A. E. W. MASON – At the Villa Rose. Inspector Gabriel Hanaud #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1910. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1910. Serialized in nine parts in The Strand Magazine, beginning December 1909, as “Murder at the Villa Rose.” Reprinted many times, including Scribner’s Crime Classics, US, paperback, 1979, as Murder at the Villa Rose. Filmed four times: At the Villa Rose (silent, 1920), At the Villa Rose (1930), Le mystère de la villa rose [The Mystery of the Villa Rose] (in French, 1930), At the Villa Rose (1940). Also produced as a stage play (London, 1920).

   A classic, as the Scribner’s paperback suggests? Consider the date it was first published, 1910, and here it is, back in print again. How many other books published in 1910 can you think of that you can say that about? And how many people of good taste must have read it by now? If it’s a classic, it will have had to have earned the title.

   It is dated. If it were to be submitted to a publisher as newly written, there’s no doubt a revision would be demanded. Reading the first chapter relieves some fears, however — the symptoms of old age are there, but the book has not yet succumbed to the afflictions of rigor mortis.

   In that first chapter, with precise pictorial writing, Mason described the first meeting of Mr. Ricardo with Mlle. Celie. She is on the verge of melancholy hysteria and despair outside a French casino; nest she is being soothed by the wealthy young English inventor, Mr. Wetherall.

   On the very next night, Celie’s benefactress, whose companion she is, is robbed and murdered. The girl stands accused, at least of complicity. All the evidence, as well as the testimony of the maid, points directly to her. Nor does her background as a stage-variety spiritualist speak well on her behalf.

   Mr. Wetherall asks that the famed M. Hanaud of the Paris Sûreté be called in. Hanaud is not only a gifted detective, but he is also a forerunner of all those other masterminds who know, or guess, and do not tell. Of course I know that Conan Doyle often allowed Holmes to lapse into this poor excuse for a storytelling device, but at least Holmes never insulted Watson, at least not directly, nor did he ever ridicule him for poorly asked questions, as Hanaud so badly treats Ricardo.

   Speaking of whom — on pages 79-80 of the paperback edition Ricardo very nicely summarizes the eight salient features he sees in the mystery. Included in the replies Hanaud later makes to the questions that Ricardo happens to ask is one based on one of those very points. The latter (as a gentleman) accepts the rebuke when Hanaud loudly suggests that Ricardo has foolishly missed a vital point of the case.

   The mystery is solved by page 145. The remainder of the books recounts that final version of the reconstructed crime, and Hanaud’s feeble attempt to explain the guesses in deduction that he made.

   Well, as you can see, I was already biased. This may be too harsh a judgment, and by no account should you take this to mean that Hanaud’s version is impossible. It’s just that the facts, as described, I submit there is no reader who would have come to the same conclusion as Hanaud did by guesswork, pure and simple.

   A classic? From a historical point of view, perhaps so. As a mystery, it’s an outdated one.They just don’t write them like this any more.

   Andrea Motis (born May 9, 1995) is a Catalan jazz singer and trumpeter who has been performing since the age of seven. In this video she is backed by the Joan Chamorro Quartet (Joan Chamorro double bass, Ignasi Terraza piano, Josep Traver guitar, Esteve Pi drums, Perico Sambeat alto sax).

NO MAN’S WOMAN. Republic Pictures, 1955. Marie Windsor, John Archer, Patric Knowles, Nancy Gate, Jil Jarmyn, Richard Crane, Fern Hall, Louis Jean Heydt, Percy Helton. Screenplay by John K. Butler, based on a story by Don Martin. Director: Franklin Adreon.

   Marie Windsor’s movie-making career was perhaps never destined to climb into the A-film category, but to me and many people I know, she was the Queen of the B’s, no doubt about it. She has top billing in this one, and she deserved it, even though she’s the kind of witch (“no matter how you spell it”) who’s destined to be killed off buy someone she’s crossed, and badly, soon after the halfway point.

   As Carolyn Grant, she’s the wife, for example, of a man (Suspect #1) who’s no longer in love with her, and in fact they live apart, and who would like to have a divorce to marry someone else (Suspect #2). He can’t meet her demands, however: alimony plus a six-figure additional payout. The husband’s father (Suspect #3) offers to meet her demands, but husband refuses to use his money that way.

   Carolyn meanwhile has her eye on the fiancé (Suspect #4) of the girl (Suspect #5) who works for her in her art shop. After insinuating her way into breaking up the engagement, add two more people would would be happy to see her dead.

   And that’s not all. Her lover of sorts is a local art critic/newspaper columnist [Suspect #6] who’s been plugging her art shop, to their mutual advantage, until he’s found out and fired. At which point Carolyn summarily boots him out of her life, laughing happily as she does so.

   All of which makes the first half of the movie a lot of fun to watch and await the inevitable. On the other hand, after Carolyn’s death, all of the built up tension is gone, and the movie turns into a straightforward murder mystery. It’s not a bad one as far as murder mystery movies go, and in fat it’s actually a very good one. The problem is, without Marie Windsor’s memorably brassy man-stealing performance to continue watching, anything that follows would have to have been, in comparison, a ten-story letdown.

JOHN COLLIER “Evening Primrose.” Short story. First published in 1940. Collected in Presenting Moonshine (Viking Press, 1941) and more famously in Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951; Bantam 1953). Reprnted many times. Adapted as both radio (three times on Escape, CBS) and television plays , the latter a musical by Stephen Sondheim (ABC Stage 67, November 1966).

   I read this again last night for the first time since High School and delighted in it on several levels.

   First, Collier’s prose, rich in lines like, “I felt like a wandering thought in the dreaming brain of a chorus girl down on her luck.” and “Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.”

   All in service of Collier’s dark whimsy as starving poet Charles Snell takes up residence in a stately old Department Store of Byzantine aspect (“Silks and velvets glimmered like ghosts, a hundred pantie-clad models offered simpers and embraces to the desert air.”) only to find it already haunted by the Living. Or the nearly-living, once-humans like he, who permeated themselves into the store years and ages ago, and gradually lost touch with their own humanity.

   The one exception is Ella, a foundling adopted by the reigning Grande Dame of this society and used as a servant. Still human and in her teens, she has fallen in love with the Night Watchman, much to the chagrin of our poet-narrator. And when discovered, her love raises the venomous ire of the nearly-living, who summon The Dark Men, setting up a conflict that pits our narrator and the Night Watchman against…

   It’s a short tale, perhaps a dozen pages, but Collier packs a whole sub-world into it, reawakens the spirit of those grandiose old emporiums (for those who remember them) and makes it real, even as he sketches out characters who – well, “come alive” doesn’t really fit here, so I’ll just say they become convincingly inhuman under his skillful pen.

   Even better, Collier touches on the alienation common to fantasy readers, evokes it, embraces it and rejects it without wasting a single comma. I remember being profoundly moved as a teenager by Evening Primrose’s Truth. As an adult I was just as moved by its Beauty.

THE SHADOW “The Man Who Murdered Time.” Mutual Radio Network. January 1, 1939. William Johnstone, Agnes Moorehead. Sponsor: B. F. Goodrich Tires.

   In this, the first adventure of The Shadow (aka Lamont Cranston) in 1939, the man who can control men’s minds so that they cannot see him, deals with a mad scientist (there is seldom any other kind on the radio) who has invented a time machine. Dying of an incurable disease, he has by the flip of a switch found a way to set the entire world back 24 hours so to relive the day, December 31, over and over again.

   And thus the series delves deeply into science fiction, rather than a pure detective mystery. I always find it interesting to see how writers try to explain their time travel stories to mass audiences; this time the analogy is to a railroad track that time travels down. The scientist in this one simply bends the track into a circle, so the day repeats itself, with no one the wiser.

   Except for Lamont Cranston, whose powers of “invisibility” from the Orient also mean the scientist’s machine does not affect him; or at least he is fully aware that the time has curled back on itself. And because Margot Lane is dancing in his arms at the time, she also is aware of what is happening.

   All this makes for a story that’s pure nonsense,of course, but it’s one that’s still very entertaining to listen to, perfectly timed for a New Year’s Day broadcast.

  FRED VARGAS – This Poison Will Remain. Commissaire Adamsberg #7. Harvill Secker, hardcover, August 2019. Penguin, trade paperback, 2019. Translator: Siân Reynolds.

First Sentence: Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, sitting on a rock at the quayside, watched the Grimsey fishermen return with their daily catch as they moored their boats and hauled up their nets.

   Spider bites can kill. But three elderly men, living in one area, killed by a small reclusive spider seems more than accidental to a member of Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg’s team. As information is gathered, Adamsberg decides to investigate, a decision that causes a rift within his team. Running an unauthorized investigation and possibly losing his best friend and right-hand man is a risk, but seeking justice is worth it.

   What an interesting opening to have the protagonist, the former commissaire of the Paris Serious Crimes Squad, on a quay in Iceland. Adamsberg’s respite doesn’t last long before he is called back to his team who knows him well— “Lieutenant Veyrenc … knew that when the commissaire was in charge, the squad was like a tall sailing ship, sometimes with a brisk wind behind it, other times becalmed and its sails drooping, rather than a powerful speedboat churning up torrents of spray.”

   For those who have read previous books in the series, there is a feeling of coming home. For those who have not, Vargas conveys the sense of the team members and their loyalty, from the very start. And what a quirky team it is, filled with affection and respect, right down to the cat and Mathias, a character from her “The Three Evangelists” series. It’s interesting seeing Adamsberg go through the case and the evidence with the team, which adds veracity to the story. The verbal exchanges often make one smile— “It’s called Le Curé de Tours, The Priest of Tours.” “Thank you,’ said Estalère warmly…’Still Balzac didn’t bust a gut making up the title, did he?’ ‘Estalère, one doesn’t say of Balzac that “he didn’t bust a gut”.’

   As an historian and an eukaryotic archaeologist Vargas wrote a definitive work on the bubonic plague, and her knowledge certainly contributes to the story’s plot. There is certainly nothing usual or ordinary about this case to which Adamsberg is attracted, as well as the realism of having the squad working more than the one case. There are very good twists and an escalation in the depth of the crimes involved and in the tension within the team. Yet it is all the characters, which are the core of the story, including Louise Chevier and Adamsberg’s brother, a revelation in his own life, and the return of the imagery of a ship, which keeps us immersed in the story. Vargas plays fair with the reader. As Adamsberg begins to put the pieces together, so may we.

   It is very difficult to quantify Vargas’ work. She takes one into the world of the best, most unique police squad one will ever find although some similarities may be made to Christopher Fowler’s “Bryant and May” team.

   With This Poison Will Remain, Vargas has created a story filled with delightful imagery, a unique plot, and a truly touching ending. For those who like the unusual and quirky, reading Vargas can be addictive.

Rating: Excellent.

KEEPING MUM. Isle of Man Film – Azure Films – Tusk Productions / Entertainment Film Distributors, UK, 2005. Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Patrick Swayze, Tamsin Egerton, Toby Parkes, Liz Smith. Screenplay: Richard Russo & Niall Johnson, based on a story by the former. Director: Niall Johnson.

   A couple of months ago I saw a French film from 2000, With a Friend Like Harry, about a psycho who insinuates himself into a family. then “helps them” by killing anyone he perceives as their enemies. Imagine my surprise to find the same plot played for laughs — and played quite well — in Keeping Mum, which I recommend if you ever think back to those old Ealing comedies like Lady Killers and Kind Hearts and Coronets where murder was done with such quiet panache as to seen amusing and even tasteful.

   Mum centers around Kristine Scott-Thomas as the beleaguered wife of bemused country ,minister Rowen Atkinson, mother of a libidinous teenage daughter and a bullied son, and sex-object of sleazy lothario Patrick Swayze. Into her chaotic life housekeeper Maggie Smith descends like a lethal Mary Poppins with a perfectly simple philosophy for happiness: kill anyone who gets on your nerves.

   Writer-director Niall Johnson handles this thing with the necessary light touch — he recycles the cell-phone gag from With a Friend Like Harry to highly amusing effect — and the players are competent and sometimes inspired. Scott-Thomas as the wide-eyed adulteress reminded me touchingly at times of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. Give this one a look if you enjoy the gentle irony of British Humour at its best.

ROADBLOCK. Pilot episode, 1958. MCA-TV/Revue. Later shown on (Heinz) Studio 57 as “Getaway Car,” 29 March 1958 (Season 4, Episode 19, in first-run syndication). Michael Connors, John McIntyre, Wallace Ford, Olan Soule, Irene James. Teleplay: Fredric Brady, based on the story “The Homesick Buick” by John D. MacDonald (EQMM, September 1950). Director: Earl Bellamy.

   The only clue the California cops have to catch a gang of bank robbers who made their getaway in separate automobiles is by cross-referencing the locations of the stations the radio of one of the cars was preset to. The driver himself is dead, with no ID on him, having been shot while driving away.

   I don’t get it. VIN’s have been around since 1954, and the car didn’t look older than that, but maybe it was. No matter. The rest of the case is based on faulty deductions, luck and pure guesswork. No wonder this pilot episode of a proposed new series, sort of a early precursor to CHiPs, went nowhere fast.

   A young Michael Connors plays a special motorcycle-riding state investigator in this one, young and very earnest. Most of the other roles are played by old-timers who could do short plays like this in their sleep.

      —

Note: Michael Shonk also reviewed this busted pilot a while ago on this blog. You can read his comments here.

JOHN LAWRENCE “Broadway Malady.” Short story. Lt. Martin Marquis #1. First publisheded in Dime Detective Magazine, February 1937. Collected in The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1. (Altus Press, 2014); introduction by Ed Hulse.

   This is the first in a series of 26 tales written by veteran pulp writer John Lawrence about the redoubtable Lt. Martin Marquis, the so-called “Marquis of Broadway,” and the gang of men he used to keep law and order in Manhattan’s famed strip of brightly lit theatres and night clubs in the 1930s and (mostly) pre-war 40s. All of them appeared in Dime Detective. The last would have been appeared in 1942, butr one last one was finally published in 1948.

   Always flashily dressed, the dapper Marquis was actually little more than a criminal himself, if not an out-and-out gangster, nor were the policemen in his squad any better, and maybe even worse. . Their methods were crude but effective. In “Broadway Malady,” however, one particular overly ambitious night club owner makes the mistake of crossing him, to his lasting regret only a few pages later.

   It seems as though the latter has taken a liking to a beautiful young singer who is in love instead with a bandleader whom the Marquis has taken under his wing. When the former is found beaten up rather considerably, the Marquis takes it personally.

   What’s most striking about this story, even more than its setting — what major thoroughfare of its era was more famous than Broadway? — the rather standard plot, is the terse, understated way in which it’s told. I think “Broadway Malad” comes as close to matching the subtext of Dasheill Hammett’s tales than almost any of the latter’s would-be imitators. Other writers may steal Hammett’s plots, but very few of them seem ever to master the essence of how he told his terse, hard-bitten tales.

   Or in other words, there is almost as much to be read between the lines in “Broadway Malady” as there is story itself. Lawrence makes no concession to the reader. I can’t imagine many getting to the end of this tale without having to go back to see what they missed. When the pieces finally fit together, and they will, the light goes on.

   Chandler is easy to imitate. Hammett less so. It’s a pleasure to read a story that’s so solidly told in the latter’s manner. There are now only 25 more stories of the Marquis left for me to read. Luckily two thick volumes of his “Complete Cases” have recently been published by Altus Press, making up just over half the run. More, I hope, are on the way.

JERRY KENNEALY – Polo in the Rough. Nick Polo #4. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1989. Speaking Volumes LLC, paperback, 2013.

   Nick Polo is yet another San Francisco PI. This, his fourth recorded case, takes him to Carmel as a bodyguard for a writer who specializes in uncovering dirt those in political power would rather stay buried. What he’s working on now involves the Shah of Iran.

   And all the millions of dollars that left the country with him. Kennealy is said to be a working PI himself, which may explain why the writing is occasionally straight from the cliché closet, while the detecting is strictly high-tech state-of-the-art: Computer databases, mail-order supply houses, and all.

   Unfortunately Polo is not much help to his client, and the ending is as flat as yesterday’s two-day-old beer.

      The Nick Polo series —

1. Polo Solo (1987)
2. Polo Anyone? (1988)
3. Polo’s Ponies (1988)
4. Polo in the Rough (1989)
5. Polo’s Wild Card (1990)
6. Green With Envy (1991)
7. Special Delivery (1992)
8. Vintage Polo (1993)
9. Beggar’s Choice (1994)
10. All That Glitters (1997)
11. Polo’s Long Shot (2017)