DOG AND CAT. ABC / Paramount / Largo Productions, 1977; 74 minutes. Cast: Lou Antonio, Kim Basinger, Matt Clark, Charles Cioffi, Richard Lynch, Dale Robinette and Janit Baldwin. Created by Walter Hill. Teleplay by Owen Morgan, Henry Rosenbaum and Heywood Gould. Story by Owen Morgan.Executive Producer: Lawrence Gordon. Producer: Robert Singer. Director: Bob Kelljan.

   This TV Movie pilot would lead to the ABC series Dog and Cat that would run for six episodes on Saturdays at 10-11 pm from March 5, 1977 through May 14, 1977.

   An underage ex-porn star (Janit Baldwin) who has found Jesus wants to help “the pigs” get the man behind her former career. Detective Sergeant Jack Ramsey (Lou Antonio) and his partner Earl (Richard Forbes) meet with her and set up a trap for the bad guy.

   While waiting for the bad guy to show up and meet the girl, Ramsey is at a pay phone checking in when a creepy guy (Richard Lynch) enters the diner, exchanges glances with girl, walks up to Earl and shoots him. In the confusion the shooter escapes and the girl disappears.

   Ramsey’s boss, Lieutenant Kipling (Matt Clark) arrives at the scene as Earl is being rushed to the hospital, unconscious but still alive. He finds a sad Ramsey sitting on the curb. He reacts as if Ramsey was a hotheaded cop about to go rogue and sends him home to cool down.

   At first, I wondered if Antonio was playing the part wrong, focusing on inner emotions rather visually displaying his anger, but then the script has him going home to walk his dog. Ramsey stops at a phone booth to call the hospital to check on his beloved partner. When he learns his partner has died he is emotionally distressed without any visual sides of anger. He takes his dog home and lies down on his couch. Dirty Harry, he ain’t.

   The next day the Lieutenant warns Ramsey against going out on his own hunting the killer. Kipling is convinced (for reasons not apparent to us) he should force Ramsey to take two weeks off, but instead gives him a new partner familiar with the skin trade and sends him out to hunt for the killer.

   Ramsey is angry to discover his new partner is a young beautiful woman (Kim Basinger). He claims “Dog and Cat” partnerships (male cop/female cop) never work. After some lame sexist dialog, Ramsey gets into her car, a cute VW Bug with a Porsche engine.

   While Antonio’s acting seems not to fit the character, Basinger does no better as Officer J. Z. Kane. Basinger looks overwhelmed in this film, her Southern accent keeps going in and out. She isn’t even convincing with the sexy part of her character. This is Kim Basinger here, sexy should be a given.

   Of course, the two are like cats and dogs, complete opposite from body parts to taste in music. They constantly argue except when danger threatens then they work as a team, each having the others back.

   While looking for the girl, they question the man who had helped the girl get into a Mission and find Jesus. After our favorite Dog and Cat leave, the man is worried Officer Kane will remember him hanging around a porno theatre (she had spent time undercover as the cashier). So he sends his lackey out to “take care of her.”

   Meanwhile, the cop killer named Shirley is also looking for the girl and kills again to cover his trail. Richard Lynch does what he can with his role as plot device, but the writers don’t bother to develop the character.

   This script focuses less on making sense and more on its quota of car chases, gunfights, gratuitous women in bikinis, and predictable arguments between the two cops until it’s off to chase the bad guy.

   After Ramsey and Kane catch the bad guy behind it all, they then focused on catching the cop killer. And of course, our two cops take the killer on alone without backups because this kind of TV show can never have too many pointless chases and gunfights.

   For a TV movie pilot, nothing worked. The story was unbelievable and unnecessarily complex. The writing and acting did not play well together, with the characters behavior inconsistent with the script. There was no chemistry between Antonio and Basinger.

   The movie ends with the two discussing their future, as if we cared. He suggests dinner but end the partnership. She agrees, but warns him she will never get involved with a man with a badge. He cancels dinner and both agree to stay partners as cops with no romantic involvement. Reportedly, Ramsey and Kane kept their relationship platonic during the series.

   The 1976-77 season ended with ABC the top rated network. Four ABC series finished in the top five and seven in the top ten. ABC’s Dog and Cat finished 50th out of 102 series.

   Networks were trying the idea of a third season that started in March. New series would be tested. Some such as Three’s Company, Man from Atlantis, and Eight Is Enough were a success, while most such as Kingston: Confidential (with Raymond Burr), Future Cop (human cop/android cop) and Dog and Cat failed and quickly vanished to be forgot

DOROTHY L. SAYERS – The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Ernest Benn, UK, hardcover, 1928. Payson & Clarke, US, hardcover, 1928. Reprinted extensively in both hardcover and paperback.

    “Today is perhaps also a suitable occasion to recall a classic detective story which not only opens on Armistice, or Remembrance Day, but in which the coincidence of events on that particular day is absolutely crucial to the story. The book in question is The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers.”

— Martin Edwards, “Do You Write Under Your Own Name”

http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2008/11/remembrance-day.html

    “The story of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club breaks into two halves, with each half functioning as a more or less independent novella. The first and better half, consisting of Chapters 1-12 and the start of the succeeding chapter, contains a real puzzle plot. The first half is also rich in genuine detection.

    “In fact, nearly 100% of this section consists of following Wimsey on his detective efforts. Wimsey’s detective work shows the influence of Sayers’ ancestors in the realist school. … Sayers uses formal, abstract, non-naturalistic chapter titles in this book, in this case based on Bridge hands. Such a technique will become common in later Golden Age writers, especially Ngaio Marsh.”

— Mike Grost

http://mikegrost.com/sayers.htm

    “The Bellona Club is a men’s club. One of the members is discovered to have passed away, apparently while sitting in his chair reading a newspaper. Since the General is known to have a heart condition, it doesn’t appear to be very much out of the ordinary. But when attendants move him, they discover that, although rigor mortis has set in and he is stiff as a board, his knee joint hinges easily. This decidedly suspicious condition indicates that the body was forced sometime after rigor mortis began.

    “Lord Peter is called upon to investigate and unearths some startling facts. The General’s sister, it seems, died on the same day at precisely 11 a.m. — and she has a will with the following clause: If the General predeceases her, her entire (and considerable) estate goes to one party; if she dies first, then the estate goes to another. It is clearly established when the sister died — but did the General die before her or after her?”

— Drew R. Thomas

http://www.worlds-best-detective-crime-and-murder-mystery-books.com/lord-peter-wimsey.html

From The Saturday Review, 27 October 1928:

    “THE UNPLEASANTNESS AT THE BELLONA CLUB. By Dorothy Sayers. S. Payson & Clarke. 1928. $2.00.

    “This should have been a pretty good detective story. Its crimes, and the motives out of which they spring, are comparatively reasonable. General Fentiman, grandfather — not uncle, as the jacket-blurb-writer wrongly guessed — of Major Robert and Captain George Fentiman, was found dead in a smoking-room chair at the club. He had been dead for some hours. His wealthier sister died the same morning. Because of her will it was important to learn which had died first. Later it developed that dirty work, even murder, had been done; but this development comes too late. That’s what’s the matter with The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. All its developments come just a little too late to knock the reader off his chair: he is given plenty of time to foresee most of the book’s twists and turns, and he needs no great nimbleness to keep anywhere from one to six chapters ahead of the story.”

http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1928oct27-00301

    “[Ian] Carmichael’s Wimsey is ever the aristocrat, here ready to quote W. S. Gilbert and W. Shakespeare (though not nearly as frequently as Rumpole will quote his favorite poets), even though he must apologize now and then for being over the heads of some of his less well-educated acquaintances. In this story the grinding poverty of one of the interested parties is shown in striking contrast to Wimsey’s luxurious accommodations and ability to be very generous with his money (which after all was never earned by any workaday sweat of his brow).”

— Frank Behrens, IMDb, Review of the 1972-3 TV miniseries

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068146/reviews

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068146/

    “Another fine piece of detection by an expert, with usual great dialogue, characterization and humor. It’s a shame Dorothy stopped writing so soon.”

— Xavier Lechard

    “However, despite the brilliant evocation of
the stodgy Bellona Club and the contrasting Bohemian London, and the good characterisation … the book is ultimately a disappointment …”

— Nick Fuller

http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7932286/The%20Unpleasantness%20at%20the%20Bellona%20Club

    “… The Unpleasantness became my favorite of the series so far. I liked the plot, the elaborate crime and twists, but above all I liked the portrait of post-war England, in particular the experiences of the soldiers who returned. Together with the first decade of the 20th century, my favorite historical period is the Interwar. The Innocence and the end of it.”

— “The Sleepless Reader”

http://thesleeplessreader.com/2011/03/22/the-unpleasantness-at-the-bellona-club-strong-poison-by-dorothy-sayers/

    “This is a book in two parts, perhaps not intentionally so, but that is how it reads. I read the first half with very little interest, almost with hostility. The clues seemed as subtle as neon lights in the Club, they pointed in only one direction, and the storyline plodded steadily towards it. I felt an antipathy to the tone of the book. I disliked the way the younger characters were unpleasantly cynical and condescending, not only to their elders but to anyone different to themselves. And I didn’t take to the flippant, wealthy Lord Wimsey. His investigations seem unhampered by the constraints of time and money. In this story he alone is right, and he is always right. His every conjecture is spot on, like a man getting heads with every throw.

    “And then somewhere towards the middle of the book, you turn a page and find the story suddenly springs to life.”

— Karyn Reeves

http://apenguinaweek.blogspot.com/2011/02/penguin-no-5-unpleasantness-at-bellona.html

THE SAINT’S VACATION. RKO Radio Pictures, US/UK, 1941. Hugh Sinclair, Sally Gray, Arthur Macrae, Cecil Parker, Leueen Macgrath, John Warwick. Based on the novel Getaway (1932), by Leslie Charteris (also a co-screenwriter). Director: Leslie Fenton.

   Whenever a series character such as Simon Templar, known more familiarly as The Saint, decides to go on a vacation trip, say to Europe, you can bet your last bottom dollar that as soon as he and his companions check into their hotel, their paths will cross those of some evil ones.

   Nazis, in this case, or so one suspects, as I do not believe they were ever identified as such – as well as an adventure involving several deaths and a mysterious music box that is the key to something – that something never revealed, of course, until way at the end of the movie, which by that time, we may not care any more.

   Luckily the movie is just over 60 minutes long, as very little of what happens makes any logical sense, but as they say in France, it’s fun while it lasts. The was the first of two chances that British actor Hugh Sinclair had to impersonate The Saint, and if you’d like to know my impression, I think he was far too stiff and formal to be what I think of as the dashing and debonair hero I remember from the books.

   Patricia Holm, Simon’s close companion who was in the book Getaway, does not show up in this filmed version. She’s replaced instead by a reporter named Mary Langdon who is played by husky-voiced Sally Gray, of whose vivacious performance I heartily approved – feminine but just brash enough to be a fitting replacement for Miss Holm, although in the movies it is a strictly separate bedrooms kind of arrangement. In the books you’re never quite sure, but somehow you just know.
   

BARBARA CLEVERLY – Not My Blood. Soho Crime, hardcover, August 2012.

Genre:   Historical / Police procedural. Leading character:   Joe Sandilands, 10th in series. Setting:   England; 1933.

First Sentence:   Carrying more than a hint of snow, a southwesterly wind gusted up from the Channel, spattering the school’s plate glass windows with sleety drops.

   A phone call from a young boy named Jackie Drummond has Joe Sandilands traveling to a boarding school in Sussex where a teacher has been murdered. The case raises a number of questions for Joe. His suspicions aroused, can the boy actually be his illegitimate son? Why is Dorcus Joliffe, the daughter of close friends, who had recently been avoiding Joe, suddenly insistent on helping him with this case?

   However, the main question is what has happened to a surprising number of missing boys, each from a wealthy family. With Dorcus to aid him, Sandilands is headed to school, looking for answers.

   Barbara Cleverly really knows how to captivate her readers from the very first page. Her excellent descriptions of period, place and weather create the atmosphere and bring us straight into the story. It is fascinating to see this period of history between the wars when women are becoming police officers and education reform in public schools is beginning.

   The characters are charismatic and real: Joe, his sister Lydia, Jackie, ever-clever aide de camp Alfred, and Dorcus who is now grown and has a degree in psychology. These are people you come to know by Cleverly providing enough history that new readers don’t feel lost and with whom fans of the series have become friends.

   I am not normally a fan of relationships between two principle characters, but Ms. Cleverly makes it work and faithful readers will see things progress as they may have hoped it would so do.

   Dialogue makes such a difference and here, it is excellent and reflective of the period and class. Ms. Cleverly’s writing is wonderfully literate and she expects the reader to be the same. At the same time, she isn’t trying to embarrass or be over the head of the reader. The meaning is always clear from the context: “If anyone’s been setting himself up as some sort of a psychopompos, a guide to the souls to the Land of the Dead — a Hermes, or even a playful Peter Pan — we’ll have him.”

   The intrigue and subterfuge is masterfully created, yet clever plotting and occasional humor keep things from becoming overly grim. This is a time when science is evolving. The motive is horrific but not inconceivable, and that makes it the more terrible still.

   Not My Blood is an excellent traditional police procedural driven by intelligent dialogue and charismatic characters and where the case is solved by following the clues and having a good working relationship with the other branches involved. It also has a wonderful, lovely ending. This is a very good series which should be read in order.

Rating: Very Good Plus.

Editorial Comment:   LJ’s review of Strange Images of Death, the 8th in the Sandilands series, may be found here on this blog. Following the review is a list of the first eight in the series. Missing is The Blood Royal (2011), number nine.

   I happened to be in New Jersey during the week in the middle of last month when an event took place in Manhattan which, had I known about it, would have led me to cross the Hudson and attend, and maybe get asked questions I couldn’t have answered on the spot.

   On Thursday, August 16, as part of its ongoing series of French crime thrillers, the Museum of Modern Art ran the little-known 1939 film Pièges (Traps), starring Maurice Chevalier and directed by Robert Siodmak (1900-1973). Born in Dresden to Jewish parents, Siodmak wisely left Germany for France soon after Hitler came to power and, after completing Pièges, left France for a new life in Hollywood as a specialist in what became known as film noir.

   Our interest here is in the skein of connections between Pièges, its director, and the most powerful of all noir authors, Cornell Woolrich.

   First, the film’s springboard situation. After several young Parisian women mysteriously disappear, the police suspect that their adversary is a serial killer who finds his prey by placing newspaper ads seeking single young women. The cop in charge of the cases enlists the lovely taxi-dancer who roomed with the latest victim to go undercover, answer some of those ads, and serve as bait for a trap.

   Sound familiar? To my ears the echoes of Woolrich’s pulp classic “Dime a Dance” (Black Mask, February 1938; first collected in The Dancing Detective, 1946, as by William Irish) are as loud as the roar of the sea, although to the best of my knowledge no one has commented upon the resemblance in print or on the Web.

   Introducing Pièges to the MoMA audience, curator Laurence Kardish mentioned that the print, with new English subtitles, had arrived from France just two hours earlier. If the film had ever been shown in the U.S. before, it came and went in a blink.

   Among the huge audience listening to Kardish was noir connoisseur Kurt Brokaw, who in an email (not to me) described “the first meandering hour” of the film as “more florid melodrama than noir… Chevalier sings and mugs and mopes around and is such a pain. The femme Marie Dea is good, but the picture seems to run forever.”

   Eventually, Brokaw pointed out, the film assumes a noir look and feel — and takes on a strong resemblance to Woolrich’s classic suspense novel Phantom Lady.

   The problem here, as most Woolrich lovers know, is that that novel first appeared in hardcover in 1942, three years after Pièges. As they say in the cafés of Montmartre, was ist hier los? Could Woolrich have lifted Phantom Lady’s plot from a French film that had lifted its springboard situation from a Woolrich story?

   When Brokaw’s correspondent invited me to weigh in on the issue, I replied that the original version of Phantom Lady was Woolrich’s short novel “Those Who Kill” (Detective Fiction Weekly, March 4, 1939).

   The pub date would make it seem more likely that Pièges borrowed from Woolrich than the opposite. And when you factor into the equation that “Those Who Kill” takes place in France–!

   At this point our conversation was joined by West Coast noir maven Eddie Muller, who told us that the Pièges/Phantom Lady connection was not a new discovery but had been discussed by Deborah Alpi in her 1998 book on Siodmak.

   According to Alpi, the French film was based on the trial and conviction of a young German intellectual named Eugen Weidmann, who had murdered several women traveling in France.

   Time out for a sidebar. Weidmann was the last criminal in France to be publicly guillotined. The execution took place in 1939, the same year Siodmak made Pièges, the same year Woolrich wrote his classic “Men Must Die” (Black Mask, August 1939; usually reprinted as “Guillotine”), which is about a French criminal desperately trying to avoid his date with the headsman. Coincidence, or had Woolrich been reading about the beheading of Weidmann?

   As if our skein weren’t tangled enough already, there is one final knot. When Phantom Lady was itself filmed, in 1944, would anyone care to guess who got the job directing the picture? Yes, it was Robert Siodmak.

   However we interpret this sequence of events, we seem to be stuck with some coincidences worthy of Woolrich himself, and maybe even of Harry Stephen Keeler. Someday I’ll track down Alpi’s book, and also a DVD of Pièges if there is one.

   Anyone who sampled Boston Blackie on YouTube after reading my last column doesn’t need to be told that it was hardly a detective program at all but much more like an action-packed Western series set in the present, i.e. the early 1950s.

   Also accessible on YouTube is another series of the same vintage which is closer to the detective genre and even features reasoning of sorts, but I didn’t care for it 60 years ago and still don’t today.

   The 39-episode Front Page Detective was produced by small-screen pioneer Jerry Fairbanks (1904-1995), first broadcast on the short-lived Dumont network in 1951 and rerun times without number on local stations throughout the rest of the Fifties.

   The title came from a pulp true-crime magazine but its protagonist, café-society columnist and amateur detective David Chase — described as a sleuth with “an eye for the ladies, a nose for news, and a sixth sense for danger” — was created especially for TV.

   â€œPresenting an unusual story of love and mystery!” the unseen announcer would purr in dulcet tones at the start of each episode. His introduction concluded with: “And now for another thrilling adventure as we accompany David Chase and watch him match wits with those who would take the law into their own hands.”

   Starring as Chase was one-time matinee idol Edmund Lowe (1892-1971), a name familiar to moviegoers for a third of a century before his entry into television. During the 1920s he specialized in suave romantic roles complete with waxed mustache, but the biggest boost in his film career came when director Raoul Walsh cast him opposite Victor McLaglen in What Price Glory? (Fox, 1926), first of the Captain Flagg-Sergeant Quirt military comedies.

   Lowe’s foremost contribution to the detective film came ten years later when he portrayed Philo Vance in The Garden Murder Case (MGM, 1936), but he also played a New York plainclothesman of the 1890s opposite Mae West in Every Day’s a Holiday (Paramount, 1938).

   By the early 1950s Lowe had begun to show his age, and in Front Page Detective he looked all too convincingly like a man of almost sixty who’s determined to pass himself off as 25 years younger.

   In many an episode he’d romance the woman in the case, rattle off a few deductions — once he reasoned that a letter supposedly from an Englishwoman was a forgery because the writer used the U.S. spelling “check” rather than the British “cheque” — and then collar the villain personally after a pistol battle or fistfight underscored by Lee Zahler’s background music for Mascot and early Republic serials.

   Supporting Lowe were Paula Drew as Chase’s fashion-designer girlfriend and crusty George Pembroke as the inevitable stupid cop. Appearing in individual episodes were such stalwarts of TV’s pioneer days as Joe Besser, Rand Brooks, Maurice Cass, Jorja Curtright, Jonathan Hale, Frank Jenks and Lyle Talbot.

   Filming was 99% indoors, on some of the cheapest sets ever seen by the televiewer’s eye. The director of every episode I’ve seen recently was Arnold Wester, whose name crops up almost nowhere else in TV history, hinting that it may have been an alias for producer Jerry Fairbanks.

   Whoever he was, his idea of directing was to point the camera at the actors and leave the room. Many scripts were by veterans of pulp detective magazines and radio like Robert Leslie Bellem and Irvin Ashkenazy, with an occasional contribution by Curt Siodmak, the younger brother of director Robert Siodmak — do I connect the items in this column or what? — and author of the classic horror novel Donovan’s Brain.

   Three episodes of the series — “Murder Rides the Night Train,” “Seven Seas to Danger” and “Alibi for Suicide” — are accessible on YouTube, and a few others can be found on various DVD sets in the bins of dollar stores.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYPaS6qp3-A

   Most seem to have vanished but their gimmicks can often be deduced from the brief descriptions in crumbling issues of TV Guide. In “The Case of the Perfect Secretary” Chase tries to find out why Dr. Owens, the inventor of a synthetic cortisone, didn’t show up for a scheduled lecture. He finds Owens’ laboratory deserted and later discovers that the doctor has been murdered, the letter M imprinted on his forehead. It takes no Charlie Chan to figure out that the M is most likely a W.

   â€œHoney for Your Tea” finds Chase looking into the claim of a young actress that her fiancé was brutally murdered by her dramatic coach (Maurice Cass), a gnarled and crippled old man whose hobby is beekeeping. Anyone want to bet that this isn’t the old bee-venom poisoning shtick?

   In “The Other Face” Chase investigates the death of a handsome actor who “accidentally” fell from his penthouse terrace shortly after telling his psychiatrist of his desire to fall through space. If the murder victim didn’t turn out to be not the actor but his look-alike understudy, toads fly.

   Other episodes seem to have more intriguing story lines. In “Napoleon’s Obituary” a man named for Bonaparte dies the day after asking Chase to write his obituary, and the trail leads our sleuth to a house all of whose inhabitants sport the names of historic figures.

   In “Ringside Seat for Murder” Chase witnesses a bizarre murder during a wrestling match where one of the athletes (using the term loosely) is stabbed in the back with a poisoned dart while pinned to the mat by his opponent.

   Front Page Detective never pretended to be a classic, but for all its cliches and Grade ZZZ production values it was a pioneering effort in tele-detection that deserves perhaps a wee bit more than to be totally forgotten.

CLAYTON RAWSON, writing as Stuart Towne – Death from Nowhere: Don Diavolo Mysteries. Mysterious Press, ebook, two novellas, May 2012.

— The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo. Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, hardcover, March 2005.

    “Overall, I really enjoyed Death from Nowhere. The stories are creative and imaginative, and although there are flaws, the book still manages to be quite enjoyable.”

— Patrick, Review of Death from Nowhere, “At the Scene of the Crime.”

http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-scarlet-wizard.html

      See also:

    “Nicolas Alexander Houdin, alias Don Diavolo, is a crime fighting stage magician detective who routinely faces seemingly supernatural horror and mystery in all four of these circa 1940 stories. Despite his Latin-esque name, the 30-something vaudeville conjurer is blond and wiry with a lithe and powerful physique, the endurance of 6 men, and capable of lightning fast thought and action. He often wears a scarlet suit of impeccably cut clothing, and may sometimes adopt the clothing over far and near Eastern illusionists in his stage and public acts.

    “Don Diavolo finds himself routinely dragged into adventures in crime-fighting, often at the instigation of his suspicious nemesis, Inspector Church of NYC’s Homicide Division. Rather than using hand waving and spooky mysticism to fix things right and routinely clear his sullied name, Don Diavolo solves these baffling mysteries using modern techniques of science and psychology, along with a healthy dose of vaudeville drama and stage hocus pocus.”

— Review of The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo, “Age of Menace.”

http://docmystery.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/book-39-pulp-the-magical-mysteries-of-don-diavolo-by-clayton-rawson-reprint-2004/

    “Rawson wrote four novellas in 1940 about magician-sleuth Don Diavolo. They have recently been collected in book form as The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo. The first three Don Diavolo stories are Rawson’s richest impossible crime tales… The Don Diavolo stories often feature dying messages, a kind of mystery puzzle that rarely appears in impossible crime tales. Rawson is throwing every possible mystery idea into these tales.”

— Mike Grost

http://mikegrost.com/laterimp.htm#Rawson

    “Don Diavolo is the fabulous Scarlet Wizard, a magician detective created by author and illustrator Clayton Rawson (1906-1971) writing under the pen-name Stuart Towne. Himself a magician as well as writer, Rawson is mainly remembered today for his magician detective, the Great Merlini, but not to be ignored are the four short novels he wrote about Don Diavolo.”

— “The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.”

http://www.batteredbox.com/LostTreasures/07-DonDiavolo.htm

From The Saturday Review, 27 May 1939, “The Criminal Record”:

    “Title and Author: THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE CEILING – Clayton Rawson (Putnam: $2.00)

    “Crime, Place, Sleuth: Poisoned corpse of agoraphobic heiress found in East River island mansion beneath sole-marked ceiling. Merlini unmagicks three incredible killings.

    “Summing Up: Encyclopedically fascinating, with amazing bits about sunken treasure, catalepsy, ‘the bends,’ assorted poisons — also gun-play and sky-high suspense.

    “Verdict: Immense!”

http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1939may27-00020

From The Saturday Review, 16 July 1938, “The Criminal Record”:

    “Title and Author: DEATH FROM A TOP HAT – Clayton Rawson (Putnam: $2.00)

    “Crime, Place, Sleuth: Occultist found slain in pentagon: death deals card-trickster Black Lady. Merlini, ex-magician, helps cops fathom riddle.

    “Summing Up: Amazingly good dope on magicians and their art, keen foolery, extra-tricky plot, and conclusion that lifts the roof.

    “Verdict: Dazzling.”

http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1938jul16-00020a02

NORMAN A. FOX – Long Lightning. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1953. Dell 783, paperback, 1954; several later printings. First published as the short novel “Wire to Warlock,” Zane Grey’s Western Magazine, December 1952.

   For those of you always on the lookout for hard-boiled fiction to read, and you have no a priori objections to reading a western, here’s one you might want to hunt down. There are some solid “tough guy” aspects to this 50-year-old novel that may be worth your attention, largely due to the highly individualistic nature of its main protagonist, Holt Brandon, construction chief for the Mountain Telegraph Company. In this book, not only must he get the job done on time, but he has to fight for his life all the while he’s doing so.

   There are two obstacles, the first being Mountain’s main competitor, Consolidated, and they do not hesitate in hiring local gunmen to make sure Holt’s crew do not make their deadline. Second, and not insignificantly, is Colonel Templeton, the owner of the Montana land they must cross, an elderly gentleman from the South who imagines that the War Between the States is still going on, and still fighting imaginary battles in his mind.

   Holt Brandon plays his cards strictly by the book, and his loyalty to his boss, Sam Whitcomb is never in question. The world of financial matters is beyond him, but what he’s fully aware of is this: If they do not get the wires strung to Warlock from Salish on time, all is lost for Mountain Telegraph.

   Here’s a quote that demonstrates that Fox knew exactly what he was writing about, from page 113:

   To add some variety to the plot, Holt is not shy around women, but he is caught by surprise when he finds himself the focus of attention of two of them: Gail, the daughter of his boss, and Ellen Templeton, the colonel’s daughter. It is clear which of them he will end up with, if either is to be the case, but that he will lose both of them is a definite possibility, and what Fox does is make sure the reader does not lose sight of that.

   So — here’s a western that’s a trifle clumsy when it comes to affairs of the heart, perhaps, but not– ever — when it comes to matters of loyalty and pride, and other qualities that men have, or they’re supposed to.

[UPDATE] 09-07-12.   I’ve made no attempt to obtain an exact count of the western novels written by Norman Fox (1910-1960), but if he’d been able to live longer, I’m sure he’d have written a lot more than the roughly 30 or so I’ve quickly come up with.

   He was a pulpster as well, with nearly a full page of entries already listed for him in the online FictionMags index, a list still under construction. The first of these, by the way, is “The Strange Quest” (Cowboy Stories, June 1934).

   The photo of him comes from the back cover of one the hardcovers I own by him. What’s unusual about it is that it was taken by fellow western and adventure writer, Dan Cushman. I’d love to know more about when, where and why.

FINGERPRINTS DON’T LIE. Spartan Productions / Lippert Pictures, 1951. Richard Travis, Sheila Ryan, Sid Melton, Tom Neal, Margia Dean, Lyle Talbot, Michael Whalen, Karl Davis. Director: Sam Newfield.

   Early this year an old childhood buddy of mine gifted me with a box of perfectly-chosen DVDs: no classics, just a lot of stuff I kinda wanted to see but didn’t want to spend much money on. So far, the gem of the set has been Fingerprints Don’t Lie (Spartan Productions, 1951) an enjoyably bad film that passes too quickly for its deficiencies to grow irksome.

   Yeah, this is listed as “A Spartan Production,” and Spartan it is, but “Cheapo” might have caught the spirit better, as it was produced by Sigmund Neufeld and directed by Sam Newfield, the driving talents (for want of a better word) behind PRC, which has been widely celebrated as the most penurious studio in Hollywood. Fingerprints carries nobly on in the PRC tradition, with tacky sets, perfunctory acting, and a screenplay that seems more interested in killing time than actually getting anyplace.

   What makes it fun to watch, though (for me anyway) is the amusingly slip-shod nature of the thing. Instead of background music we get an organ soloist, just like in the old-time soaps, bridging scenes and setting moods with a turgid melancholia that broke me up every time.

   Then, late in the film, we get one of those cinematic conventions that normally go unnoticed: two characters talk about checking out a suspect’s apartment on the sixth floor of the Metropolitan Hotel, and we cut to an exterior shot of the Metropolitan, the camera sweeps up to the sixth floor, and we cut to the two characters walking into the apartment.

   It’s the kind of movie-shorthand you’ve probably seen dozens of times and never noticed. Only in this case they couldn’t afford to send a cameraman out for an exterior shot, so they simply panned up a photograph of the hotel —- which might have worked except that no one noticed the photo was printed backwards and we see the words LETOH NATILOPORTEM in mirror-image!

   Still later, the gaffes come fast and funny as the Police close in on the Crime Boss and his Moll in a rather economical–looking suite. When they tell the baddie he’s going Downtown, the obliging Moll opens her purse, ostensibly for lipstick, but holds it up what seems like an eternity as he sees the gun inside and they exchange significant glances. At some length.

   Much later (it seems) he reaches inside the purse and fumbles around for several seconds before finally pulling the gun out — upside down! Whereupon he spends several more seconds getting it pointed at the cops, who promptly register surprise. Now that’s acting!

   Following a bit of stand-off, the Crime Boss eventually shoots a cop, who bends sharply forward, as if hit in the stomach, then apparently remembers some long-ago instruction from the director, straightens up and grabs his supposedly-wounded shoulder. Bullets fly (or rather, bullet-type noises fill the soundtrack) till our bad guy (WARNING!) “falls” out a window.

   Actually, we see him slide out the window-set, lie down on a not-quite-hidden platform and roll out of view. Which at least gets him mercifully out of this turkey.

   I should perhaps add that the unfortunate actors in this thing at least carry on manfully, ignoring the paucity of their surroundings and the deficiencies in the script. In one scene, the prosecutor is played by Tom Neal, who would soon be facing a prosecutor himself. An actor named Sid Melton gamely struggles to apply comic relief as a newspaper photographer who can’t work a camera, and Karl “Killer” Davis makes a rather effective Hood. Altogether a game bunch, and it’s just a pity they had so little to work with.

Editorial Comments:   This film, if you would like to obtain a copy, is easily available on DVD, as part of a two-for-one “Forgotten Noir” pair of offerings. See the image above. I’ll Get You, with George Raft and Sally Gray, is the main feature, with Fingerprints getting only second billing (in very small print).

   Also worth noting, as Dan has already pointed out in a comment following Michael Shonk’s recent review of Philo Vance, Detective, this is one of the movies that was re-titled (as Fingerprints) and edited down to less than thirty minutes in a syndicated package of films sold to TV stations in the early 1950s.

ANN CLEEVES – Sea Fever. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, 1st printing, October 1991. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1993.

   This is the fifth mystery novel in which inveterate birdwatcher George Palmer-Jones has become involved with a case of murder. It shouldn’t be too surprising: even though he’s now actually a retired civil servant, he and his wife Molly have become partners in an “enquiry agency” as a means to keeping themselves busy in their declining years.

   George hates the term “private detective,” but there is no escaping it: whether “enquiry agent” or PI, that’s the kind of work they do. (*) George has birds on his mind most of the time, though, and if it weren’t for Molly to push him, I think his investigative business would be nothing at all, in no time flat.

   In Sea Fever they’re hired to trace a wayward son who refuses to come home, or to acknowledge the existence of his worried parents in any way. That he’s also an ardent birdwatcher makes the Palmer-Joneses the ideal couple to track him down. They catch up to him momentarily on a sea cruise/birdwatching expedition, but they lose him again almost as quickly at the hands of a killer.

   Murder at sea means a limited number of suspects, and this is classical detection at very nearly its highest level and its most overwrought, boosted by little annoying hints of what is yet to come and a (female) police inspector who finds her own life close to exploding out of control.

   Don’t get me wrong, though. While this may not be the equivalent of John Dickson Carr in plot complexity, it is a pleasant voyage through waters charted several times or more. Every time I take the trip, I enjoy it just about as much as the time before, and that’s the kind of book this is.

(*)   I’ve just checked John Conquest’s Trouble Is Their Business (Garland, 1990), a superb compendium of just about every other fictional PI you could name, and as it happens, he misses these two. They’re borderline, I’d say, but by Conquest’s own definition, they’re PI’s, and they should be in there.

[UPDATE]. 09-05-12. And for what it’s worth, the Palmer-Joneses are not included on Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website either. Kevin doesn’t miss many, but this is one pair of PI’s I think he he has. A lengthy profile of the author by Martin Edwards can be found here, along with a long list of all her mysteries. (She’s done more than just this one series.)

       The George & Molly Palmer-Jones series —

A Bird in the Hand. 1986.

Come Death and High Water. 1987.
Murder in Paradise. 1988.
A Prey to Murder. 1989.

Sea Fever. 1991.
Another Man’s Poison, 1992.
The Mill on the Shore. 1994.

High Island Blues. 1996.

PHILO VANCE, DETECTIVE. Official Films, 18 minutes. (Originally Philo Vance’s Secret Mission, PRC, 1947; 58 minutes). Cast: Alan Curtis, Sheila Ryan, Tala Birell, Frank Jenkins, James Bell, and Frank Fenton.

   Philo Vance, Detective did not include any onscreen credits except for the actors listed above. (The actor listed as Frank Jenks in all the databases is credited on screen as Frank Jenkins.) According to the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) database and imdb.com, the original film was written by Lawrence Edmund Taylor and directed by Reginald LeBorg. S. S. Van Dine received no screen credit.

   In 1947 PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) made three Philo Vance theatrical films: Philo Vance’s Secret Mission, Philo Vance’s Gamble, and Philo Vance Returns. Both Secret Mission and Gamble featured Alan Curtis as Philo with his assistant Ernie Clark played by Frank Jenkins. In Returns Philo was played by William Wright (without Jenkins).

   The PRC version of Philo Vance resembled the generic detective hero of the average 1940s Poverty Row studio film series more than S. S. Van Dine’s creation.

   By the 1950s television had become the gluttonous beast with an insatiable appetite for content that it remains today. When the networks were unable to fill the needs of the TV stations, the stations turned to syndicated producers such as Ziv, CBS TV-Films and Official Films. Distributors such as MPTV (Motion Pictured for Television) acquired the rights to B-movies, cartoons and short films such as Philo Vance’s Secret Mission and sold them to the hungry hungry hippos aka the local TV stations.

   One of the major problems facing MPTV and others was local stations taking a dull ax and editing programs to suit the local station needs. This could be the cause for a 58-minute theatrical film to exist in a renamed TV version suitable for a half hour time slot. More likely, Official Films, one of the top syndication companies at the time, did the editing and sold it in a package of half-hour mysteries.

   Fortunately, the TCM database has a complete synopsis full of spoilers and credits for the 58-minute film short.

   Jamison (Paul Maxey), co-publisher of pulp magazines, has invited writer Philo Vance to his office to discuss the possibility of Vance writing a mystery based on Jamison’s former partner’s murder seven years ago. With his assistant Ernie Clark and a woman who is not introduced, says nothing and no one says anything to her during the long scene (she is Vance’s secretary Mona), Vance meets the suspects.

   Mona (Sheila Ryan) will be in nearly every scene of Philo Vance, Detective, while most of the rest in this scene will end up victims of the missing forty minutes and not be seen again.

   Jamison’s other partner is upset over the idea of leaving pulps to publish “books.” The company’s two main writers also hate the idea of mystery books (there are too many of them now). When Jamison announces he had solved the murder of the dead partner, office secretary and victim’s wife (Tala Birell) faints. Jamison invites Vance to his house that night to discuss the case.

   Vance and Mona arrive to meet Jamison. They hear gunshots and a cry for help. The two break into Jamison’s home to find blood on the floor but no body (just like the earlier murder). They call and wait for the sheriff.

   â€œI think I am going to faint,” says Mona, half seriously.

   â€œWhy don’t you wait until the police come and I’ll catch you in my arms,” suggests Philo, who is busy on the phone.

   Vance and Mona leave but a motorcycle cop chases them down. The murdered man’s body is in Vance’s car trunk. Next we see a cop using the police radio informing all police cars to look out for an armed and dangerous killer, and the cop is nice enough to add Philo “and girl companion” have been released.

   Now the editing becomes noticeable. We miss all the scenes with the suspects, clues to motive, where the murder weapon came from, and information about the first murder. One entire character, Joe the cover photographer, ends up on the editing floor.

   Instead we jump to Vance and Mona driving to the first victim widow’s home. They are followed and shot at. Vance fights with the bad guy who runs away unseen in the dark. Vance rushes to the widow afraid she would be next. Instead he finds her packing for a cruise where she plans to marry her finance.

   More scenes vanish including (according to the TCM synopsis) the denouncement scene where Vance names his girl friend Mona as the killer (that I would need to see to believe).

   But it was all a ruse to trap the killer. At the cruise ship the killer is revealed, Vance suggests he and Mona take a cruise together, but then he heads for the exit when she suggests they get married at sea. She stops him with a long kiss.

   It would be unfair to judge the cast and production with forty minutes missing from the 58-minute film, but the story holds up considering. There are times the viewer is confused by what is going on such as why does Vance think the widow is in danger. But while the editor of this television version has removed the mystery, the story barely survives to find a home in the crime genre with the relationship between Vance and girl friend Mona providing most of the entertainment.

Sources: TCM.com database, IMDb.com, Billboard. If you wish to avoid spoilers you can read Steve’s review of the original film here. I need to find a copy of the original, if only to see Sheila Ryan posing for a pulp cover.