SECRET AGENT OF JAPAN. 20th Century Fox, 1943. Preston Foster, Lynn Bari, Noel Madison, Victor Sen Yung, Janis Carter, Steve Geray, Kurt Katch, Addison Richards. Screenwriter: John Larkin. Director: Irving Pichel.

   Secret Agent of Japan was the third and final pairing of its two leading stars, Preston Foster and Lynn Bari, the others being Chasing Danger (1939) and News Is Made at Night (1939). This one’s not nearly as good, but there may be a reason for it, and a historical one, at that.

   I’m told, from what I read, that this movie went into production the day after Pearl Harbor, and it was the first film to be released that included the attack as part of the story line. I’m also told that the critics were not particularly fond of the film, quite the contrary, but audiences flocked to it in droves.

   Its official release date was April 3, 1942. Hardly enough time to get a story written and filmed, one that makes a lot of sense, you might think, and true enough, this one doesn’t.

   Preston Foster plays an expatriate American (Roy Bonnell) running a bar called the Dixie Bar in Shanghai as the drums of the oncoming war fills the minds of the citizens there, of every nationality, and there are many. Bonnell thinks he knows his way around the city and has an understanding with the Japanese living there, but the latter are growing confident (and menacing) about something.

   Enter Lynn Bari as a spy for the British, on the trail of some valuable jade she says, but with various mail drops, secret codes, and a mysterious death or two, it seems as though her cover story is not long to last, nor does it. (Poor Janis Carter, as Bari’s companion in the spying business. Her part is too short to make much of an impression, much less to warrant a listing so high up in the credits, but to her credit, she does and she is.)

   The tale gets a twist or two from there along the way, with the various parts never coming together as a whole, but the audience in 1942 knew what was going on well enough, I’m sure, and the ending of course, is a happy one. The movie doesn’t stand up well today, but the people involved with it weren’t making it for viewers some 70 years later. They were making it for another audience altogether.

        #14. HANIGAN & IRVING, by Roger Torrey.

   The Hanigan & Irving stories by Roger Torrey were a short series of eleven stories published in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1937 to 1941. There are two main characters in the series and a number of supporting ones. The main characters are private detective Michael “Mickey” Hanigan and his assistant – Irving Koslowski the taxi driver.

   Hanigan is a former cop, probably a detective, before he opened up his agency. “Hanigan had ethics, though of a peculiar sort and often discounted by the police department.” (Suicide Story) Irving usually drives a decrepit old taxi and takes Hanigan wherever he needs to go and also assists when needed. Irving’s last name was Borowski in “The Meter Says Murder” but changes to Koslowski later in the series. (see “Murder Tips the Scales” from 1940)

   Supporting characters include Nancy Evans, Hanigan’s girl friend, always ready to try to convince Hanigan to take the day off and relax. But Hanigan usually resists the temptation, insisting that he needs to be in his office in case someone needs him. She tried to help him in the first story in the series, but wound up making a mess of matters, so she refrains from helping him after that unless he asks her.

   Various police detectives are also supporting characters in the stories, but they are different in each story.

   Irving is introduced in the first story in the series, “Case for a Killer” (DFW, September 17, 1937), and is of assistance to Hanigan in the story. Hanigan just picks his taxi at random, and does not identify Irving by name in his first scene. In a later scene, after Hanigan repeatedly calls him Jack, Irving corrects him and tells him his name.

   He also tells Hanigan: “You’re the kind of a guy I like; one that makes up his mind.” Before the two go to a Greek bar, Hanigan tells Irving: “To this Greek spot, and you’re to go in with me. If there’s any dough in this, I’ll see you’re taken care of. If not, you got a steady customer at least.” So it was by sheer accident that the two met up and Irving became hired by Hanigan for future jobs.

   In another story (The Meter Says Murder) Hanigan defends his hiring of Irving: “Now about Irving. The guy ain’t making any money hacking and all I’ve got to pay him is enough for him to get along. And the cab’s handy and he’s a handy boy.” Later Hanigan seems to regret his hiring of Irving, for it was said about him: “Irving Kowalski, who drove a taxi part time and who drove Hanigan to desperation practically the remainder of the time. . .” (Suicide Story)

   Irving’s description was given in “Suicide Story”: “Irving wasn’t tall but he was built like a Shetland pony. Stocky. There’d been several times when he hadn’t ducked in the right direction and these errors in judgment had given him a slightly lumpy appearance. One ear had been torn and this hung at a slight angle, and the gold teeth he’d chosen to replace originals knocked out by knuckles, shone at Hanigan out of the murk.”

   In the first story in the series, “Case for a Killer”, the story is longer than later stories. It is described as a short novel, and the other stories in the series are novelettes. Hanigan is hired to bodyguard Nick Poulas and his young daughter for four days until they sail on a ship for overseas.

   Unfortunately, an assassin breaks into the hotel room while Poulas is giving his story to Hanigan and shoots Poulas with a shotgun. Hanigan takes this hard, and promptly shots the assassin while he is trying to escape. He hides the daughter from the police and goes out on an investigation. Poulas had a valuable briefcase that is missing, so Hanigan searches for that too.

   There is a big conflict between the police and Hanigan and Irving on one side, and two group of crooks on the other. Irving did a good job helping, and the police captain said about him: “Well, he’s a bearcat.” Hanigan replied: “He’s my boy. He’s going to work for me.” So that incident tied up the connection between Hanigan and Irving.

   In the second story, “The Meter Says Murder”, Hanigan is in trouble over a murder. He had had an argument with a newspaper journalist, whom he threatened. The journalist shows up dead the next day in Irving’s taxicab, and both Hanigan and Irving wind up down at the police station trying to explain the situation to one of the Homicide detectives. Hanigan then sets out to investigate the case and clear his name.

   â€œYou Only Hang Once” starts off with Hanigan being called upon to bail Irving out of jail. Irving has a number of charges against him, which he says he is not guilty of committing. The person putting the charges against Irving winds up murdered the next day, and Hanigan gets involved when an heir to a hefty sum is accused of the crime.

   Irving is attacked and both stabbed and slugged, and Hanigan is also attacked when he finds a seriously injured Irving in his taxi. It doesn’t take long for Hanigan to clear up the cases, which are all connected, once he gets a bit of cooperation from friends in the police department.

   â€œA Hunch for Hanigan” finds Hanigan searching for and finding a missing heiress. The case becomes complicated when the heiress is mysteriously killed in an automobile accident with a train. Both the police (in the person of Detective-Lieutenant Simpson) and Hanigan find the accident suspicious.

   The woman’s husband, who happens to be the number one suspect in the death, asks Hanigan to investigate the crime and find the murderer. In this story, Hanigan works well with Detective-Lieutenant Simpson.

   â€œSuicide Story” starts off quickly, with a woman entering Hanigan’s detective agency office and attempting to shoot him. He disarms her and has her tell him why she shot at him. Her boyfriend committed suicide, she said, because Hanigan was investigating his firm.

   Hanigan promises to look into the matter and goes to the seedy hotel where the man had been staying. What he finds convinces him that it is murder, not suicide, and he decides to check further into the case.

   In “Country Kill” Hanigan is called to the country for a case by a landowner who is being sniped by an unseen rifleman. The shooter doesn’t seem to want to hit anyone, just cause a nuisance. His client is an unpopular person in the neighborhood, making matters more difficult.

   The case becomes more complicated when not only is a murder committed, but also three city gunmen decide to come to the area supposedly for fishing on the local lake. Hanigan calls Irving to come down to help him, and leave his taxi behind. Irving doesn’t like being separated from his taxi.

   â€œA Bodyguard for Beano” starts off with Hanigan being hired to bodyguard the rich owner’s prize pedigreed English bulldog, and then moves on the real motive for the hiring. Joseph T. Collins, the dog owner, has really hired Hanigan to bodyguard him. He is in fear of his life from his other three partners in his business firm.

   One attempt on his life took place on the first day Hanigan arrived at Collins’ house and before Collins told him why he was there.

   â€œNo Money Payoff” starts with Irving bringing in a tipster to Hanigan’s office. The tipster claims he knows about a jewelry theft worth ninety thousand dollars that the insurance company would pay to know about. Hanigan, with a hangover from the night before, doesn’t believe him and throws the guy out.

   Irving is convinced the guy is telling the truth, and follows him, only to run into the middle of the kidnapping of the tipster by two crooks. Irving is shot, and winds up in the hospital. He tells Hanigan the story, and Hanigan finds out there actually was a jewelry heist that the tipster could know about. Then he is interested in tracking down the tipster and finding the jewels in order to get the insurance company fee.

   This is probably the most violent of the stories in the series. Five men are killed (one a policeman) and two are seriously hurt. Only Hanigan’s good detective instincts and experience keep him safe from harm.

   In “Murder Tips the Scales” Hanigan and Irving become involved in a plot to kill some ex-politicians. The first politician asks for Hanigan’s help but is killed before Hanigan can do anything or find out any more information than a threatening note stating that three will be killed.

   As usual, Irving convoys Hanigan around in his taxi, but he does get in on some of the action. Irving chases a suspect in a scene, but somewhat ineptly. He buys another taxi, but it keeps breaking down and stranding Hanigan and Irving. The murderer turns out to be the least likely suspect.

   Police Detective-Lieutenant George Woods was ready to give Hanigan a hard time about virtually anything to do with his current cases. Woods often thought that Hanigan knew some facts about his current criminal case. And Woods was right; Hanigan just didn’t want to tell Woods anything because he was working on the case. Hanigan was in it for the money.

   â€œFrame for a Killer” opens with Hanigan and Irving unknowingly being framed for a jewelry robbery and murder in the same building that Hanigan’s new was located in. Most of the story consists of Hanigan and Irving trying to get out of the frame and get the right criminals.

   First Hanigan has to escape from two policemen who have arrested both him and Irving for the crimes. A shootout with the criminals finalizes the case. Then Hanigan has to explain matters to the police, who don’t look too kindly on Hanigan for assaulting their detectives.

   This is an above average series, with some good stories. There is an element of humor in the stories, often contributed by Irving’s actions. Irving is actually of some assistance in Hanigan’s cases, even with the humorous situations.

   This series deserves to be reprinted. The stories are fairly long, so eleven stories might fill a book.

       The Hanigan & Irving series, by Roger Torrey:

Case for a Killer     July 17, 1937
The Meter Says Murder     December 11, 1937
You Only Hang Once     April 23, 1938
Labor Trouble     September 17, 1938
A Hunch for Hanigan     November 12, 1938
Suicide Story     April 15, 1939
Country Kill     May 27, 1939
A Bodyguard for Beano     August 26, 1939
No Money Payoff     December 16, 1939
Murder Tips the Scales     February 24, 1940
Frame for a Killer     November 1, 1941

    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.

GEORGE SELMARK – Murder in Silence. Cassell, UK, hardcover, 1939. Doubleday/Crime Club, US, 1940. Thriller Novel Classic #37, no date [1945], abridged.

   The septuagenarian vicar of Twitten has gone and done it. He has married a chorus girl, and he is returning unrepentant but panting to the vicarage. Meanwhile, his daughter, who has something on her mind but it’s apparently not her father’s unfortunate marriage, disappears.

   Most unusually, the chorus girl turns out to live up, or down, to the typical chorus-girl reputation. Deaths start occurring. A demented but chuckling villain appears at night. The heroine is brave and bright. The hero is dull and sensible. Inspector Bass drinks too much at the village pub and at the Twitten Manor Home for Inebriates, joining the home’s owner, Dr. MacFarlane, who always has a bottle handy, while the murderer remains unapprehended.

    A thriller-type novel with a twist and some interesting characters. George Selmark is a pseudonym of Seldon Truss. Truss wrote only one novel under this name with a detective that Truss had written about under his own name. Odd.

Bibliographic Notes:   To clarify Bill’s last paragraph, Murder Is Silence is the only novel to have been published first under the George Selmark byline. Two mysteries first published in the UK in the 1960s as by Seldon Truss were reprinted in the US as by George Selmark.

   As for Inspector Bass, he appeared in two other novels under Truss’s name, both also in the 1930s.

JOHN LUTZ – Diamond Eyes. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, December 1990. No paperback edition.

   The dust jacket of this book describes it as “A novel of suspense featuring private investigator [Alo] Nudger.” Partly right. There is a lot of suspense, but most of that is due to the fact that Nudger doesn’t do any investigating.

   In fact, I’m not sure I know what he does do, other than worry and sweat and lose his lunch as his client, his girl friend and his best friend are all either murdered, terrorized or brutalized by a pair of thugs who think Nudger knows the location of a slew of stolen diamonds.

   He doesn’t, but that’s no excuse. The final straw comes when [Oops. PLOT ALERT] he simply leads the bad element straight to his dead client’s sister. He has successfully hidden her out for the second half of the book, but if I may quote from page 189: “He got in the Granada and aimed it north toward Hannibal, not noticing the drab gray rental car that followed.”

   There is no other word to describe him. In this book Alo Nudger is incompetent. I’ve read a few of his cases before, and I’ve enjoyed them, but if I were to call this one disappointing, it would be an understatement.

PostScript:   [Minor PLOT ALERT]   I also didn’t care for the way Nudger’s client, female, was so brutally murdered. Calling it torture and rape doesn’t begin to describe it. What the author may have had in mind was showing how sadistically uncivil Nudger’s opponents are, but I (simple minded as I am) found it distasteful and disgusting.

   Early on in the story a bomb on an airplane goes off, killing 93 people. For a PI story, I think this is overkill. I concede that it was a crucial part of the story the author was telling. You’ll have to convince me, though, that it was a story worth telling. It certainly wasn’t one I wanted to read.

KILLER’S KISS. United Artists, 1955. Frank Silvera, Jamie Smith, Irene Kane, Jerry Jarrett, Mike Dana, Felice Orlandi, Shaun O’Brien, Barbara Brand. Director and co-screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick.

   Recently saw Killer’s Kiss which immediately became my favorite Stanley Kubrick movie, which ain’t saying much, but is intended as a compliment nonetheless. A lot of folks consider Kubrick a genius, and a lot think he’s a pretentious bore; I’ve always thought he had some talent but tended toward self-indulgence, with his failure to capture Nabokov’s Lolita on film particularly disappointing, coming from one as intelligent as Kubrick says he is.

   Anyway, there are a few — a very few — really cheap really good movies to come out of Hollywood, and Killer’s Kiss is one of the tackiest and best. It’s not as good (or as threadbare) as Ulmer’s Detour or Bluebeard, but then nobody could do as much with as little as Ulmer, whose films sometimes amaze one by the very fact of their existence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQePeeM6ElM

   But though not on the same level as Ulmer’s poetic cheapies, Killer’s Kiss is nonetheless right up there with Murder by Contract (1958) and Blast of Silence (’61) as a gritty, stylish thriller done for peanuts.

   The cast is non-professional but talented, with Frank Silvera particularly good as a lecherous dance-hall owner who murders for love, and Irene Kane inadequate but haunting as the neurotic object of his attentions.

   There is some very effective use of seldom-lensed New York City locations — which seems innovative but was probably merely necessary — particularly the roof of a warehouse, which stretches out like some improbable desert before the hero fleeing across it.

   There are also a couple of very visceral fight scenes, the most memorable of which involves the hood and the hero smashing each other with clubs, spears, and plaster mannequins. It makes one realize, with a twinge of regret, how skillful a filmmaker Kubrick could be when he wanted to Show Feelings instead of Explaining Ideas.

   Surprisingly, in fact, Kubrick resists the temptation here to wallow in his own concepts. There is, for example, a part early on where he cuts between the prizefighter hero and the taxi-dancer heroine getting outfitted in their dressing rooms. Almost any other director would have cut back and forth several times, to make sure no one missed the point about professional athletes and prostitutes both being paid to ruin their bodies for the pleasure of strangers, but Kubrick cuts only once, realizes the point is made and gets on with things.

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

   Also, this is the only prize-fight movie I’ve ever seen that has only one shot of a spectator grinning while the hero gets his face punctuated. In every other fight movie, the Director’s not truly happy until he’s looked down his nose at fight fans by showing lots of low-angle shots of them porking out and screaming for blood, just to make sure the moviegoers can feel morally superior to them.

   Killer’s Kiss has just the one shot of Silvera getting turned on while he watches the fight on television, a restraint amazing coming from Kubrick.

NEWS IS MADE AT NIGHT. 20th Century Fox, 1939. Preston Foster, Lynn Bari, Russell Gleason, George Barbier, Eddie Collins, Minor Watson, Paul Harvey, Richard Lane, Charles Lane, Betty Compson, Paul Fix. Screenplay: John Larkin. Director: Alfred L. Werker.

   Of all the thousands (millons?) of sites on the Internet, I believe the one I visit the most is IMDB, even more than Wikipedia, but excluding (of course) my own blog, the one you’re reading right now.

   Back in the olden days, you’d watch a movie on the late show, try to catch the list of credits as they flashed by, and if you were lucky, you might recognize some the cast from other pictures you’d seen them in. You’d know the top two or three stars, of course, but not the ones listed any farther down than that.

   For example, you might have known who Preston Foster and Lynn Bari were, but the rest of the names in the credits above? Mission: Highly Unlikely. I’ll let you have the honors on seeing what you can learn about them, but they were all professionals in the movie business, with lots of credits, and they – all of them – are part of what make this relatively low-budget movie so enjoyable.

   Preston Foster and Lynn Bari are included in that last comment, of course, but what IMDB cannot do is help you find out what other movies they may have made together, unless there’s some way to do that that I don’t know about. What I do know is that they teamed up once before, in a movie called Chasing Danger, and that’s because I reviewed it here on this blog earlier this month.

   I enjoyed watching that one, but all in all, I think I enjoyed this one more. In fact, I know I did, because News Is Made at Night falls into the category of a detective mystery tackled by a pair of newspaper people, one of my favorite kind of stories — lacking a PI anywhere in sight, that is.

   Foster plays the hard-nosed editor who isn’t above the cheapest of tricks to get a story (publishing phony affidavits on the front page to stir up trouble; using an extension line to impersonate the acting governor to grant a reprieve to a convicted killer at the last minute; that sort of thing) while Lynn Bari plays the brash lady reporter whom Foster won’t hire because he doesn’t hire women.

   Lynn Bari, of course, won’t be put off for any reason anything like that, nor is she above a little minor blackmail when she gets wind of one of Foster’s schemes.

   Any movie that begins with a small plane strafing a prison yard has something going for it already, but the snazzy snap crackle and pop of the “animosity” between Foster and Miss Bari keeps the movie moving right along, even though the plot itself is rather ordinary and somewhat confusing, at that.

   (Something to do with a gang of gangsters trying to run a town, or are they merely dirty politicians? Either way, they are all busy trying to gun each other down for most of the film’s 70 minute length.)

   But believe it or not, there is a pretty good detective story that emerges from all this gang-oriented violence – not one worthy of a Christie or Carr, mind you — but if you’re a fan of detective fiction more than out and out crime fiction, you’ll find the ending satisfactory in that regard too — as well as the romance we all know is what this movie is really all about.

PostScript:   I am amazed at how many posters and movie stills I found of this slightly obscure film — more, in fact, than I could use. On the other hand, there are no reviews or external links on IMDB to this movie. This one will be the first.

WILLIAM LUHR – Raymond Chandler and Film. Frederick Ungar, hardcover/softcover, 1982; bibliography and index, photographs, filmography. Florida State University, trade paperback, 1991.

AL CLARK – Raymond Chandler in Hollywood. Proteus, hardcover/softcover, 1983; index, filmography. Silman-James Press, trade paperback, 1996.

   I have paper editions of both these books: the Luhr is a 5-1/2 x 8″ yellowback, the cover sporting a portrait of Chandler set into an oval frame next to a pulp illustration; the Clark is a large-sized 8 x 10-3/4″ book, the cover featuring a brown hat with a revolver resting on the brim.

   The Luhr pages are densely packed with text in small type, while the Clark is profusely illustrated with stills, lobbycards and other advertising material for the films. Luhr is an associate professor of English and film at St. Peter’s College, and Al Clark is a Spanish-born publicist and magazine editor who is currently creative director of the Virgin Records group, based in London.

   The copy for Clark’s biography is probably written by him and is a tongue-in-cheek view of his life; Luhr’s credentials are presented soberly. The casual reader is likely to assume that Luhr is writing a serious study of Raymond Chandler’s Hollywood career and that Clark has put together an album for the film buff.

   In fact, both books are valid contributions to the literature on Chandler’s Hollywood years. Luhr’s approach is largely analytical, a close reading of his films. Clark went to Los Angeles where he interviewed people involved in the films and people who knew Chandler, and his narrative is a mixture of production information and film analysis.

   Clark unfortunately only cites his sources in his preface: there are neither notes nor bibliography. He seems more sensitive than Luhr to information furnished by people like Leigh Brackett, but both men communicate their enjoyment of the films and of Chandler’s fictional world, and I would not want to be without either book.

   The layout on the Clark book is handsome, and the stills, not the tiny postage stamps one often sees, are generously displayed in an attractive format. I compared the two accounts of The Long Goodbye, and while they are not perfectly congruent they are in general agreement, with, as one would expect, Luhr going into greater detail about the film and Clark more enlightening on the actual production. He incorporates a lengthy interview with Nina Van Pallandt into the chapter, and it is the insight furnished into the making of the film that makes Raymond Chandler in Hollywood a more intimate look at the Raymond Chandler film world.

VIRGINIA RICH – The Cooking School Murders. E. P. Dutton & Co., hardcover, 1982. Ballantine, paperback, 1983.

   For a nice, gently nostalgic Midwestern tale of murder that will remind you of nothing less than home-folks all the way through, look no further. (Of course, if you come from a long line of Manhattanites or native Californians, you may be left wondering what the charm of living in Iowa may actually be, even after reading this book, but then again, some people are beyond help.)

   Seriously, though, as an amateur sleuth in this first of a new series, Mrs. Potter has the right idea. As a widow in her early sixties, she’s seen enough of life to be convinced that when it comes to murder, an honest character study of the people involved will always prove to be an essential key to its solution. So do I, when it comes down to it (even though, of course, that’s where any resemblance between Mrs. Potter and myself most definitely ends).

   Three deaths occur the same evening in Harrington, Iowa, immediately after, it seems, the first meeting of an advanced cooking class offered by the local high school. One is that of a long-time friend of Mrs. Potter’s — apparently a suicide. Another is that of the new femme fatale in town, whom blackmail seems to follow like a well-trained setter.

   The latter, obviously, has been murdered, and it comes as no great surprise, but the death of a naive young schoolmarm seems to have been purely an accident.

   Everyone else takes the “obvious” answers to the questions raised by these three nearly coincident deaths. Not Mrs. Potter, though, who putters around and unknowingly puts her own life on the line as she busily constructs various scenarios for the crimes, placing each of her many friends and acquaintances into every possible role.

   Naturally she fails to put the solution together quite correctly enough, until it is very nearly too late. Myself, I thought the final outcome rather unlikely, and, if you will, a bit of a let-down to a mystery novel that till then, had me very nicely entertained.

   Overall, then, I’d call this one a lightweight in the world of amateur detection, but it’s still a mystery with its own built-in source of warmth and charm — just enough to ward off the ever-approaching chill of murder.

P.S.   If you are so inclined, you can skip the recipes. I did.

Rating:   B.

      The Eugenia Potter series —

1. The Cooking School Murders (1982)
2. The Baked Bean Supper Murders (1983)

3. The Nantucket Diet Murders (1985)
4. The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders (1992) (with Nancy Pickard)

      Virginia Rich’s first novel was published when she was 68, and she died three years later. Fellow mystery writer Nancy Pickard continued the series, working from the boxes of notes Virginia Rich had made in planning future novels.

      The Eugenia Potter series, continued by Nancy Pickard —

5. The Blue Corn Murders (1998)

6. The Secret Ingredient Murders (2001)

   Black Lizard’s first mystery anthology included the [Harlan] Ellison Edgar winner, “Soft Monkey.” The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, edited by Ed Gorman (trade paperback, 1988), is 664 pages long with thirty-eight short stories and a full-length novel, Murder Me for Nickels, by Peter Rabe.

   Most of the stories are reprints, but the list of authors reads like a Who’s Who of hardboiled detective fiction for the last thirty-five years, including Avallone, Max Allan Cdllins, Estleman, Gault, Hensley, Lutz, McBain, Pronzini, Spillane, Willeford, et al.

   Of the book’s three new stories, I especially liked Jon Breen’s baseball mystery about a streaker (remember them?).

   There is also a Hall of Fame quality to The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg (Carroll & Graf, trade paperback, 1988), which in its 592 pages offers stories about almost every important private eye, including Philip Marlowe in “Wrong Pigeon,” the last story Chandler wrote.

   Only Hammett (readily available elsewhere) seems to be missing among the authors who include current masters like Hansen, both Collinses (Michael and Max Allan), Lutz, Pronzini, Muller, Estleman, and Grafton. The editors also dug out early work by Carroll John Daly, Robert Leslie Bellem, Fredrick Brown, Gault, McBain, and Prather, as well as rarities: a Paul Pine story by Howard Browne and a private eye story by Ed Hoch, who doesn’t usually write in that genre.

Editorial Notes:   A complete list of authors for the Black Lizard anthology is as follows: Stories by Michael Avallone, Timothy Banse, Robert Bloch, Lawrence Block, Ray Bradbury, Jon Breen, Max Allan Collins, William R. Cox, John Coyne, Wayne D. Dundee, Harlan Ellison, Loren D. Estleman, Fletcher Flora, Brian Garfield, William C. Gault, Barry Gifford, Joe Gores, Ed Gorman, Joe L. Hensley, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Laymon, John Lutz, Ed McBain, Steve Mertz, Arthur Moore, Marcia Muller, William F. Nolan, Bill Pronzini, Ray Puechner, Peter Rabe, Robert Randisi, Daniel Ransom, Mickey Spillane, Donald Westlake, Harry Willeford, Will Wyckoff, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

   Contents for the “Mammoth” collection:  

Raymond Chandler, ‘Wrong Pigeon’ [aka ‘The Pencil’] (1971: Philip Marlowe)
Carrol John Daly, ‘Not My Corpse’ (Race Williams)
Robert Leslie Bellem, ‘Diamonds of Death’ (Dan Turner)
Fredric Brown, ‘Before She Kills’ (1961: Ed and Am Hunter)
Howard Browne, ‘So Dark For April’ (1953: Paul Pine)
William Campbell Gault, ‘Stolen Star’ (1957: Joe Puma)
Ross Macdonald, ‘Guilt-Edged Blonde’ (1953: Lew Archer)
Henry Kane, ‘Suicide is Scandalous’ (1947: Peter Chambers)
Richard S. Prather, ‘Dead Giveaway’ (1957: Shell Scott)
Joseph Hansen, ‘Surf’ (1976: Dave Brandsetter)
Michael Collins, ‘A Reason To Die’ (1985: Dan Fortune)
Ed McBain, ‘Death Flight’ (1954: Milt Davis)
Stephen Marlowe, ‘Wanted — Dead and Alive’ (1963: Chester Drum)
Edward D. Hoch, ‘The Other Eye’ (1981: Al Darlan)
Stuart M. Kaminsky, ‘Busted Blossoms’ (1986: Toby Peters)
Lawrence Block, ‘Out of the Window’ (1977: Matt Scudder)
John Lutz, ‘Ride The Lightning’ (1985: Alo Nudger)
Sue Grafton, ‘She Didn’t Come Home’ (1986: Kinsey Millhone)
Edward Gorman, ‘The Reason Why’ (1988: Jack Dwyer)
Stephen Greenleaf, ‘Iris’ (1984: John Marshall Tanner)
Bill Pronzini, ‘Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg’ (1985: Nameless Detective)
Marcia Muller, ‘The Broken Men’ (1985: Sharon McCone)
Arthur Lyons, ‘Trouble in Paradise’ (1985: Jacob Asch)
Max Allan Collins, ‘The Strawberry Teardrop’ (1984: Nate Heller)
Robert J. Randisi, ‘The Nickel Derby’ (1987: Henry Po)
Loren D. Estleman Greektown’ (1983: Amos Walker)

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – Cat and Mouse. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1988. No paperback edition.

   I have not been very enthusiastic about the products of septuagenarian William Campbell Gault’s return to the criminous arena, but Cat and Mouse is more like it.

   Brock Callahan, retired (owing to a handsome inheritance) private eye, is back again, and this time involved in a case in which I can believe. A dead cat, deposited on Callahan’s front lawn, announces the arrival — and implies the murderous intentions — of the bald man with the scar.

   Nameless he is, and nameless he stubbornly remains, probably arisen out of one of Brock’s old cases (but which?) and determined on a lingering revenge. How does he remain just out of reach, flitting here and there, leaving the odd body behind, when cops of several cities and all of Brock’s numerous friends and connections are on the lookout?

   Quite pleasant.