MINETTE WALTERS – The Scold’s Bridle. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1994. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1994.; paperback, 1995. TV movie: BBC, 1998.

   I feel sort of proprietary about Walters – I was among the earlier in this country to sound the “fine new author” alert when she debuted with The Ice House [reviewed here ]even if no one but me and a few friends heard it. Imagine my delight when one of those friends returned from London and presented me with a signed copy of this.

   Mathilda Gillispie was an old woman, crippled by arthritis, and thoroughly disliked by almost everyone; very much including her daughter, and granddaughter. When she was found dead with her wrists cut, everyone was convinced it was suicide except for an aging policeman and two of the very few people who didn’t dislike her, her doctor and the doctor’s artist husband. She was found wearing one of her favorite possessions, a scold’s bridle – an iron framework that encloses the head and has a sharp metal bit to restrict the tongue. And therein lies a tale that spans four generations, and touches many lives still extant.

   The strength of Walters’ novels is the set of characters she creates and brings to full life. She doesn’t try to establish an ambience in any sort of geographic or physical sense. Her pacing is outstanding, but that by nature is unobtrusive unless done poorly. Her prose is excellently suited to what she does, but is not memorable in the sense that passages or phrases will stick in your mind. Her characters will. For a long time.

   The Scold’s Bridle won’t win an Edgar for obvious reasons, and given the vagaries of the awards process may not even be nominated, but hear me well: if this isn’t the best crime novel of the year, someone wrote a hell of a book between now and then.

REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Black Echo. Harry Bosch #1. Little Brown, hardcover, 1992. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1993. Reprinted many times since. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for “Best First Novel” for 1992, and was nominated for the Anthony Award in the same category and the Dilys Award for “Best Novel.” TV Adaptation: Season three of Bosch (Amazon Video) was based on both The Black Echo (Book 1) and A Darkness More Than Night (Book 7).

   Harry Bosch is working when an anonymous phone call to the police informs them that there’s a body in a drainpipe at Mulholland Dam. At first it seems to be a simple case of a heroin overdose, but Harry recognizes the corpse as a fellow “tunnel rat” named Meadows who served with him In Viet Nam. A few discrepancies lead Harry to believe that Meadows was murdered and placed in the drainpipe, and he soon discovers that Meadows was a suspect in an old safety deposit box burglary.

   Harry then learns that Meadows was apparently tortured before his death and had recently pawned a piece of jewelry that had been in one of the safe deposit boxes. The bank burglary is being handled ,by the FBI, and Harry has to threaten to go to the newspapers to force his way onto the investigating team. Meantime, Internal Affairs is suspicious of his connection with the dead man and assigns two men to try and get the goods on Harry.

   I can’t fault the writing or the story telling, which is first rate; it’s the plotting that I have to take to task. I picked this book up at the same rummage sale that I bought The Poet [a non-Bosch book from 1996], which I read before this one.

[WARNING: Plot details are going to be discussed so if you are planning to read either of those books, do not read any further.] This book was written earlier, so perhaps I should have read it first, but it doesn’t matter: both have the same basic plot. The crime is different and the protagonist is different but both feature crimes in which the FBI agent in charge turns out to be the one behind the crimes. And in both, the hero forces himself onto the FBI team and falls in love with the female FBI agent working with him. And both wind up alone, though for different reasons. [END OF WARNING]

   One other thing: the burglars break into the bank by digging a tunnel that connects to those large drive-in sewers that they have in Los Angeles. When Connelly describes these sewers, he scrupulously avoids mentioning the one pop culture reference that made everyone familiar with them: the classic giant-bug movie Them. Why?

THE JORDAN CHANCE. NBC, 2 hours. 12 December 1978. Raymond Burr (Frank Jordan), Ted Shackelford, James Canning, Jeannie Fitzsimmons. Guest Cast: John McIntire, Peter Haskell, Maria-Elena Cordero, Stella Stevens, George DiCenzo, Gerald McRaney. Teleplay by Stephen J. Cannell, based on a story by Roy Huggins (as John Thomas James) & Stephen J. Cannell. Directed by Jules Irving.

   Chronologically, as far as Raymond Burr’s career is concerned, this failed pilot for another TV series for him came after Perry Mason, after Ironside, after the short summer season of Kingston: Confidential, but before the long run of Perry Mason movies. I called this particular endeavor a “failed pilot,” and I’m sure that the people involved were ready to go with it as another series, but there was a big, big reason why they didn’t. I don’t know what the ratings were for it, but the fact is is that it’s not very good.

   I hesitate saying that it’s bad, but it’s an awfully close call.

   Here’s the premise. After serving time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, lawyer Frank Jordan sets up a foundation, with himself as the head, whose directive is to come to the assistance of others who are have found themselves in jail while innocent but have used up all of their other options.

   Such is the case of a Mexican-American maid who has been convicted of murder for only two reasons: one, that she’s Mexican-American, and two, because she was there on the scene, working in the dead man’s house and being the one who found the body. Once he’s convinced that she’s innocent, Jordan gathers up his crew of three assistants and heads for the small California town where the murder occurred.

   And where he finds – no surprise here – that not only does the local sheriff not want him coming in and stirring things up again, but none of the local townspeople do either. I think we have all seen this before. Not personally, mind you, but in watching several dozen TV shows with much the same story line.

   One problem here is that Jordan (Raymond Burr) is the whole show. His assistants are bland beyond belief, and then some. And the story’s so slight that at least twenty minutes is spent on watching cars squealing tires turning corners in city streets or chasing each other up and down rural roads, with the more than occasional sheriff’s helicopter hovering around overhead. Jordan does get roughed up a little, but once he convinces the sheriff to switch sides (I didn’t catch how this happened), the show’s over.

   And so was any chance for a series. Not even a Jordan Chance.

REVIEWED BY JEFF MEYERSON:

JACK HIGGINS – Storm Warning. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1976. Henry Holt & Co., US, hardcover, 1976. Bantam, US, paperback, 1977.

   Jack Higgins (Henry Patterson) has written more than thirty crime novels since 1959, as Harry Patterson, Martin Fallon, Hugh Marlowe , James Graham, and Higgins. It was only with the publication of The Eagle Has Landed (1975), however, that he hit the big time. Storm Warning has several things in common with that excellent book and is, in my opinion,, even more exciting.

   Both books take place during World War II, with a considerable part of the action set in Great Britain. Each has a German as a sympathetic protagonist, each of whom spent time in England as a child (and therefore speaks the language well), and each man gains our sympathy through the opposition and antagonism of an obnoxious Englishman. Finally each is courageous, honorable, and ultimately heroic.

   That said, these are two quite different books. Eagle is a Day of the Jackal-type story about an attempt to assassinate Churchill. Storm Warning centers on the attempt of a group of German seamen to sail a nineteenth century sailing ship, The Deutschland, home to Germany from Brazil to be with friends and family as the war reaches its inevitable climax.

   Besides the excellent scenes aboard the ship, Higgins shows that he is a master craftsman by shifting points of view among several groups of people: the crew and passengers of The Deutschland (including five nuns); the people of the island of Fhada, in the Outer Hebrides, whose lifeboat crew plays an important role; and the four leading characters. These are American Admiral Carey Reeve, recuperating from wartime injuries on Fhada while longing to return to action; his niece, Dr. Janet Munro; Lieutenant Harry Jago, running a messenger service between the islands as a respite from the action; and Paul Gericke, the German war ace.

   Higgins maneuvers his large cast until the fantastic storm of the title brings them all together off Fhada in a desperate, selfless and heroic rescue mission where all sides work together to save lives. Storm Warning is a thrilling book and a sure bet as a movie. Don’t miss it.

   
Editorial Update: From Wikipedia “In January 1977 it was announced that Columbia had bought the film rights and Peter Guber would produce a movie version. However no film resulted.”

DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Nobody’s Perfect. Dortmunder #4. M. Evans & Co., hardcover, 1977. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1979. Mysterious Press, paperback, 1989.

   I was talking about funny detective fiction a little while back. Standing and looking on from the sidelines, it’s obvious that it’s much easier to write a funny mystery story when you don’t have to work some detective work in to go along with it. Funny crime stories are a lot more common.

   Donald Westlake, while he doesn’t have a patent on it, does have a particular genius for this sort of thing. The caper story, that is. He’s written a number of them, and many of them have starred, if that’s the right word, a small-time thief, a crook named Dortmunder. Even his name is funny, but what makes the crimes he and his gang commit so funny is not that they’re so badly planned, for they’re not, but that all of a sudden, beyond a certain point, everything unavoidably goes wrong.

   In this book Dortmunder is hired to steal a painting. He’s hired by its owner, who can use the insurance money, but who is naturally reluctant to part with the painting itself. He’d also rather the insurance company didn’t get too suspicious.

   Somehow, however, the painting ends up in Scotland, of all places, and to save his very hide, Dortmunder has to commission a forgery, And steal that. Which doesn’t work out either.

   Now, all of this may sound as though it would be very easy to write, but a good part of what makes this story funny is Westlake’s way with words, a sardonically understated sort of slapstick, if you will. If Hollywood were to get their hands on it, or from the typewriter of a lesser mortal, you can bet it would end up just· being silly.

   Westlake also has a well-developed knack for describing a world and its inhabitants where the life of casual, amoral crime is nothing but another plane of existence. It’s almost funny, for example, to discover how easy it is to steal a typewriter just whenever you need one, but not quite, considering who always ends up paying for such petty pilferage. Sure. You and me. You better believe it.

Rating: B

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

SILVER LODE. RKO, 1954. John Payne, Lizabeth Scot, Dan Duryea, Morris Ankrum, Harry Carey Jr. Robert Warrick, Dolores Moran, Emile Meyer, and Frank Sully. Written by Karen DeWolf. Directed by Alan Dwan. Available on DVD, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.

   Probably the most explicit anti-McCarthy film of its time, and a pretty good “Town” Western besides.

   â€œTown Westerns” of course are those that largely forsake the wide-open spaces associated with the genre, and focus the action in and around a small community. They can get a bit static and talky, but there are some fine ones: FACE OF A FUGITIVE, DECISION AT SUNDOWN, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, RIO BRAVO…. Feel free to add your favorites in the list, but try to include SILVER LODE.

   The film opens with a quartet of Owlhoots riding into town, led by a stubble-faced Dan Duryea as a character named McCarty — could it get more obvious? Turns out that a well-loved local man (John Payne) is about to Marry Lizabeth Scott when Duryea/McCarty disrupts the ceremony. He has papers identifying hm as a US Marshal, a warrant to arrest Payne for murder, and a glint in his eye that says Payne will never make it to trial.

   What follows will be familiar to anyone who has seen HIGH NOON or its imitations: Payne’s friends rally to his side, then drop away one by one as suspicion mounts against him. To be fair to them, at one point he’s found standing over the murdered Sheriff (Emile Meyer) with a smoking gun, but director Alan Dwan keeps the talky parts commendably brief and un-preachy.

   Thus, SILVER LODE emerges as a well-crafted cat-and-mouse game, Payne trying to find some lever against Duryea, and Duryea chipping away at his reputation with innuendos and half-truths—character assassination in aid of physical murder.

   Karen DeWolf, a prolific writer of B Movies, makes it seem fresh by keeping the characters on the move, seldom seen on the same set twice, and never for very long. She also makes a fine job of giving Lizabeth Scott and Dolores Moran (as a tarty Saloon Gal) roles that are more than decorative. Without giving anything away, I’ll just say that they manage to shape the story without breaking character. Indeed, DeWolf uses their positions in the social strata of the town so well I began to wonder if this was a Chick-Western.

   No fear of that though. Dwan keeps up the pace and tension as few could, culminating in a bell tower chase-and shoot-out that caps the action perfectly. Where some Town Westerns tend to get verbose and self-important, SILVER LODE delivers its anti-McCarthy message with style and a disarming lack of pretension.

   I also want to put in a word here about Frank Sully. A busy character actor in films as diverse as THE GRAPES OF WRATH and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU, he specialized in dumb cops, dumb hoods, dumb cowboys and the occasional yokel, and he always gave it his all. SILVER LODE features Sully as a rattled telegrapher, and he manages to inject his own sense of humor quite effectively into a scene played for tension.

ROBERT B. PARKER – Night and Day. Jesse Stone #8. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 2009. Berkley, paperback reprint; 1st printing, February 2010.

   I’ve read about a third of Parker’s Spenser books, one of his with female PI Sunny Randall, but this is my first encounter with Jesse Stone, long time police chief of a small town called Paradise, somewhere not too far out from Boston. This one’s number eight of nine of Stone’s adventures Parker write before his death in 2010, although other hands have since taken over, with ten more having since appeared (more than Parker himself wrote!).

   The emphasis in Night and Day is that of sexual adventure, or misadventure to be more accurate, starting with a high school principal who is caught checking her female students’ (eighth graders) underwear before a school dance. It also seems that the women in Paradise are being stalked by a peeping tom before he escalates his nightly rounds to daytime home invasions in which he forces the women to strip while he takes their photos.

   And as they say, wait, wait, there’s more. A young girl comes in to complain that her parents are members of a very active group of swingers. All of this comes at the same time that Jesse’s ex-wife, with whom he still has close relations, leaves for a job in New York City with what we might call a very close mentor.

   The book is filled with many many pages of Parker’s trademarked witty dialogue, but I have to tell you I was expecting more. The paragraph above is all there is. It is tough to recommend a book, one purporting to be a mystery novel, when the stakes are as small as this, so guess what. I won’t.

DEATH IN PARADISE “Beyond the Shining Sea: Parts One and Two.” BBC, UK. 07 & 14 February 2019. (Season 8, Episodes 5 & 6). Ardal O’Hanlon, Joséphine Jobert, Tobi Bakare, Shyko Amos, with Leemore Marrett Jr., Zackary Momoh, Nicôle Lecky, Indra Ové. Screenwriters: Sally Abbott (Part One), Roger Enstone (Part Two). Director: Jermain Julien.

   As you may recall, I unwittingly started watching this series with season eight, and I’ve continued on with it. There are now but two more to so, and then I will go back and do things properly and start way back at the beginning, with season one.

   I have, however, enjoyed all of them I have seen, and ranking them, after the first one of the season, these two come in a close second and third. It certainly helped that both episodes are based on the solution of “impossible crimes,” if not the small subset of that particular genre called “locked room mysteries.” In the first episode a young woman, a festival queen, is found stabbed to death after setting off in a small boat and around a headland then coming to shore where the villagers are eagerly waiting for her. Somewhere in that three minutes of time, while she was out of sight, she was murdered.

   There were no other boats in the area, and any swimmers or divers would have left wet footprints in the boat, and there are none. The solution is quite clever and is worked out perfectly, but after the killer is caught and confesses, there is more to the story. One prominent player is murdered and another seriously injured.

   The assailant can only be one of three people living on a rich man’s getaway island, but there is no boat on the island and there was no time for any of them to swim to shore, where the shootings took place, and return. The solution is a bit more contrived this time around, but it’s still quite adequately accomplished.

   It is only at the end of story that the viewer (me) realizes that what these two episodes were really designed to do was to pave the way for one of the players to make a dramatic exit from the series. This caught me by surprise. Personnel changes in a series as dramatic as this one don’t usually happen with two more episodes to go.

REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:

C. DALY KING – Obelists Fly High. [Lt. Michael Lord & Dr. L. Rees Pons #3. Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, US, hardcover, 1935. Dover, trade paperback, 1986, 2015. Published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1935.

   A re-read of a book I probably bought when it was first reprinted. In this case, I didn’t remember anything about it, so it was like reading it for the first time.

   Dr. Amos Cutter, a prominent surgeon and brother of the Secretary of State goes to the Police after receiving a letter saying he will be murdered on the following day at noon central time. Cutter is going to Reno, where his sister is getting a divorce and his brother is in the hospital in need of an operation that Cutter is one of the few surgeons who can perform.

   The Commissioner assigns Capt. Michael Lord to protect Cutter as they fly across country with Cutter’s nieces: the beautiful Fonda Mann, who is fond of men and her sister Isa who is a lesbian. (Note that King wasn’t very subtle with his names). Also along is Cutter’s assistant Hood Tinkham. Among the passengers is Lord’s friend, psychologist Dr. L. Rees Pons, who is going to Hollywood to provide psychological background for a script involving two women in love with each other (obviously pre-Code.)

   There’s also author Hugh L. Craven, who is a friend of the girl’s father, a former British spy during the Great War and a believer in the theories of Charles Fort. (ASIDE: Some 30 or so years back I came across a one volume edition of Fort’s books and read it. Some of the stuff is pretty interesting in a Ripley’s-Believe-It-Or-Not sort of way. Other stuff is just damn silly.) Anyway, at noon central time as they’re flying over the mid-west, Cutter dies, and it’s up to Lord to find the killer before the plane reaches Reno.

   Of all the Dover reprints I’ve read this is probably the most poorly written. Characters and dialogue are mediocre at best and there’s an elaborate timetable provided that I couldn’t bother going through. However, King manages to pull off a big surprise midway through the book and then tops that in the final few pages. He also provides at the end a list of clues with the page and the line on that page where they were given so that the reader can go back and verify them.

Editorial Notes: Quoting from Martin Edwards’ blog and a review he wrote of Obelists en Route:

   “‘Obelist’ was a word that King made up. He defined it in Obelists at Sea as ‘a person of little or no value’ and then re-defined it in Obelists en Route as ‘one who harbours suspicion’. Why on earth you would invent a word, use it in your book titles, and then change your mind about what it means?”

   Another online review can be found here at the Invisible Event blog. (He gives it Zero stars.)

      The Obelists series —

Obelists at Sea. Knopf 1933.
Obelists en Route. Collins 1934. No US publication.
Obelists Fly High. H. Smith 1935.
Careless Corpse. Collins 1937. No US publication.
Arrogant Alibi. Appleton 1939

   Lt. Lord makes a solo appearance in Bermuda Burial (Funk, 1941)

NANCY SPRINGER “Milk of Human Blindness.” Mr. Jefferson #1. First published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 1996. Probably never reprinted.

   There can’t be a lot of business in Lancaster PA – the heart of Amish country – to keep a private eye in business, so it could very well be that this particular story was not only the first but also the last recorded case for Mr. Jefferson, as his client in this tale calls him. If so, that’s a shame, because as an introduction, it works fine, but it also leaves the reader (me) wanting more.

   Jefferson, by the way, is black, and he has kind of a sour outlook on life, with most of it taken up by doing repo and process serving. His client in this case is a young girl named Sarah, maybe eleven, twelve years old, and having found $200 on the street, she wants Jefferson to find out who her real parents are. Unfortunately when she discovers who lost the money (not drug money, as she thought), she needs the money back.

   And she agrees to go to work for Jefferson, to pay off her bill. And Jefferson, on his part, finds that yes, indeed, he needs the help, being as he is, not nearly as up to date in the new world of computers as he should be. By the story’s end and between the two of them, they have solved her case, and they’re ready for another. I hope there was one, but alas perhaps not.

PostScript: Nancy Springer is far better known as a fantasy writer, with several novels to her credit, but she also has written a long series of young adult mysteries about Enola Holmes, the fourteen-year-old sister of the far better known Sherlock Holmes, some twenty years older. A movie adaption of one the books is said to be currently in production.