon.

   Benedetta Toso, a dying hospice patient who asks to speak with the police, claims her husband, Vittorio Fadalto, was murdered over “bad money.” Commissario Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, promise to investigate the matter, but was it murder or an accident? Suspicions mount as they learn more about Vittorio’s job, that of collecting samples of water to be tested for contamination. Piecing together the tangled threads, Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

   With an excellent beginning, one learns that being a Neapolitan in Venice is a “far greater handicap than being a woman.”— and that one may not want to visit Venice during the summer. Leon’s voice is always a pleasure. When talking about the heat, she conveys the sense of it without referencing it directly– “Brunetti realized only then how hot he was. He tried to lift his right leg, but it was glued to the chair by sweat.” It is these touches that bring Venice to life by allowing us to see the city as those who live there do.

   There is a second plot thread of two Romany pickpockets. It is interesting to learn the differences between how crimes are handled in Italy versus the United States. The secondary plot does raise interesting points. Leon’s descriptions, from the route to an address Brunetti takes that only a resident would know, to his description of a room badly decorated, to food, are a delight and bring the city to life. Even a plate of sandwiches at a bar sound good– “From the sides of the sandwiches spilled ham, egg tomato, tuna salad, radicchio, rucola, shrimp, artichokes, asparagus, and olives.”

   Leon is wonderful at injecting verbal exchanges to make one chuckle. When called into his boss’s office, Signorina Elettra remarks– “If you aren’t out in fifteen minutes, I’ll call the police.” However, she is also very good at making one pause and consider, as with Bruno’s conversation with a nurse– “But if you work with death, you have to become spiritual, or you can’t do it any more. … when they get close to the end, you can sense their spirit, or you sense that it’s there. They do, too. And it helps them. And us.” She knows how to touch one’s emotions– “Griffoni…raised a hand and threw open her palm, as if to release the dead woman’s spirit into the air. The three of them remained silent for enough time to allow that spirit to escape the room…”

   There is something wonderful about a policeman who reads Lysistrata for pleasure and describes Agamemnon as a “windbag commander.” The relationship between Brunetti and his wife Paoli adds normality. It is one of a couple who have been married a long time and still love one another. An interesting characteristic of Leon is that when her characters are in a professional setting, she references them by their surnames, yet when in a personal setting, or amongst one another as friends, she uses their first names.

   Leon is incredibly good at building a story. She takes one along with her through the steps with an amazing subtlety to the clues. Trace Elements is a police procedural without car chases or gunplay, but with a somewhat political theme. It is a very contemporary mystery with a contemporary crime. It reflects on the degradation of true justice in our time and on compromise. For some, the ending may not seem satisfactory, but upon reflection, there is some small justice amidst justice that cannot be achieved.

Rating: Very Good.

COMMISSIONER MANARA. “The Perfect Crime (Un delitto perfetto).” Rai 1, Italy, as Il commissario Manara. 08 January 2009 (Season 1, Episode 1.) Guido Caprino (Luca Manara), Roberta Giarrusso (Lara Rubino), and a large ensemble cast. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime as Inspector Manara.

   Commissioner Manara, a delightful combination of comedy and sentimental police work, appeared on Italian TV for two seasons of twelve episodes each. In this, the first episode, Luca Manara has been sent down from the big city to take over as Commissioner in a small provincial town where his arrival is looked on with considerable suspicion, especially since one of the officers still there had expected to be offered the job.

   Luca is, as it turns out, something of a playboy and a womanizer. He reputedly had to leave his previous position for romancing the wife of his superior there. Young, dressed rather informally, with a carefully maintained stubble of a beard, plus a propensity for riding a motorcycle everywhere, he is often taken for a delivery person. When his new inspector sees him, she immediately slaps him in the face. It seems that they have had a past together, back in inspector school.

   The first case they have to work on together is that of a death that is at first assumed to have been a suicide, but between Luca’s good instincts and even better forensic work, it is soon discovered that it was murder instead, much to the local superintendent’s displeasure.

   I really enjoyed this one. There is both laugh-out-loud comedy and excellent detective work involved, plus a sentimental ending that shows everyone that Luca Manara also has the proverbial heart of gold. Add in lots of beautiful scenery and even more beautiful women, what’s not to like?

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

HARRY WHITTINGTON – The Humming Box. Ace Double #D-185, paperback original, 1956. Published back-to-back with Build My Gallows High, by Geoffrey Homes.

   I recently revisited a book I picked up back in College. I was pretty wild back in those days, you see, and my gang and I would sometimes get in an old jalopy, pool money for gas, and tear up to Cleveland, where we’d spend the day prowling the seedier parts of town, scouting out Used Book Stores and whistling at girls. Or maybe we just scouted out Used Book Stores. It’s been a long time, Anyway, on one of these raids, I picked up Ace Double #D-185 featuring The Humming Box by Harry Whittington. Inside the front cover, the blurb page offered a Cast of Characters, including:

         LORNA PALMER: A modern Pandora. Her box was no myth!

   Ah, the things they used to get away with in those days! Anyway, The Humming Box is better than it sounds, despite the pulpy plot (Everyone in it seems to be plotting to murder somebody, though none of them are much good at it.) and the lurid packaging. Whittington works some really creepy scenes from the (rather timely) concept of a package of disease-carrying mosquitoes smuggled out of Korea by a psychotic GI, then fallen into the hands of a scheming heiress who’s being blackmailed by …. well, you get the idea. Sheer pulp, but carried off competently by a past master of the form.

   By the way, the flip-side of this gem is none other than Build My Gallows High, Geoffrey Homes’ novel basis of the Ultimate Film Noir, Out of the Past. It’s a bit more diffuse and perhaps less powerful than the film, but still a well-plotted and tightly-written bit of business. Homes evokes the minor characters well and keeps the story moving with the occasional oddly poetic touch that recalls Chandler at his best. Makes me wonder why he never did anything else as good.

KEVIN HANCER – The Paperback Price Guide. Harmony Books / Overstreet Publications, softcover, 1980.

   A friend of mine gave me some good advice once. “Never,” he said, “throw anything away before it starts to smell.”

   In this age of compulsive collectibles and instant nostalgia, that’s not such a bad idea. Besides guides for collectors of antiques in general, there are price guides as well for old baseball cards and old comic books, for example, basic commodities of life that have always given mothers such bad reputations (for throwing them away once our backs were turned). There are price guides for old phonograph records, both 45s and 78s, and yes, heaven help us, for beer cans as well, complete with full-color illustrations.

   Joining the illustrious company of these and doubtless many others, the hobby of collecting old paperback books has come now into its own. Besides the obvious goal of determination and the compilation of current going prices, using some scheme known only to him – there is little or no relation to any asking prices I have seen, but more about that later – the greatest service that Hancer has given the long-time collector is that he has put together in one spot a more-or-less complete listing, by publisher, of all the mass-market paperbound books that were sold originally in drugstores and supermarkets across the country, for prices that from the first were almost always twenty-five cents each.

   By 1960, however, they had crept upward to the thirty-five cent level, or so. (Now , twenty years later again, check the prices of paperbacks in the bookstores today, if you dare.)

   Made superfluous are all the various checklists produced by specialist collectors and appearing in mimeographed forms in various short-lived periodicals over the past few years, signall1ng the big boom of interest about to come.

   Many early paperbacks were mysteries, and mystery fans have collected them in lieu of the more expensive first editions for some time. An added attraction the cheaper paper editions always had to offer was the cover artwork, designed not-so-subtly to catch the would-be buyer’s eye, but now categorized as GGA. Good Girl Art, that is, a term coined by a comic book dealer, I think.

   It speaks volumes for itself, as does the title Naked on Roller Skates, a book by Maxwell Bodenheim which lists for $30. Dell “mapbacks” go high, although most of them still lie in the $5 to $20 range, and so does early science fiction. The first Ace Double goes for $100, however, in mint condition, and a book entitled Marihuana goes for the same amount. The latter was published in 1951, when you could have picked up a copy, had you but known, for ten cents. Last month I could have bought a copy for a mere $13.

   Another friend of mine has a theory about scarcity and price guides, and it goes something like this. Whenever the price of something is forced upward by artificial hype, he says, sooner or later it gets so high that no one wants it. If you have it, your only alternative is to find another fool to take it off your hands. The last person who ends up with it and cannot sell it is thereby crowned the Greatest Fool of Them All.

   Check out your basements and attics now.

ROBERT ARELLANO – Havana Libre. Akashic Books, hardcover & paperback, 2017.

   The spy novel is alive and well in the hands of Roberto Arellano, in this, the second volume of his Cuban Noir Trilogy, and it has returned to its roots in Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

   Arellano’s protagonist, and our guide, is a young doctor in 1997 Havana, where oppressive September heat wears on nerves, nightly blackouts – thanks to the loss of the Soviet subsidies that kept Castro’s Cuba functioning since 1959 – make the streets treacherous, and the PNR watches everyone. So when our narrator picks his way from his clinic to his attic flat in a one time mansion, he is not happy to find a man waiting for him, Colonel Emilio Pérez, chief homicide investigator for the Policia Nacional de la Revolución, who wants a favor Manolo Rodriguez doesn’t feel like extending, even if it might mean he could attend a medical conference in Tampa he is wanting to go to.

   He helped Pérez five years earlier and has no desire to do so again.

   Meanwhile a character known to us only as the Tourist has arrived carrying explosives and a mysterious map. A series of explosions at hotels have plagued the city, and the Tourist is part of this, the attacks crippling the only industry Cuba has left, tourism.

   But when Mano finds himself unable to save victims of the latest attack, he is trapped into becoming a Pérez employee in a far more dangerous city than Havana, at least for him: Miami.

   Arellano captures the Kafka-like quality of both life in Havana where a slip of the lip can land you in the not so gentle hands of the PNR, and among the dissidents and anti revolutionaries in Miami, where life is just as treacherous for Mano as a Cuban spy.

   The portrait of Havana is nightmarish when contrasted with Mano’s memories of better days, back when the Revolution was still being financed by Russian rubles. The pictures of hustlers, spying neighbors, ruthless bureaucrats, and justified paranoia the essence of the term Kafkaesque.

   Like an Ambler or Greene hero, all Mano really wants is to survive. His politics are his job as a pediatrician, and Mercedes, a young woman he becomes involved with , but he finds himself caught between forces that aren’t all that interested in his personal survival and facing a surprising reunion with his father in Miami.

   It’s a fresh and exciting setting for a spy novel, Arellano positioning his hero as a sort of cross between Candide and a Cuban Ashenden, a reluctant spy who only wants to survive, stop the killing, and see his country return to some sort of sanity. The stakes are to stop an attack on the Havana Libre, the hotel of the title, not the fate of nations or revolutions, the crime more criminal than political.

   The downside of all this is that the book is written in the present tense which is always tricky, but it works to give this one some immediacy since it is also a first person narrative, certainly in a chilling interrogation scene.

   This is not a translation, but a Cuban-American novel written in English about Cuba and Cubans.

   Like the Ambler and Greene models I mentioned earlier, in this book surviving and finding brief moments of happiness are all anyone can really hope for, and small victories are the only ones that a pawn in the bigger international game can hope for. Arellano captures that as well as anyone writing in the field today.

   Based on this one I’ll be looking for his first, Havana Lunar, and then the final installment in his Cuban Noir trilogy.

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN “Robber’s Roost.” Short story. PI Amos Walker. First published in Mystery, April 1982. Collected in General Murders (Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1988) and Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (Gallery Books, hardcover, 2010).

   This was Amos Walker’s first appearance in short story form. While I have both hardcover collections, I read this one in its original magazine form, at the time when, according to the introduction, Estleman had written only two novels about Walker, his long running Detroit-based PI. (I don’t know whether he’s still active. From the information I have, he last appeared in The Lioness Is the Hunter (2017).

   This one’s a good one, based on the crime-ridden history of Michigan’s largest city. He takes a job from a long-retired cop in a nursing home who wants to find out what really happened to his adopted brother when he died some 50 years before. His car apparently fell through the ice while making a bootlegging run while crossing the river into the US from Canada. He’s positive that Eddie was killed by his boss, a former racketeer now also still alive, and he wants Walker to put him in prison.

   There is, of course, more to the story than that, but finding out what really did happen takes all of Walker’s skills as a detective. The story’s breezily told, maybe just a tad too breezily, but only a curmudgeon would cavil at such a small thing as that. Fans of PI stories who haven’t yet caught up with Amos Walker have a real treat coming.

 ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Long-Legged Models. Perry Mason #57. William Morrow, hardcover, 1958. Previously serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in eight parts as “The Case of the Dead Man’s Daughter,” beginning with the 10 August 1957 issue. Reprinted many times since, including Pocket #6009, paperback, 1960; and Ballantine, paperback, 1994.

   This late middle period Perry Mason novel begins simply enough, but then again all of cases do. This time he’s hired by a long-legged brunette who’s inherited a share of small Nevadan casino from her murdered father, but a syndicate of sorts is trying to squeeze her out. A man claiming to be the representative of the group is soon found murdered, and Perry’s client is arrested for the crime.

   That’s the mundane part of the tale. What this one’s really all about is the matter of the three identical guns involved, one of which did the killing, but with Perry intentionally shuffling the guns around, it is nearly impossible to keep track of who had it where and when. I’m not sure that even Perry knew, not until the end, but I sure didn’t.

   But the best part of any Perry Mason novel is the courtroom scene, where D.A. Hamilton Burger tries his best to make mincemeat of both Perry and his client, and as usual, only ends up with egg on his face. The guilty party is obvious, but only after all the facts are in. This one will be a lot of fun for readers of Perry Mason fans, but probably run-of-the-mill routine for those who aren’t.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL. American International Pictures, 1962. Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Richard Ney, Heather Angel, Alan Napier, John Dierkes, Richard Miller. Screenplay by Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell, based on the story by Edgar Alan Poe. Directed by Roger Corman. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, DirecTV and others.

   Put aside the plot for now. For this third entry into Roger Corman’s Poe cycle of films fundamentally revolves around an idea, a concept. And that is: what would it be like for a man deathly afraid of being buried alive to actually be buried alive? How would he act? What would he do to those who accidentally (or purposefully) entombed him? How could a filmmaker put reflect his psychological state cinematically?

   In terms of reflecting this morbid concept on screen, The Premature Burial succeeds admirably. And then some. Ray Milland, although too old for the part, does a great job in portraying a man who afraid of being buried alive that he allows all the life to be sucked out of him. Hazel Court, who portrays his long-suffering wife, is there to both support and scold him. She clearly doesn’t want to have to spend the rest of her years with a man with one foot already in the grave.

   Based on the eponymous Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Premature Burial is enriched with claustrophobic sets and a chillingly effective score from Ronald Stein. The film also makes ample use of a rich color palette, both in terms of set design and lighting. Corman’s use of jump cuts do not work nearly as effectively as do the lush atmospherics.

   The movie also benefits greatly from the presence of three great character actors. Alan Napier, who is now best remembered as the butler Alfred in the live-action Batman TV series, portrays the father-in-law of the protagonist. And John Dierkes and Dick Miller portray two graverobbers who end up being key to how the story unfolds.

   Back to the plot. I’ll be honest. It is a little more than creaky. The ending is simply a little too pat, even for a low budget horror film. That’s unfortunate given that the credited screenwriters were none other than Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell. But that’s not what this film is about. It’s a concept film. And a good, albeit not great one, at that.