We were quite lucky. Storm Sandy gave us only a glancing blow, as it turned out, although that was bad enough. We had lots of rain and high gusty winds, 45mph or so, but our power stayed on — the lights flickered twice, and that was all. We were well prepared with food, bottled water, flashlights and a portable battery-operated radio, but we didn’t need them. I haven’t turned on the TV yet to see what damage was done along the shore here in CT and farther south along the East Coast, including New York City. Horrendous, I imagine. I know lots of people are in a lot more trouble than us.

There is one huge branch of a tree in our back yard that missed our deck by several feet, otherwise we might have lost it. The storm was essentially over by 10 pm, although it was supposed to last for several days, it was so large. I looked out it see if were raining, and I saw the moon shining brightly between the clouds. That was a great relief!

Today it is still windy with lots of gray clouds but the sun is also out, shining brightly for the first time in several days. I don’t know if you remember the date of our snowstorm last year, when we had no electricity for five days, but it was exactly a year ago. I really didn’t want to do that again!

JAMES ANDERSON – The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks. Poisoned Pen Press, hardcover, November 2003; trade paperback, February 2006.

   Here’s something I’ve noticed before, but it seems to have registered only in the back of my head, never to have been mentioned before to anyone. By me, at least, until now. The titles of each of the first nine mysteries written by James Anderson start with the letter “A” — ignoring the occasional “The,” as in the first two books of this particular series:

      The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg-Cosy, McKay (hc) 1977, Avon (pb) 1978, Poisoned Pen Press (trade pb) 1998.

      The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat, Avon (pb) 1981, Poisoned Press (trade pb) 1999 as The Affair of the Mutilated Mink.

   Anderson’s other titles, in alphabetical order, are: The Abolition of Death, Additional Evidence, The Alpha List, Angel of Death, Appearance of Evil, Assassin, and Assault and Matrimony.

   In the late 1980s Anderson also wrote the first three Jessica Fletcher paperbacks, tie-in’s with the Murder, She Wrote television series. (These do NOT start with the letter “A.”) And that seems to have been all, until just recently.

   But other people than myself seem to have remembered the first two affairs taking place at Alderley with great fondness, and several years ago Poisoned Press reissued them as part of their Missing Mystery series. Then, according to the publisher, the manuscript for this, the third adventure of Detective-Chief Inspector Wilkins arrived, unexpectedly to everyone.

   And so the Earl of Burford, George, his wife Lavinia, and their daughter Penelope are back again, which is good, no, terrific news. Nor I should fail to mention their stalwart butler Merryweather, who steadfastly aids the family throughout all three murder cases.

   But as Wilkins implies on page 129, it was inevitable. “You know the old saying, ‘Never two without three’.” Lord Burford had tried earlier to resist. “After the last two house parties, we agreed no more.” But Great Aunt Florrie’s wishes are not be denied, and since she expressed the desire to be buried at the parish church, there is no getting around it, and after the funeral the mourners have to be invited to their country house, Alderley.

   Not only that, the reading of the will is to take place there as well, necessitating overnight guests again, all distant relatives. In the securely locked house, someone, it turns out, has murderous intentions upon another.

   This magnificent throwback to the 1930s, which of course is when it takes place, is filled with people who have both hidden secrets and secret desires, none of which they wish known; witty (and often cutting) dialogue; near farcical encounters in the night; and almost more clues than you can imagine.

   Behind a rather sanguine facade, Wilkins is quite a detective, and at the end he patiently and impressively goes through each of the small hints and other pieces of evidence that brought him to his final conclusion — who did it and how, and how he found out.

   It’s quite a challenge for an author to produce a period detective novel that’s also humorous and a fair play mystery as well, and two out of three is not bad. I was very suspicious of one of the characters, and rightly so, but after the explanations are over, it’s clear that not even the cleverest of armchair detectives could have worked the solution out on their own. Wilkins has the resources, the reader doesn’t, and the reader is not told of the crucial details until too late.

   In summary, then, it’s an “almost, but not quite,” which is still better than 90% of the detective novels written today. And unless Mr. Anderson can be persuaded to write another, or he has one locked away in a trunk somewhere, I also have the feeling that this may be the end of the series. I hope I’m wrong.

[UPDATE] 10-26-12.   Unfortunately I was not wrong. This was the last of three cases to be solved by Inspector Wilkins. The author, James Anderson, died in 2007.

   Jeff Meyerson’s review of The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy can be found here earlier on this blog.

   Nowadays, weird movies are so numerous as to pass unnoticed; it is, in fact, common practice lately to layer a certain amount of weirdness deliberately onto quite ordinary films to increase their appeal to trendy movie-goers and boost the box office.

   But in my youth, the truly weird movies were something subversive filmmakers got away with, mainly in the B-features when no one was looking. Hence, the old weird movies played at neighborhood grind-houses to audiences of uncomprehending kids and drunks, then on local TV stations at obscure hours of the morning, diced up with ads for used cars and the amazing veg-O-matic.

   Hold that thought. I’ll get back to it.

   The things I read, given world enough and time, begin to amaze me. A few weeks ago, f’rinstance, I found myself somewhere deep inside Thomas DeQuincey’s memoir (sensationally serialized in the London papers circa 1821-22) Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

   This is not a book I’m going to recommend to lovers of Junkie or Musk, Hashish & Blood. The density of DeQuincey’s prose is such as will daunt most readers, and I don’t blame ’em a bit. Take one typical sentence —

    — and you’ll see it takes a Sherpa guide to get through some of these passes, and the reader with any sense at all for brevity and clarity may justifiably fling deQuincey’s book across the room.

   Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself not just enjoying this thing, but actually pursuing the tale (such as it is) eagerly to its end. For those who can fight through the dense prose, Confessions holds some powerful bits of sheer writing: harrowing descriptions of starving in London; stark descriptions of beggars and streetwalkers going desperately down winding, shadowy streets; gaudy evocations of wild opium dreams, and even the odd bit of humor jumping out from hiding, as his advice on taking Opium:

   Now to return to that thought you’ve been holding, DeQuincey’s title, somewhat abbreviated into Confessions of an Opium Eater was used for a film completely unrelated (or almost completely; the hero’s name is Gilbert DeQuincey) to the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoRBNxuweP0

   Released by Allied Artists (formerly Monogram) in 1962, produced and directed by that wild card of the Cinema, Albert Zugsmith (look him up) this was a cult film before there were cult films, a movie that emerges as simply weird for its own sake, rather than aimed at any particular audience. Spawned by a filmmaker known equally for his work with geniuses and for his own trashy bad taste, Confessions will easily boggle the mind of anyone unprepared for its tawdry neo-surrealism.

   Vincent Price stars as a black-clad and bemused soldier-of-fortune charged with ending the Oriental slave trade in San Francisco, circa 1920s — an action hero if you will, and if the mantle seems to rest a bit awkwardly on his shoulders, he still bears it manfully, jumping from rooftops, hatchet-dueling with Tong assassins, freeing fair young maidens and trading repartee with the Dragon Lady — in short, everything you expect from a two-fisted hero, but done with a sardonic lyricism never seen outside this cheap little movie, with lines like: “They say in every drunkard there’s a demon, in every poet a ghost. So here am I ghost and demon…”

   There are other surprises along the way, including an oriental den of iniquity filled with several hundred doors, sliding panels and secret passages; a tiny slave girl locked in a cage who turns out to be a jaded and diminutive old woman; an extended slow-motion dope-dream fight sequence, and an ending that made me doubt my senses. In short, this is the goods: a genuine Old Weird Movie and like nothing else you’ll ever see.

DIRK GENTLY. BBC Four/ITV Studios in association with The Welded Tandem Picture Company for BBC Cymru Wales, 2010 and 20123. Created and executive produced by Howard Overman. Cast: Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently, Darren Boyd as Richard MacDuff, Lisa Jackson as Janice, Jason Watkins as DI Gilks, and Helen Baxendale as Susan Harmison. For a more complete list of credits and an in depth look at the series visit the official BBC Four website.

    Douglas Adams’ (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) private detective Dirk Gently first appeared in the comedy fantasy mystery novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. His adventures continued in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) and in the unfinished Salmon of Doubt (2002).

    “But right now on BBC Four, its murder most random with Dirk Gently,” proclaimed the network’s announcer.

    Dirk Gently believes in “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things,” the quantum mechanics of Physics applied to all life.

    The series takes place in a modern day London. However, there are occasional moments when we realize the action is in an alternate universe, such as when Dirk fails to keep a computer program out of the hands of the Pentagon and America conquers Mexico.

    The mysteries are played fair with clues, some obvious while others not. Everything is connected. When Dirk takes things from anyplace, know it will play a role in the case, unless it is cash from the dead person’s pocket – that will be for pizza.

    The series was less interested in adapting Adams’ books than attempting to capture the spirit of his work and characters. Considering how impossible it would be to film the books, it was a wise choice, if not always successful.

    Stephen Mangan may not fit the image of Dirk from the books but he plays the character convincingly. A self-centered con man with the social skills of Sherlock Holmes, Dirk may or may not believe in his detective skills but is satisfied that things always work out in the end. He drives a broken down car worthy of Harry Orwell’s admiration. He is a deadbeat whose primary joy in life is eating fatty foods.

    Darren Boyd plays the spineless “Watson,” Richard MacDuff. But it is this character where the series goes most wrong. MacDuff appeared in the first book only. Lacking a narrator (though a narrator would have improved the TV series much as it did Pushing Daisies and Dragnet), the series needed a second character to help reveal exposition to the audience. The result was the series became less Dirk Gently and more a funny spoof of Holmes and Watson, as well as police procedurals.

    Helen Baxendale was wasted as Susan Harmison, MacDuff’s girlfriend. The writers really didn’t know what to do with the character except use her as a story device to threaten MacDuff and Dirk’s partnership (while MacDuff considers himself a partner having invested all his money into the agency, Dirk considers him his assistant).

    Lisa Jackson plays the one note character, Dirk’s secretary Janice. Janice sits in the outer office refusing to do any work, such as answer phones or show clients into Dirk’s office, until Dirk pays her wages. While not the most logical, the running gag is funny especially in the final episode.

    Jason Watkins gets the required role of stupid cop DI Gilks, whose role gives Dirk someone to run from.

            THE EPISODES:

Pilot (12/16/2010). Written by Howard Overman. Based on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. Directed by Damon Thomas. Guest Cast: Doreen Mantle, Anthony Howell, Billy Boyle, and Miles Richardson. *** Dirk is hired by an old woman to find her cat. This leads him to his friend from college Richard MacDuff, who is breaking into his girlfriend Susan’s home to delete an email he regretted sending.

    They look for the cat in a warehouse full of SF looking machines that self-destructs apparently killing a millionaire scientist. The same millionaire who had been “in love” with MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan since their college days, and who Susan had been rejecting for years because of an incident in college. This and more is all connected and leads Dirk to the cat and the answer to two murders.

    Typical Dirk moment: Among his expenses (payable in advance) Dirk charges the old lady for is the cost of a new refrigerator for his office (the one in his apartment had been padlocked by his landlord).

Episode One (3/5/12). Written by Howard Overman. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Cosima Shaw, Paul Ritter, Colin McFarlane and Kenneth Collard. *** MacDuff has joined the detective agency as Dirk’s partner/assistant. The agency has been hired by a paranoid millionaire computer genius convinced the American Pentagon is out to kill him.

    They find him murdered, and uncover his plans to invade Switzerland. From the clues, Dirk realizes the man had invented a computer program that will prove whatever premise you want, to justify the unjustifiable, a computer program the Pentagon would kill to get.

    Typical Dirk Gently moment: Dirk believes in Zen navigation. While many believe when you are lost you should consult a map, Zen navigation advises one to find someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them. Dirk admits this method rarely gets him where he was going but it often gets him where he is supposed to be.

Episode Two (3/12/12) Written by Matt Jones. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Bill Paterson, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Lydia Wilson and Andrew Leung. *** Dirk’s mentor, Professor Jericho hires the agency to discover who was stealing funds and projects from the computer research department.

    While Professor Ransome struggles on the verge of creating an AI named Max, Jericho is working on a robot version of his lost daughter Elaine. The robot is stolen and Jericho blames Dirk.

    Typical Dirk moment: Dirk falls in love with the woman of his dreams, a woman who shares his obsession for fatty foods.

Episode Three (3/19/12). Written by Jamie Mathieson. Directed by Tom Shankland. Guest Cast: Lisa Dillon, Tony Pitts, Tina Maskell and Jason Stevens. *** Final episode of the series. Someone is killing Dirk’s former clients. He thinks someone is trying to frame him and runs from the police. The police are hoping he will be the next victim and regrettably feel obligated to offer him protection.

    Dirk’s most basic random beliefs are tested when normal police procedural work finds the evidence to arrest the killer. MacDuff quits the agency when he is bothered by how flippant Dirk is over the mysteries when people are dying. But in the end the proper police work proves wrong and the inner connectedness of all things is the key to the solution.

    Typical Dirk moment: One of Dirk’s first cases had him help convict a man for murder. He had been hired to find out who was stealing post-it notes from an office. Dirk framed the man he thought was guilty. However, when the police went to arrest the man for post-it note theft, they discovered the man’s brother murdered body. Later it was learned there was no stolen post-it notes, it had been an error in accounting.

    Dirk Gently has its moments of delightful absurdist humor and the mysteries are fun, but, like in the books, the characters wear thin after awhile. The series is worth watching, but I would rather re-read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

    The series has been released on Pal format (non-USA) DVD. Currently (and unlikely for long) you can watch the episodes over at YouTube starting with the pilot here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0oXJ0Ocjr8&list=PL2B639E39513C8D4E&index=1&feature=plpp-video

A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER. 20th Century Fox, 1953. Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Gary Merrill, Catherine McLeod, Jack Kruschen, Barney Phillips, Freddy Ridgeway. Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone.

   When his young niece dies a painful death of unknown causes, Whitney Cameron (Jospeh Cotten) is inclined to think it only a fluke of fate until the wife of the family attorney, a woman who also writes for the pulp magazines, does some investigating on her own and comes up with the possibility that the girl was poisoned. With strychnine.

   If this is true, it’s next to impossible that it was an accident. And this being a movie, of course the answer is yes, the girl was poisoned, as an autopsy finally reveals. Could it be murder? Cam cannot believe it, but his suspicion (and that of the police) soon turns to the child’s stepmother (Jean Peters), who is as cool as they come and is calmly acquitted for lack of evidence.

   Cam’s only concern now is the fate of the dead girl’s young brother. Did the stepmother do it? Who else could have done it? Who else had a motive? It’s a battle of wits between Joseph Cotten, as solid an actor as they come, and the cool and collected Jean Peters. I know, I know. I’m repeating myself, but this is the heart of the film.

   I only wish is that the ending was able to live up to the rest of the story, and sad to say, it does not. This movie is sometimes categorized as “noir,” and a goodly part of it is. The middle portion, though, is straight out of Dragnet, which is fine, but the rest of the film wants to be a detective puzzle, and it simply isn’t there.

   Since my last column I’ve seen Pièges, the French film from 1939 with so many strange links to Cornell Woolrich, and discovered even more of the same. I’ll limit myself here to three.

   First of all, the movie is episodic in just the way so many of Woolrich’s best-known novels are episodic. It’s impossible that director Robert Siodmak and the screenwriters borrowed the structure from a Woolrich novel of that sort since all of those novels, beginning with The Bride Wore Black (1940), postdate Pièges.

   Could the filmmakers have known of Woolrich’s first use of episodic structure in the long 1937 novelet “I’m Dangerous Tonight”? Barely possible but most unlikely since that tale remained buried in the pulps for decades and wasn’t collected until 1981.

   Secondly, for just a minute or two, beginning with Marie Dea’s discovery of her vanished girlfriend’s bracelet in Maurice Chevalier’s desk, Pièges evokes the classic Woolrich situation where the protagonist is made to seesaw back and forth between believing the person he or she loves is innocent and accepting the evidence of the other’s guilt. The earliest Woolrich story in this vein is “The Night Reveals” (1936) so the filmmakers could have known of it.

   Third, when Chevalier in Pièges is put on trial for murder, director Robert Siodmak covers the scene in just a few impressionistic fragments. Woolrich in Phantom Lady (1942) covers the trial of Scott Henderson in somewhat the same way: prosecutor’s closing argument, jury verdict, death sentence. He could have chosen this approach simply because he knew no law and didn’t care to learn any, or because it was suggested to him from seeing Pièges. We’ll never know.

   Pièges was released in France late in 1939, apparently just before the outbreak of World War II. Was it ever released in the U.S.? Yes it was. In the chapter on Siodmak in his 1994 book Beyond Hollywood’s Grasp: American Filmmakers Abroad, 1914-1945, Harry Waldman tells us that its original English-language title was Personal Column and quotes from the review of it that appeared in the New York Times. Clearly Woolrich could have seen the picture.

   But did he? Since there’s no reason to believe he knew French, it’s unlikely he would have gone unless the print shown in New York was subtitled. Was it? Waldman doesn’t tell us and so far I haven’t found the answer elsewhere.

   Siodmak is included in Beyond Hollywood’s Grasp because Harry Waldman believed he was American by birth. In fact, as I mentioned last month, the director was of German Jewish descent and his birthplace was Dresden. But the myth that he was a son of the South, born in Memphis, has circulated for generations. I must say I’m grateful that Harry Waldman accepted that myth. His mistake made my research for this month’s column ridiculously easy.

   In my high school and college days I read just about all of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels — except those that hadn’t been published yet! — and some but not all of the novels about Bertha Cool and Donald Lam that he wrote as A.A. Fair.

   Last month I pulled out one that as far as I could remember I hadn’t read before and gave it a try. The results are mixed. Bedrooms Have Windows (1949) opens in the lobby of a large hotel to which, as we learn later, Lam has trailed a suspected con man. Suddenly a petite and gorgeous blonde, clearly meant to evoke Veronica Lake, invites Donald to escort her into the hotel’s cocktail lounge.

   There she spins a yarn that takes them both to a remote motel where they register as husband and wife. The woman walks out on Lam around the same time that a man in another unit of the motel apparently kills his mistress and then himself. All this in the first couple of chapters!

   Eventually we learn that the counter-plotting stems from the blonde’s determination to break up the marriage between the man her sister loves and the tramp he actually married and a blackmail ring’s determination to cash in on the situation. But, if I may mangle metaphors, under scrutiny much of the plot labyrinth collapses like a house of cards, which is an all too common fault in Gardner.

   The coincidences that keep things moving might have fazed a Harry Stephen Keeler, and the storyline suffers from a number of coffee-out-the-nose elements, for example that the police accept as an obvious suicide the death of that guy in the motel who, as Gardner omits to tell us till near the end of the book, was shot between the eyes.

   I wouldn’t rank this as one of the finest in the Cool and Lam series, but it moves fast and has plenty of the adversarial dialogue that was a Gardner trademark and reflects its time well, with plenty of references to the skyrocketing inflation of the years right after World War II. I don’t recommend it strongly but I can’t call it worthless either. Shall we say one thumb down?

   This month’s column is both shorter and later than usual. Why? Because I have been and still am putting in a slew of hours on the index to Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection. Gad, what drudgery! The book will come out around February and a short excerpt will appear in the January 2013 EQMM. I hope those who read this column regularly will keep an eye out for both.

ROBERT LUDLUM – The Janson Directive. St. Martin’s, hardcover, October 2002; paperback, October 2003.

   I don’t know about you, but the few of Robert Ludlum’s books I’ve read have always kept me reading. And with this particular one checking in at 680 pages in paperback, reading and reading and reading. I can’t do that in one night any longer, no matter what, and I don’t think anybody can.

   Plot: An ex-Vietnamese War prisoner named Alex Janson, now a super-whiz corporate security consultant, is hired to free a wealthy philanthropist Peter Novak from a group of terrorists. Novak’s billions of dollars have been used many times over to promote democracy and peace around the world, and Janson is the only one who can save him.

   Which, after several nerve-shattering incidents, including a free-fall parachute drop from four miles up, he does. This is on page 140. With 540 pages to go. What next? You should only ask.

   Janson finds that he only a pawn, if you’ll forgive the cliché, in an even greater conspiracy, one designed to simply knock your socks off. Ludlum demonstrates such a worldliness in his characters, and leans so heavily on a world of esoteric knowledge that seemingly comes natural to him, that an everyday, ordinary sort of person such as you and I can only sit back in awe.

   Well, I can vouch for me.

   There are flaws, though. Janson is all but perfect, but his shield of invincibility only goes so far. It just isn’t large enough to include all of the people who give him aid and assistance, to put it mildly. They’re on their own. Given a chance to second guess themselves, they might well opt out of this book, given the opportunity. Nor is Ludlum averse to dragging out the clichés himself, as the occasion arises.

   All in all, at $7.99 list price for the paperback, you certainly get your money’s worth. If in the end you start to reflect on the fact that the tale that’s told is no deeper than your standard super-hero comic book, that’s the only drawback that might trigger some regret, and it will quickly pass.

[UPDATE] 10-13-12.   According to at least one online source, following the success of the Bourne movie, The Janson Directive is also being converted to the big screen. It ought to be a good one.

       The Paul Janson series —

The Janson Directive (2002)
The Janson Command (2011) (with Paul Garrison)
The Janson Dilemma (2014)

BRUNO FISCHER – So Wicked My Love. Gold Medal #437, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1954. Gold Medal #753; 2nd printing, March 1958. A shorter version appeared in Manhunt, November 1953, under the title “Coney Island Incident.”

   Sometimes it’s interesting (and often even fun) to put yourself in the shoes of one of the hapless protagonists in one of these early Gold Medal noir dramas of the early 50s. Take Ray Whitehead, for instance.

   He’s a blue collar sort of guy, working as a truck driver for his father in a small Brooklyn-based business. His fiancée has just broken up with him, one of those “my mother always wanted me to marry a doctor” sort of deals, and he has her $1200 engagement ring in his pocket. He’s moping around on Coney Island when spots a redhead he knew in high school, Cherry Drew, a girl with not much of reputation then, but in a bathing suit, she certainly looks fine enough now.

   One thing leads to another, and instead of throwing the ring down a convenient sewer, he’s given her the ring and he’s heading for her apartment with her. There waiting for her, though, is a guy named Shorty. It turns out that Cherry was part of gang of bank robbers, but she’s hijacked the loot with another guy who the rest of gang caught up with and who is now dead, and now they’ve caught up with her.

   Several minutes later, Shorty is dead – Cherry’s doing – knifed twice in the back. Cherry has $80,000 in stolen cash. Question: what do you do? What can you do that doesn’t keep coming back to haunt you?

   It’s a good beginning, but the book’s far too long for what was first a short story but which is stretched as far as it can go. There are a few twists of the plot that follow, but not even a good pulp writer like Bruno Fischer can keep coming up with as many as he needs. One good one, though, involves Ray’s former fiancée, who changes her mind about him, but who wonders why this other woman has the ring – or what looks exactly like the ring – she realizes she returned to him much too hastily .

   But as sappy as Ray is for Cherry, he’s too honest a guy to be caught up in the latter’s charms all of the way the book, although she tries, believe me she does, and Ray really is as dopey as I said, and then some. In fits and stops. the book wanders around to a sort of happy ending, but only if you don’t stop and wonder about what comes next; how Ray manages to explain his way out of his last final encounter with Cherry.

WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM – Nightmare Alley. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1946. Triangle Books, hardcover, Photoplay edition, 1948. Signet #738, paperback, 1949. Popular Library, paperback, 1976. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1986. New York Review of Books, softcover, 2010. Included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, Library of America, hardcover, 1997.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY. 20th Century Fox, 1947. Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith. Based on the novel by William Lindsay Graham. Director: Edmund Goulding.

   The very words “nightmare alley” with their fusion of dreams and squalor, phantasm and filth, promise a lot when you put them on a book. Or a movie. Nowadays it’s possible to read a book and watch the film made from it in close proximity, and a while back I had a bit of ghoulish fun with the exercise.

   Nightmare Alley was William Lindsay Gresham’s first novel, and though there’s a bit of fat in the book, it’s still a powerful and often unsettling tale of Stan Carlisle, a smooth carnival huckster who promotes himself to spiritualist and then religious con-man, rising in society only to find that the seeds of his own undoing were always within him and “what we saw and he didn’t” have grown to hideous (nightmarish?) proportions.

   This was the work that brought the term geek to the public, and Gresham’s description of just what a geek was in those days, and how one was made, is still chilling today. It ain’t for every taste, but fans of Jim Thompson and David Goodis will find it a rare and — in its own way — unforgettable treat.

   (PARENTHETICAL NOTE: William Lindsay Gresham (1909-1962) was, from all accounts, an alcoholic who abused his wife and children and ended up a suicide. His treatment of his wife and kids was bad enough that his spouse took the children and fled to England — where she met, fell in love with, and married C. S. Lewis. Their story can be seen in the film Shadowlands.)

   The movie Nightmare Alley that came out in 1947 is something of a surprise from a major studio like Fox, a “class” director like Edmund (Grand Hotel) Goulding, and producer George Jessell (!) but it’s slick, savage, seedy and immensely satisfying.

   Tyrone Power — a smooth leading man with an odd flair for self-destructive roles — puts bitter bite into his performance as Carlisle, ably supported by a spirited cast of capable players, including Joan Blondell, Ian Keith, Mike Mazurki, and chilling Helen Walker as a lethal psychologist; the scene where she destroys Power’s psyche is worthy of Lady MacBeth.

   Lee Garmes’ evocative, sleazy-splendid photography helps out too, but best of all is Jules Furthman’s cunning screenplay. Undulating past the censors, he takes the masochism explicit in the book and makes it implicit in the character, and even hints at a darker ending than the one we see on screen.

   Furthman always was a good hand at adapting the works of others (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, etc.) with a slick trick of slicing just enough out of a book to get past the censors, while still preserving the tone of the piece, and his work here is simply splendid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idlYaKQ1yjw

        #15. Senor Arnaz de Lobo, Soldier of Fortune, by Erle Stanley Gardner.

   Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) is probably best known for his long-running series about the always victorious lawyer, Perry Mason, but he also had hundreds of exciting stories in the pulps. Many of these appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly, where he had multiple series running: Senor Arnaz de Lobo, Sidney Zoom, Lester Leith, the Patent Leather Kid, The Man in the Silver Mask, and other standalone stories that could have been turned into series. The Lester Leith series seems to have been the most popular in the magazine, but the other series were popular as well.

   The Senor Lobo stories are fun, action-packed stories that were nothing like the other detective and mystery stories in the magazine. Senor Lobo and his friend, El Mono Viejo, are basically soldiers of fortune thrown into the midst of a city where they continually find adventure and danger.

   Lobo is like a knight errant, always ready to jump to the defense of a lady in danger or to right a wrong. Of course, the adventurers don’t turn down any money that comes their way, and many a criminal finds himself divested of his cash after running into them. Here is a paragraph from the beginning of one their adventures that describes Lobo:

   His physical description is given early in the series:

   He reveals that he is only part Spanish — his mother was Spanish and his father American, and he himself is an American citizen. This brings the question as to whether his name had been changed or was originally Lobo. He can speak not only English and Spanish but also French and Chinese. He fought in Central and South America and also in China and Africa.

   Events from the past are often alluded to in the course of their American adventures. El Mono Viejo’s real name is not given in the series, just his nickname and description: “which means ‘The Boss Ape,’ short, abnormally broad of shoulder and long of arm, his eyes round and brown.” (Costs of Collection)

   Although Senor Lobo often uses guns in the course of his adventures, his favorite weapon is his sword cane. It has a retractable blade, and Lobo often uses it in confrontations with criminals. Lobo kept weapons of various kinds in his car that would be of use in close quarter fighting, including hand grenades.

   One story describes an outing against gangsters thusly: “And now as they swept into this gangster hide-out, each man carried two hand grenades, two guns, extra clips of shells, and a tear gas bomb.” (The Sirens of War)

   So they were well prepared for any fighting to be done, which is more than most of the criminals up against them could claim. Senor Lobo also had a special car for his adventures – a roadster “specially constructed for power, acceleration, and an ability to take right angle turns at high speed.” (Broken Eggs)

   Unfortunately, Lobo’s adventures were rough on equipment, and the car was shot to pieces by a machine gun in “Broken Eggs.” However, doubtless he had it repaired or acquired another because cars were indispensable in his work.

   Another requirement for his work was a safe place to live. He had to constantly change his apartments whenever their location was revealed, often abandoning his belongings at the same time. “To maintain safety it was necessary that he keep himself well under cover. The place where he had his apartment was known to but two people, El Mono Viejo and himself.” (Carved in Jade)

   Lobo also tried to keep his whereabouts secret from the police. As El Mono Viejo stated about the police viewpoint: “They are angry now at our methods. They say we are as much of a menace to law enforcement as are the gangsters upon whom we war.” (Carved in Jade)

   In virtually every story the soldierly professionalism of Lobo and his lieutenant are stressed, and the lack of such qualities in their gangster opponents is also stressed. In fact, the gangsters’ lack of ability to handle the tactics of the two soldiers of fortune is shown to best effect in the story “Barking Dogs.” Here the two soldiers raid a gangster headquarters in order to rescue a woman, and defeat a gangster mob many times their size. Afterwards, the gangsters claimed to the police and newspapers that twenty rival gangsters had raided their stronghold, and asked for a police investigation. Clearly, they never knew what hit them.

   The series, which ran for 23 stories, starts out with basically a two-part beginning, though each can be read separately and were published four months apart. In “The Choice of Weapons” and “Gangsters’ Gold”, the two parts of the opening story, Lobo is up against a hard fight with Butch Pender and his gang. These early stories are full of action, with Lobo out-maneuvering the gangsters twice in their attempt to rob gold from a bank. Lobo originally came to the U. S. in response to a strange situation. It seems that a dying American gangster named High Test Barker, wanting revenge on his enemies, makes a will leaving $70,000 in gold to Senor Lobo.

   The will makes the condition that Lobo can have the money only if he avenges Barker’s death. So Lobo comes up to take care of the situation and steps into what might be termed a hornet’s nest of trouble. The first stories are based upon this plot. After it runs its course, Lobo becomes involved in one adventure after another in the city.

   The series seems to have quite a lot of the influence of Leslie Charteris’ series about The Saint (who appeared in DFW itself in 1938-39 and 1943). However, there was nothing like it in the magazine during the series run from 1930-34.

   Detective Fiction Weekly boasted many series, and none of them were remotely similar to Senor Lobo. Plenty of professional detectives, both private and government, ran through the pages. Also plenty of amateur detectives of all kinds appeared in stories. Senor Lobo fell into none of these categories. He was a professional who enjoyed what he did as a mercenary and revolutionary, as well as his new work as a gangbuster.

   Lobo was at his happiest when engaged in a conflict. He states to a woman: “sometimes I feel the lust for adventure in my blood… Perhaps I’ll pull out one of these days and start another revolution.” (Gangsters’ Gold)

   He does eventually leave for another revolution — in the last story, “Opportunity Knocks Twice”, he and his assistant leave the city for Latin America for this purpose.

   In an example of Lobo’s predilection for getting into trouble, see the story “The Sirens of War”. In this story, Lobo is bored with inaction and soft living. He is pacing the late night sidewalks of the city looking for action. As his assistant, El Mono Viejo, says, “it has been a week, and we have had no action.”

   So they wander the streets until, finally they find some trouble to get involved in. Trouble in the form of a kidnapping of a wealthy woman. Lobo involves himself in the matter to the extent that he goes after the kidnappers and in a couple of violent shootouts wipes them out. He returns the ransom money, minus what he takes for expenses.

   The expenses are what Lobo refers to in other stories as “the costs of collection”, and usually run ten per cent of the money returned. (Costs of Collection)

   Lobo gets involved in more conflicts with criminals by investigating any strange occurrence that strikes his interest. After things quieted down too much, he got the idea of paying taxicab drivers to report unusual occurrences to him. This helped keep Lobo busier, even if only part of the drivers’ reports led to action against criminals.

   Another example of Lobo’s penchant for getting into trouble occurs in “Carved in Jade”, an early story. This one starts in Chinatown, a popular setting for Gardner. Lobo wants to eat Chinese food, but his visit to a Chinese restaurant involves him with a group of gangsters who try to kill him in a trap. Lobo is up against both American and Chinese criminals in this story.

   One of the funnier stories is “Costs of Collection”, where Lobo and his friend are almost broke, thanks to their bank going under with all of their money in it. Far from finding it to be a bad situation, the two adventurers laugh about the situation and decide they have to make more money.

   â€œCaramba!” said El Mono Viejo, “but we need guardians, we two. We put money in a bank, and presto! We cannot take it out!” So Senor Lobo needs to find some gangsters to fight and money to appropriate. He uses almost the last of his money to pay for information from a cabdriver, and as a result finds some crooks to fight and a young woman to rescue. Coincidentally, Senor Lobo takes $10,000 in cash from some crooks as what he calls the “spoils of warfare”. So he is back in the money again.

   By the time of the story “A Hundred to One”, many of the local gangsters were fed up with Lobo’s interference in their affairs and made attempts to eliminate him by setting traps. In the words of one newspaper that Lobo saw, they intended “to rid the city of a “disturbing influence” in the shape of an independent adventurer, who seemed to enjoy interfering with gang activities for the sheer pleasure of the ensuing conflict.”(A Hundred to One)

   Lobo smiled at the article; all he wanted was some excitement and conflicts with the gangsters were one way to do this. In fact, he tells El Mono Viejo: “We can ask but three things of life, beautiful women, hard fighting—and a clean getaway.” (A Clean Getaway)

   So we can assume this is the philosophy of Senor Lobo. But he has another philosophical comment in another story: “Senor Arnaz de Lobo snapped out his philosophy of life in a single sentence: “I am not afraid to die,” he said, “nor do I want to be afraid to live.” (The Spoils of War)

   El Mono Viejo is constantly warning Senor Lobo to beware of beautiful women, because their enemies may use them as bait for traps for him. Nevertheless, Lobo continues to enter the traps. As he says: “Trap or no trap, I like the bait. There is beauty and adventure, a woman and danger, a mystery and a threat. I know of no better combination.” (A Clean Getaway)

   El Mono Viejo is much more serious-minded than Lobo, and more cautious. Lobo occasionally calls him “Sobersides” to poke fun at his serious attitude. El Mono Viejo enjoys the action and adventure, but he sees matters differently: “life is a stern reality.” (Leaden Honeymoon)

   The Senor Lobo series was undoubtedly more fantasy than reality based, but it was the kind of crime-fighting stories that appealed to readers, as shown by the fact that it lasted for 23 stories and probably could have run longer.

   Each story features Senor Lobo and El Mono Viejo becoming involved in gangster activities, and usually culminates in a violent gun battle (sometimes with explosives used).

   Naturally, Senor Lobo always comes out on top and wins the girl when one is part of the conflict. El Mono Viejo told Senor Lobo “it was a wonderful idea of yours — this business of coming to the city and antagonizing organized crime.” (Opportunity Knocks Twice). He only complained when there was insufficient action.

   The last story, “Opportunity Knocks Twice,” is a fast-moving tale of action, started when a taxicab driver’s report of a very unusual occurrence puts Lobo on the trail of a $10 million secret and murder.

   At the same time, Lobo and El Mono Viejo are getting ready to offer their services to a revolutionary, who is in the city buying arms for a revolution in Latin America. If he doesn’t want their services, then they will offer them to the opposing side.

   By this time, El Mono Viejo is tired of the “guerilla warfare” with the city’s gangsters, and wants nothing more than to leave so they can get involved in a war or revolution. So the story is of the two mercenaries running around trying to resolve the murder and at the same time keep an eye out for when the time is ripe to leave for Latin America.

   The title refers to the two opportunities that Senor Lobo has in the story: firstly the murder and secondly the revolution. As Senor Lobo says at the end of the story: “In our profession,” he said, “one does not overlook opportunity’s second knock.”

   So the series has a conclusion of a sort, as the two prepare to leave the city they have lived in for over four years. It is certain that the criminals will not miss them.

   This is an excellent series that deserves reprinting. As this series was finishing its run in 1934, another series was beginning that seems to show some influence of Senor Lobo: the Park Avenue Hunt Club series of Judson P. Philips. This was a small group of men who were devoted to fighting gangsters, and enjoyed their work. Though it is doubted if they ever enjoyed it to the extent that Senor Lobo did.

        The Senor Arnaz de Lobo series by Erle Stanley Gardner:

The Choice of Weapons     July 12, 1930
Gangsters’ Gold     November 15, 1930
Red Hands     December 6, 1930
A Matter of Impulse     February 7, 1931
Killed and Cured     February 21, 1931
Carved in Jade     May 9, 1931
Coffins for Killers     July 25, 1931
No Rough Stuff     December 5, 1931
Sauce for the Gander     December 12, 1931
Barking Dogs     March 26, 1932
A Hundred to One     April 30, 1932
A Private Affair     June 25, 1932
Trumps     November 12, 1932
A Clean Getaway     December 3, 1932
Tickets for Two     December 31, 1932
The Spoils of War     January 14, 1933
Leaden Honeymoon     March 11, 1933
Results     May 6, 1933
The Sirens of War     September 16, 1933
Costs of Collection     November 18, 1933
The Code of a Fighter     January 27, 1934
Broken Eggs     May 5, 1934
Opportunity Knocks Twice     October 27, 1934

Note:   An earlier version of this article appeared in Blood ‘n’ Thunder magazine (#16, Fall 2006).

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.
6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.
7. TUG NORTON by Edward Parrish Ware.
8. CANDID JONES by Richard Sale.
9. THE PATENT LEATHER KID, by Erle Stanley Gardner.
10. OSCAR VAN DUYVEN & PIERRE LEMASSE, by Robert Brennan.
11. INSPECTOR FRAYNE, by Harold de Polo.
12. INDIAN JOHN SEATTLE, by Charles Alexander.
13. HUGO OAKES, LAWYER-DETECTIVE, by J. Lane Linklater.
14. HANIGAN & IRVING, by Roger Torrey.