DRAGNET “The Big Lift.” NBC, 22 September 1955 (Season 5 Episode 4). Jack Webb (Sgt. Joe Friday), Ben Alexander (Officer Frank Smith), Dan Barton, Marian Richman, Kurt Martell, Alan Harris. Opening narration: George Fenneman; closing narration: Hal Gibney. Screenplay: John Robinson. Producer-director: Jack Webb.

   All of the famous hallmarks of the series were well-established by the time this episode was televised, early in the fourth season: the opening theme (!), the voiceover narration introducing the program (“The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”), the terse almost clipped dialogue throughout the story itself, and the closing remarks (“In a moment, the results of that trial.”). All of these elements were probably there from the very first episode, back on December 14, 1951, since the series had been transferred lock stock and barrel from a highly successful radio series: Dragnet on the radio had begun earlier in 1949, running to 1955, with reruns broadcast for two more years.

   I’ve not watched many of the early episodes since the the first series was on the air, so I’m not sure how common one aspect of this one was: Comic interludes! Examples: Friday and Smith are working out of Burglary and are extremely frustrated in coming up any kind of clues for a series of 17 recent break-ins. Joe Friday and his partner are sitting in a diner trying to order breakfast while being ragged by the guy on the other side of the counter (not knowing they are cops) about how the burglar is running circles around the entire police force.

   The wife of a recently robbed couple, when asked if she’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around before the theft, goes into a quiet mini-rant about how housewives are far too busy to take notice of such things. When another good citizen reports seeing a strange car cruising back and forth in front of his house, he also provides Friday and Smith with a license plate number. Turns out the car was a police car.

   One thing I missed in this episode is seeing the faces of actors I knew only from their voices I’d heard on the radio. The cast in this one is very good, but I recognized neither their names nor their faces.

   One last thought. Not only the cast was good, but also the direction and the overall production. I wonder how much time was spent in rehearsal to get everything running so smoothly and the dialogue in sync.

A traditional Irish song which means (as I understand it) “Ladies of Ireland.” The guitarist accompanying Sharon Corr is very good too.

STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP. PRC, 1946. Rosemary La Planche, Robert Barrat, Blake Edwards, and Charles Middleton. Written & directed by Frank Wisbar

FÄHRMANN MARIA. Pallas Film, Germany, 1936. Title translates to “Ferryman Maria.” Sybille Schmitz, Aribert Mog, Peter Voß, and Carl de Vogt. Written & directed by Frank Wysbar.

   The last German expressionist film before the Nazis took over, remade as a fitfully memorable little ghost story from the cheapest studio in Hollywood.

   To start with the remake, Charles “Ming” Middleton plays the ghost of ferryman Douglas, who was hanged on perjured testimony sometime before the film started. This, along with most of the rest of the plot, is conveyed in dull but cost-saving dialogue by cast members sitting in a studio mockup of a ferryboat being pulled in front of an obvious backdrop by Douglas’ successor, who scoffs dramatically when they conveniently remind him of Douglas’ dying promise to return and kill his persecutors and their descendants.

   Having brought the audience up to speed (if that word can be applied to this film) the B-movie Greek Chorus departs leaving the new ferryman to be confronted by Charles Middleton in fuzzy double exposure and swiftly dispatched.

   The dead ferryman’s replacement is his daughter-just-back-from-school Maria (Rosemary La Planche) whom the village elders tactfully or prudently refrain from telling about the local onus. When she forms an attachment for a Nice Young Man also under the curse (young Blake Edwards, no less) Middleton starts rattling his chains and the fight is on as Rosemary tries to put the ghost to rest and save the man she loves.

   Strangler in the Swamp is never very good, but it is at least consistently interesting. The studio-built swamp has a fine Gothic look to it, and the simple plot works rather nicely against this primitive backdrop. There’s also a well-judged (and incredibly cheap) scene where Rosemary runs through the town hounded by the ghost, and as she approaches each house, doors close in her face and lights go out.

   But the origin of Strangler is no less interesting than the film itself; it’s a loose remake of Fährmann Maria (1936) which Wisbar made in Germany just before coming to America. And the differences between the two films drop some interesting clues as to why Wisbar had to leave the country.

   In Fährmann, it’s not a vengeful ghost, but Death himself who preys on the little country village and kills its ferryman. Maria (Sybil Schmitz, a sensuous actress who also starred in Dreyer’s Vampyre) is a woman — possibly of questionable background, my German isn’t that good — who wanders into town looking for work and is hired to replace the ferryman by the kindly local Burgermeister. She quickly falls for a handsome young local, who falls back, but it seems he has a prior commitment with Death. And, as in the remake, Maria has to save him by herself.

   Standard Death-and-the-Maiden stuff so far, albeit photographed quite nicely on real locations, as opposed to Strangler’s set-bound atmospherics. But the kicker comes in Wisbar’s canny personification of Death.

   Death first appears as an elderly, lantern-jawed man in a priest’s cassock. But as the film progresses, this outfit subtly changes from scene to scene: death now wears a tunic with a high collar; then we notice flat epaulets and nipped-in waist; finally, the pants look more like riding breeches with jack boots.

   Any resemblance between Death’s eventual look and the fashion statement espoused by certain political groups sweeping to popularity in Germany in 1935 is understated, but there to be seen, particularly as Death is assisted in one scene by identically dressed men on white chargers, accompanied by military music. There’s even a telling moment when Death comes to the Village to take Maria. The villagers start to rally in outrage at losing their ferryman, but are ultimately cowed into submission.

   Obviously, a film like this wasn’t going to score a lot of points with the Powers that Were in the Reich, so Wisbar found it prudent to head west, where he found gainful employment at El Cheapo (pardon me, PRC) Studios till war’s end. Others here have noted his eventual success in Television, but his bottom-scrapers at PRC always seemed to me to have a haunting beauty sadly overlooked by film historians. Strangler in the Swamp has been called “PRC’s finest hour” but it’s actually just the most obvious example of the care and artistry Wisbar brought with him as a refugee to these shores.

LAURIE POWERS – Queen of the Pulps: The Reign of Daisy Bacon and Love Story Magazine. McFarland, paperback, September 2019.

   Have you ever received a book in the mail and immediately stopped what you were reading, stopped whatever you were doing and sat down and read the book? This is what happened when I received Queen of the Pulps. I had seen Laurie Powers work and do research on it for several years and finally here it is! She must of gotten sick and tired of me nagging her about the book and asking for progress reports.

   This book breaks new ground and stresses original research on the love and romance magazines. Recently there have been some excellent books about the pulps such as John Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction, Joseph Shaw and Black Mask (forthcoming from Altus Press/Steeger Books this November), and in a few months, Michelle Nolan’s book on the sport pulps. Many collectors have been saying that we live in the Golden Age of Pulp Reprints, well it looks like there is a Golden Age of Pulp Studies also.

   It’s exciting to realize that these books are not just run of the mill academic studies. They cover three of the greatest pulp editors: John Campbell, the greatest of the SF editors in the forties, Joseph Shaw, the greatest of the hard boiled detective pulp editors, and Daisy Bacon, the greatest of the love and romance pulp editors. Now all we need are books on Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, the greatest of the adventure pulp editors and Farnsworth Wright, the greatest editor of the fantastic and supernatural pulps.

   The book is a real beauty and very impressive looking. Laurie spared no expense and gathered over 80 photographs which are reproduced on high quality book paper and thus show up very well. She also has five color photos of Love Story covers. I like the way the photos are spread throughout the book and not just squeezed in a few pages. In the back of the book are around 300 chapter notes and footnotes documenting the facts, also an extensive bibliography and index. It is very obvious that this is a labor of love for Laurie and the excellent final results make all her hard work worth it.

   But in addition to the above, there is another reason why I love this book. Starting in 1972 I attended the yearly Pulpcon conventions where just about all the conversations centered around the hero pulps. Titles like The Shadow, Doc Savage, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Operator 5, etc. There also was some interest in science fiction and many of the old timers(all these great old pals now gone), loved Max Brand and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

   You might think this must have been a great time but for me, it was not. Though I ended up collecting just about all the hero pulps, I hated them with a passion. I know many of my collector friends will gasp in horror at such sacrilege, but I couldn’t stand the heroes and every attempt to read them defeated me because of the childish plots and dialog. At least with a love pulp you are dealing with a subject that makes the world go round. Love! But I positively disliked the silly Monk and Ham characters in Doc Savage and Bull and Nippy in G-8.

   So, in the early days of pulp fandom there was very little interest in other genres like detective, western, adventure, and sport fiction. And certainly there was absolutely no interest in collecting the love and romance pulps. Sure there were a couple lost souls like me, Digges La Touche, and even Steve Lewis. We picked up issues here and there over the years and now I guess I have a couple hundred Love Story issues without even trying.

   However, as the years and decades marched on, things began to change and collectors started to collect the other genres, the pulps that adults read and not just the hero pulps which were aimed at the teen-age boy market. I even did an informal survey in the seventies and eighties where I asked many non-collectors if they remembered the pulps. Many of the women remembered the love and general interest pulps and many of the men remembered and read Black Mask, Argosy, Adventure, Western Story, etc. When I directly asked them about the hero titles, the usual response was did I mean the “kid pulps”, or as one of my old time friends said “the magazines with the unreadable crap” (Harry–Damn it you said you would get back to me about the afterlife!).

   Now finally we have a book that back in the 1970’s I never thought would be published. It is not about the hero pulps, rehashing old tired comments but about one of the most successful editors, Daisy Bacon. For 20 years, 1928–1947, she edited Love Story which had the highest circulation of all the pulps, estimated to reach 600,000 per issue.

   Queen of the Pulps is not only about Daisy Bacon and Love Story, but also about editing in general at Street & Smith. Daisy edited seven other titles in addition to Love Story and though the main thrust of this book is about that magazine, Laurie Powers also discusses Daisy’s time editing Detective Story for most of the decade in the forties. She also covers her time as editor of the final issues of The Shadow and Doc Savage.

   It sounds like she enjoyed the change of pace from love to murder. For 25 years Detective Story had published a sort of bland and sedate detective story, just about ignoring the hard boiled style sweeping through the other quality detective titles like Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly. During this period, 1915–1940, the magazine avoided the tough, hard boiled fiction except for an occasional story from Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Cornell Woolrich, etc.

   But when Daisy Bacon took over as editor in 1941, Detective Story took on new life and she encouraged many of the writers from Black Mask and Dime Detective to write for Detective Story. Raymond Chandler, Dale Clark, T.T. Flynn, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Julius Long, D.L. Champion, Norbert Davis, John K. Butler, Day Keene, John D. MacDonald, and others all appeared once or twice.

   It’s obvious she wanted to make the stories tougher, and she got Carroll John Daly to write six novelets, Fred Brown to write nine shorts, William Campbell Gault to appear 14 times, and her best author during the forties, Roger Torrey. Torrey had 13 novelets, all starring Irish private eyes, and these stories are worth looking up because they represent his very best work. Torrey unfortunate had a severe drinking problem and drank himself to death around 1945. I read about his death in one of his short story collections and it’s a real sad story.

   Daisy Bacon’s reward for all this? She was fired in 1949 during the bloodiest day in pulp history as Street & Smith killed off all its pulp titles (the one exception for some reason being Astounding). Western Story, over 1250 issues—Gone! Detective Story, over a thousand issues–Gone! It seems that the president of Street & Smith hated the pulps and saw the future as slick women’s magazines. These slicks are so dated and worthless that just about no one collects them nowadays. But the Breakers love them because they cut out the slick ads and sell them to housewives and men to frame them in their basement bars or kitchens.

    What is this guy’s name? Allen Grammer, who was hired by the family to run Street & Smith, the first such outsider in almost a hundred years of publishing. When he came on board in 1938, he had no interest in the pulps and almost from the very beginning worked to get them out of circulation. Needless to say, he and Daisy did not get along and he got rid of her along with the pulp titles.

   On a more personal note, I became involved with the Grammer family. What’s the odds of a non-collector having two pulp cover paintings and moving right next door to a collector with a house full of pulp art? A billion to one? Will it happened to me. In the mid-1990’s an elderly retired music teacher moved next door and had an open house for the neighbors to get acquainted. As my wife and I walked through his house we were stunned to see two original cover paintings from Western Story hanging on the wall of the den.

   They both were from 1938 and painted by Walter Haskell Hinton. I immediately cornered my host and discovered that his name was Paul Grammer and he was the nephew of Allen Grammer. It seemed his uncle was the head executive at Street & Smith back decades ago and Paul Grammer’s father also had a high position. Eventually when Allen Grammer died, Paul inherited the pulp cover paintings. Several years later Paul gave in to my pleas and sold me the two paintings. Every time I look at the one I still have, I think of Paul and wish he still lived next door.

   Over the years I had several conversations with Paul about his infamous uncle and I sure wish Paul was still alive because I have even more questions now that this Daisy Bacon book is out. Paul once showed me a photograph of Allen Grammer sitting behind his desk at the Street & Smith offices. Behind him was a large pulp painting by N.C. Wyeth. I commented that the painting was now worth a million dollars and Paul said one day his uncle went into the office and the painting was gone. Someone had walked out with it. I wish I had talked Paul Grammer into letting me have the photo because I see that Laurie does not have one of Allen Grammer in the book. I suspect Laurie sympathized with Daisy and also dislikes him. Thus no photo! (Or maybe she could not get the rights to publish a photo.)

   So, for several years I watched Laurie got deeper and deeper into the life of Daisy Bacon. More than once Laurie traveled from California to New York and New Jersey. She discovered the old records, photographs, diaries, and various papers that Daisy had kept all her long life. On one trip she even discovered the love nest built by Daisy’s long time lover in the woods of New Jersey. Laurie even came across and now owns, the one painting that Daisy kept by Modest Stein. By the way, love pulp cover paintings are rare. I’ve only found two: one for Love Book and one for All Story Love.

   The book is full of fascinating details and stories about Daisy, her half sister, Esther Ford, her mother, and her lover. Laurie has told a suspenseful story worthy of being published in Love Story magazine. Of course the part about the secret lover would have to edited out of the story. It has all the pulp story ingredients: love, attempted suicide, secret lives, success, depression, and failure.

   If you read the pulps, buy the pulp reprints, or collect the old magazines, this book is a must buy. Price is $40 but it’s worth the cost. This gets my highest recommendation and can be bought on amazon.com or the McFarland Books website. If you attend Pulpadventurecon in Bordentown, NJ on November 2, 2019 Laurie will have copies for sale.

JOHN C. BOLAND “Marley’s Ghost.” Short story. Charles Marley #1. Published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2005. Not yet reprinted or collected.

   For someone who qualifies, I believe, as a Little Known Writer, John C. Boland certainly has been a very prolific one. He has, first of all, several dozen short stories in AHMM as well as EQMM, not only under his own name but also as by Max Gersh and James L. Ross. This plus more than a dozen full-length novels, beginning in 1991, some of them once again as by James L. Ross. (I do not know if he is related the thriller writer John Boland, who wote several dozen novels back between 1955 and 1970.)

   As for Charles Marley, who adventure “Marley’s Ghost” is his first recorded adventure, he is a retired CIA agent who seemingly can’t stay away from people he knows from his past. This includes Oleg Ossovsky, his counterpart in espionage back in the days of the old Soviet Union. The latter is now in New York and working on his memoirs, although Marley assumes he very well may have other irons in his fire.

   What’s really on Oleg’s mind now, however, is a fellow named Vlad Davidovich, whom he keeps bumping into, and whom Marley also remembers as a Russian pianist he was trying at one time to help defect. That the task did not work out was due to Oleg’s intervention, let us say.

   The tale that follows is a tough, complicated one, filled with the moody atmosphere of the Cold War, even at this late date. Besides the fact that he comes out on top in this debut story, sort of, we don’t learn a lot about Marley himself — he’s still somewhat of an enigma — but perhaps that changes over the course of the next eight stories, so far. Summing things up, though, a complete collection is in order, that’s what I say.

       The Charles Marley series —

Marley’s Ghost (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan/Feb 2005
Marley’s Package (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2007
Marley’s Woman (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 2007
Marley’s Havana (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 2011
Marley’s Revolution (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2011 [2012 Edgar Nominee]
Marley’s Rescue (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2012
Marley’s Winter (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2012
Marley’s Lover (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Apr 2015
Marley’s Mistress (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2019

LOREN ESTLEMAN – Edsel. Detroit #4. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996.

   My main complaint about this is that it isn’t an Amos Walker book. I’m sure Estleman is making entirely too much money with the Detroit series to go back to writing about old Amos, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing he would.

   Connie Minor, the Greek newspaper columnist who was the narrator of the first Detroit book, Whiskey River, has fallen on hard times in the intervening years. The mid-fifties find him a newspaperman no more, reduced to working as an advertising copywriter. His fortunes take a turn (I didn’t say what kind) when one of Henry Ford II’s (“the Deuce”) executives offers him the job of selling America on the company’s proposed new car that will become known as the Edsel.

   He takes the job, only to find his life still isn’t simple. He finds himself embroiled once again with gangsters and politicians, and trying to find out who ordered the attempted assassination of Walter Reuther.

   I said in these pages a long time ago that whatever type fiction Estleman chose to write, one thing remained constant: he was a storyteller. He still is. Probably how interesting you find this story will depend on how interesting you find the fifties. I went from a sixth-grader to a firefighter, so I found it very interesting.

   Estleman tells it with sot of a newsreel perspective and a caustic, semi-flip wit that goes down well. I wouldn’t say that any of the characters rather than Minor really came to life. Edsel is a quick and entertaining read, though perhaps not quite up to the first three in the Detroit saga. And nowhere close to as good as an Amos Walker.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe #1. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1939. Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #7, digest paperback, 1942; New Avon Library [#38], paperback, 1943. Movie photoplay edition: World, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted many times since. Film: Warner Bros., 1946 (screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman; director Howard Hawks; Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe). Also: United Artists, 1978 (screenwriter-director: Michael Winner; Robert Mitchum as Marlowe).

   It is difficult to imagine what the modern private eye story would be like if a forty-five-old ex-oil company executive named Raymond Chandler had not begun writing fiction for Black Mask in 1933. In his short stories and definitely in his novels, Chandler took the hardboiled prototype established by Dashiell Hammett, reshaped it to fit his own particular vision and the exigencies of life in southern California, smoothed off its rough edges, and made of it something more than a tale of realism and violence; he broadened it into a vehicle for social commentary, refined it with prose at once cynical and poetic, and elevated the character of the private eye to a mythical status — “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

   Chandler’s lean, tough, wisecracking style set the tone for all subsequent private-eye fiction, good and bad. He is certainly the most imitated writer in the genre, and next to Hemingway, perhaps the most imitated writer in the English language. (Howard Browne, the creator of PI Paul Pine, once made Chandler laugh at a New York publishing party by introducing himself and saying, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Chandler. I’ve been making a living off your work for years.”

   Even Ross Macdonald, for all his literary intentions, was at the core a Chandler imitator: Lew Archer would not be Lew Archer, indeed might not have been born at all, if Chandler had not created Philip Marlowe.

   The Big Sleep , Chandler’s first novel, is a blending and expansion of two of his Black Mask novelettes, “Killer in the Rain” (January 1935) and “The Curtain” (September 1936) — a process Chandler used twice more, in creating Farewell, My Lovely and The Lady in the Lake, and which he candidly referred to as “cannibalizing.”

   It is Philip Marlowe’s first bow. Marlowe does not appear in any of Chandler’s pulp stories, at least not by name: the first person narrators of “Killer in the Rain” (unnamed) and “The Curtain” (Carmody) are embryonic Marlowes, with many of his attributes. The Big Sleep is also Chandler’s best-known title, by virtue of the well-made 1944 film version directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Elisha Cook, Jr.

   On one level, this is a complex murder mystery with its fair share of clues and corpses. On another level, it is a serious novel concerned (as is much of Chandler’s work) with the corrupting influences of money and power. Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood, an old paralyzed ex-soldier who made a fortune in oil, to find out why a rare-book dealer named Arthur Gwynn Giger is holding his IOU signed by Sternwood’s youngest daughter, the wild and immoral Carmen, and where a blackmailing abler named Joe Brody fits into the picture.

   Marlowe’s investigation embroils him with Sternwood’s other daughter, Vivian, and her strangely missing husband, Rusty, a former bootlegger; a thriving pornography racket; a gaggle of gangsters, not the least of which is a nasty piece of work named Eddie Mars; hidden vices and family scandals; and several murders. The novel’s climax is more ambiguous and satisfying than the film’s rather pat one.

    The Big Sleep is not Chandler’s best work; its plot is convoluted and tends to be confusing, and there are loose ends that are never explained or tied off. Nevertheless, it is still a powerful and riveting novel, packed with fascinating characters and evocatively told. Just one small sample of Chandler’s marvelous prose:

   That passage is quintessential Chandler; if it doesn’t stir your blood and make you crave more, as it always does for this reviewer, he probably isn’t your cup of bourbon.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DAVE ZELTSERMAN “Archie on Loan.” Short story. Julius Katz & Archie Smith #9 (?). Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept-Oct 2016.

   Julius Katz, as you may already know, is a PI based in Cambridge MA who bears a more than passing remembrance to one Nero Wolfe in many ways but who is quite the opposite in others. He is athletic for one thing, but yet also rather lazy when taking on cases and often has to be prodded into taking on new ones by an assistant named Archie.

   Archie, however, is like no other detective you perhaps have ever encountered in a mystery story before. He’s an Artificially Intelligent microcomputer that Katz wears as a tiepin and with whom he is in constant contact. On request Archie can hack himself into almost any computer system anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second, the time often annotated. No worn out pair of gumshoes for this particular Archie.

   As it turns out — and this was probably not known before this story came along — Julius Katz has a sister named Julia who is an international spy. Her problem at the moment is that three attempts have been made on her life, and she does not know why. She needs Archie (whom she did not know about before), to not only learn why, but who, and stop him, or them.

   A key to this absolutely delightful case is an extremely rare copy of Our Mutual Friend, one inscribed by Charles Dickens himself. I don’t know if Julia Katz appears in any of the later Julius Katz and Archie tales, but she’s certainly an engaging character that I’d like to read about again. Overall, though, if you’re a fan of Rex Stout’s work, then I’m sure these tales (see below) will appeal to you as much as they have to me. Besides the sheer chutzpah of coming up with the characters themselves, the mysteries themselves are very well done as well.

       The Julius Katz & Archie Smith series [may not be complete] —

Julius Katz (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2009 (*)
Archie’s Been Framed (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2010 (*)
One Angry Julius Katz and Eleven Befuddled Jurors (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2012 (*)
Archie Solves the Case (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2013 (*)
Julius Katz and a Tangled Webb (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2014 (*)
Julius Accused (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 2014 (*)
Julius Katz and the Case of Exploding Wine (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2015
Julius Katz and the Giftwrapped Murder (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Dec 2015
Archie on Loan (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2016
Cramer in Trouble (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2017
Julius Katz and the Terminated Agent (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul/Aug 2017
Archie for Hire (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov/Dec 2018

       The Julius Katz Collection [paperback, 2014; contains the stories marked (*) above) plus “Julius Katz and the Case of a Sliced Ham,” which may be new]
       Julius Katz and Archie [novel; Kindle, 2014, paperback, 2018]

TOM MITCHELTREE – Blink of an Eye. Grant Reynolds #1. Intrigue Press, hardcover, 2004. No paperback edition.

   It’s always nice to get in at the top of a new series, especially a promising one, and here Tom Mitcheltree introduces an interesting new sleuth in Grant Reynolds, an American in Paris who investigates crimes involving American tourists before they are referred to the FBI for the Legal Attache at the American Embassy.

   It’s an interesting setup that has considerable leeway for the character as both detective and man.

   Reynolds is a former cop who quit after a tragic incident (nothing new there), a fine arts major, ex-Military Intelligence, and lawyer who has stumbled into a dream job in the City of Lights, albeit one that comes with multiple rules, like never carrying a gun, and working at the sometimes limited patience of the French police. Do something, but don’t actually be seen to have done anything, is the rule of the day.

   His first case, almost before he can get well started, involves the murder of the granddaughter of an American billionaire and the son of a Bolivian diplomat in a Paris alley.

   A simple enough case.

   Or so it seems.

   Reynolds introduces himself to the Maigret-like Inspector Gerard (I hate when Americans and the Brits insist on calling French Commissaires Inspectors, but they will do it) who is investigating the case.

   Granted the Maigret demeanor of Gerard and failing to call him a Commissaire put me a little off, but Mitcheltree soon overcomes that minor faux pas, thanks to Reynolds being a personable character, and a decent understanding of Paris that many fail in conveying. I do wish though American writers would understand not all French policemen are large men with mustaches. You would think they would have read one French mystery writer besides Simenon.

   Reynolds role puts him in an interesting position in that while still being a cop of sorts he has no more power than a private eye and no real legal standing, but still has access to the police and their investigations through Gerard who thankfully is an intelligent and capable policeman and neither comical nor colorful.

   As with any good crime novel, the fairly simple murder Reynolds wets his toes on proves to be far more complex and dangerous than he expected. An international hit man has killed the two young people and as Reynolds looks farther into the crime, he finds himself revisiting an old romance with a well-to-do young lady from his college days, and soon enough the Assassin has targeted Reynolds who has gotten too close, if he’s not quite sure to what.

   The mystery is good, there is a decent amount of suspense and a well done ending where Reynolds gets the upper hand, all adding up to a debut that, if not spectacular, is solid and shows some promise for the character. The writing is clean and literate, takes flight once in a while without being showy or pretentious, and the characters are well drawn and likable.

   I like this one better than you might think from the review. The writing is clean, the protagonist likable and interesting without being overdrawn, his angst believable but not beat over the reader’s head, and the elements are better handled than most debuts, plus Mitcheltree makes none of the mistakes so many American writers make in using a Parisian setting.

   It’s not merely that he understands the geography of the city, he gets the reality and the unreality of the city right, the ordinary day to day Paris as well as the legend. The last American writers to do half so well with Paris were Peter Stone in Charade, Marvin Albert’s Stone Angel series, and David Dodge. That’s pretty good company for any writer.

       The Grant Reynolds series —

1. Blink of an Eye (2004)
2. Death of a Carpenter (2006)
3. Crime of the Heart (2011)
4. The Conspiracy of Silence (2012)
5. Swan Song and Other Lullabies (2016)