JIM DAVIS “Gone Fishing.” Short story. Brad Carter #2. Published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November 2012.

   This one’s eleven pages long, but it reads so quickly, once you’re done, you’ll think you’ve read only a longish vignette. That’s a fact also probably true because the story itself is so quick and dirty, and well deserving of its placement in the Black Mask section of that particular issue of EQMM in which it appeared.

   As a PI Brad Carter ekes out a living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but when he’s hired by a prim and proper maiden aunt to find her nephew, wanted and on the run for rape and aggravated assault, the trail takes him deep into the Ozarks, from a biker bar to a meth lab way up in the hills. Any resemblance to the hillbillies of old, such as in the Li’l Abner comic strip, is purely illusional.

   The introduction to the story says that Jim Davis, the author, was planning on further adventures of Bradley Carter, who proves himself as a survivor a couple of times over in this one, but there was only one other, that being “Golf Etiquette” in the February 2011 issue of EQMM. That’s too bad. I enjoyed this one.

DAVID ROSENFELT – Bark of Night. Andy Carpenter #19. Minotaur Books, hardcover, July 2019.

First Sentence: Frank Salvio checked into the hotel under an assumed name, using fake identification.

   Truman, a healthy French bulldog, was left to be euthanized at the veterinary office where attorney and rescuer Andy Carpenter takes his dog. Truman is chipped, but the man who dropped him off is not his apparent owner. When Andy finds the owner has been murdered, it sets him off on an interstate investigation involving far more than one bulldog.

   The first thing to know is that, in spite of the cute dog on the cover, this is no cozy. Dead bodies abound. The other thing to know is that, in spite of their number, the murders aren’t described in gruesome detail.

   From the very beginning, the case is delightfully twisty, almost a bit too much so. Rosenfelt engages the reader and ensures one wants to know what happened as much as do the characters, and there are a lot of characters. This is one time when a cast of characters might have been helpful.

   The members of Andy’s team, all of whom are given good, succinct introductions, are quirky and enjoyable. Everyone should have a Marcus in their life — or maybe not. Most of all, there’s Andy. There’s something rather delightful about having a protagonist who is a picky eater, not a crack shot, or a boxing/martial arts expert but is, in fact, a bit inept, and admits it. Even when he tries to lose at a game, he accidentally wins.

   Andy’s, and Rosenfelt’s, expertise is the law. It is interesting learning how an investigation team goes through a location of interest,and these are the details which provide veracity to the plot. A well-written courtroom scene can provide tension. What is nice is that he explains the process and legalities along the way and that he writes very good dialogue— “Am I doing down for this?” he asks, the fear evident in his voice. “You’re sitting here in handcuffs, Joey. You’re already down. We’re about to start digging you out.”

   The explanation of what is behind all the deaths is a terrifying one, all the more because of its believability. The escalation of the plot’s timetable makes things exciting and tense. The only slight complaint might be that after everything which has occurred, the ending seemed too quick and the subsequent actions of the person behind it all seemed unlikely.

   Bark of the Night has more bodies than some small towns, yet very little actual violence. No, it’s not the best of the series, but Andy Carpenter fans will still find it an enjoyable read as much because the proceeds help support the Tara Foundation.

Rating:   Good.

   I’m doing better every day. Haven’t used OxyContin since I was in the hospital. Had to use a walker for about a week, but have been getting around with a cane for most of the past few days. Lots of nurses and various therapists have been stopping by, and I’ve been doing the exercises they’ve given me to do, and that has helped a lot, I’m sure. My daughter Sarah leaves for home in Illinois tomorrow, and I have followup visit with my doctor on Monday, but right now, I’m doing just fine.

RICHARD BARRE – The Innocents. Will Hardesty #1. Walker, hardcover, 1995. Berkeley, paperback; 1st printing, December 1997.

   I don’t know anything about Barre other than this is his first novel, and he had his own advertising agency. Michael Seidman [at Walker] is very high on him, for whatever that’s worth.

   Will Hardesty is forty-ish, a ’Nam vet and a PI who’s pretty much drunk his practce away because of a teenage son dead in an accident he blames himself fo And a marriage that’s slipping away from him. Happy days? Not.

   Then the skeletons of several children are discovered near Saddleback Butte, not too far away from his home south of Santa Barbara. A medallion found with the bones is enough to identify one of the dead children to his father, and Hardesty is asked to find the man who killed him. The children died many years ago, but their deaths will bring more, now.

   Well, Michael may have something here. This is one of the better first novels in the hardboiled crop of late. Hardesty is a refreshingly imperfect hero, not above lashing out when he’s hurt and not beyond making mistakes that others pay for.

   Barre’s rose is clean and straightforward, and he paces his story well through shifting viewpoints and third-person narration. The story is action-oriented rather than cerebral, but it’s done well and will hold your attention until the end. Barre is at work on a second Hardesty novel and I’ll look forward to it.

      The Wil Hardesty series —

1. The Innocents (1995)
2. Bearing Secrets (1996)
3. The Ghosts of Morning (1998)
4. Blackheart Highway (1999)
5. Burning Moon (2003)

CATHERINE L. STANTON “Multiple Submissions.” Short story. Sam Bellamy #2. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989.

   I’ve found that catching up on my short story reading has been a good way to fill some otherwise vacant time while recovering from my recent surgery. And of the ones I’ve enjoyed the most, many of them are of the relatively rare category, the traditional detective story, especially those having a recurring character in the leading role.

   Some of these series characters are extremely well known, such as those created by Edward D. Hoch. Some are rather obscure, such as Sam Bellamy in this one: his existence is not even known to the online Crime Fiction Index. Sam’s only earlier appearance was “The Teddy Bears’ Wake” (AHMM, August 1988), and there was not a third, which is a shame, because this second one is a couple of notches well above average.

   Sam is a skilled cabinetmaker by trade, an occupation I don’t remember a fictional sleuth ever having had before, but what such a job does is allow him to meet all kinds of people, including wealthier ones, and wealthy people are prone to having problems an amateur might be able to solve even more than the police.

   It also a plus to have an inquisitive nature about people, and that’s what helps Sam in this case of the murder of the current temporary director of this summer’s series of plays put on by a small Massachusetts drama company. Without going into details, and it would take another couple of paragraphs to do it well, I’ll just say that determining the killer requires some insight into what prods anyone to write a play — and hunger to see it performed — in the first place.

   The two Sam Bellamy stories were Catherine Stanton’s only contributions to the world of crime fiction. Based on this one, I have to say that I wish there had been more.

   One of the fun things about exploring the unlimited spaces of the free and wild parts of YouTube is the different Worlds that you can discover there.

   When most think of steampunk, they think of a small genre in fiction, but it is also a lifestyle for some. There are Steampunk conventions happening all over the world and while they may lack the crowds of Comic conventions the steampunk fans are the comic cons fans’ equal in passion.

         STEAMPUNK WORLDS FAIR 2015

   What exactly is steampunk depends on whom you ask. For me it is a genre of fiction where the culture features advanced technology powered by steam. Steampunk fiction is set in an alternative history or universe or post-apocalyptic world.

   But we are here for the music. Steampunk music style can range from epic adventure to humor and – if not an instrumental – often uses its lyrics to tell a detailed steampunk story.

   ABNEY PARK along with others such as THE COG IS DEAD and STEAM POWERED GIRAFFE exist beyond the music. While the bands release records and go on tour many prefer to perform stage musicals at Steampunk conventions. The bands have created stage names for each member, each with long and complex back-stories (check out their websites). These characters exist in comics, films, games, books, music videos, animation, stage plays, clothing and merchandise.

IMAGINARY BOY by ABNEY PARK (Album UNDER THE FLOOR, OVER THE WALL (2016) performed by Robert Brown (song and vocals), Skye Warren (guitar), Kristina Erickson (piano), and Derek Brown (bass))

   My favorite is Professor Elemental (Paul Alborough), a white English hip-hop comedian who always has time for tea. Using his time traveling trousers and donations from the public, the Professor did a film about his adventures through time and space as he searched for Jeffery his Orangutan butler.

   In the film the Professor visited many different places in time and space such as INN AT THE END OF TIME, a name-dropping song about the science fiction genre. The segment in the Old West was shot at a Steampunk convention and used volunteers for the cast.

         WEIRD WEIRD WEST

   To end this peek at a small part of Steampunk music is an opera, THE DOLLS OF NEW ALBION, written by Paul Shapera.

   THE DOLLS OF NEW ALBION is a four act musical featuring the McAlistar family and their lives in the city of New Albion. Following is the second song of the play.

NEW ALBION 1. Sung by Kayleigh McKnight.

DICK STODGHILL “A Deceitful Way of Dying.” Novelette. Jack Eddy #4. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989, Collected in The Jack Eddy Stories, Volume 1 (JLT-Charatan Publications, paperback, 2006).

   Between 1979 and his death in 2009, long time newspaper columnist Dick Stodghill was also a prolific writer of short stories, producing several dozen of them over those years. His only series character was a fellow named Jack Eddy, a PI working for the Wellington National Detective Agency back around 1937 or so.

   Eddy was based in Akron OH and lived in the same boarding house as the narrator of his stories, Abraham “Bram” Geary. The latter is the crime reporter for one of the local newspapers, and even though he resents Eddy for going out with their landlady’s daughter, whom he has worshiped from afar, he also does not want to miss the scoops that working with Eddy always produce.

   In this, their fourth case together of maybe 18 or 19 in all, most appearing in AHMM, a man who has been presumed dead for several months, having run his car straight into an oncoming train, turns up dead in another town some 40 miles over. Eddy is hired by the man’s insurance company, who has already paid off once. They don’t want to pay off twice.

   It takes quite a bit of detective work to unravel the complicated plot the killer has set up — and I’m not sure I followed the explanation completely — but the solidly constructed atmosphere of several working class towns in Depression-era Ohio is pitch perfect, in a style strongly reminiscent of Black Mask of that very same era: only semi-hardboiled, with a dash of humor.

   Let’s pretend we’re playing Jeopardy!, shall we? The category is Mystery Writers. Here’s the clue. This well-known crime novelist’s first short story appeared in January 1958, when he was nineteen, and today, more than sixty years later, he’s still active.

   The question, as every reader of this column should know, is: Who is Lawrence Block? In the PI world, which is all we’re concerned with here, his main claim to fame is the New York-based eye-without-a-license Matthew Scudder. Over the decades I reviewed many of the Scudder novels for the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat,but I’ve never covered the first three in the series. Isn’t it about time I did?

   At the beginning of The Sins of the Fathers (Dell pb #7991, 1976), Scudder is in a bar, meeting what, if he were licensed, we could call a potential client, a moneyed entrepreneur from upstate New York whose estranged daughter was recently slashed to death with a razor in the West Village. According to all the evidence the murderer was the young man with whom she shared a Bethune Street apartment, a minister’s son, who came out onto the street covered in her blood and confessed to the crime before hanging himself in his jail cell.

   The dead woman’s father, apparently on some sort of guilt trip, hires Scudder to find out more about the last years of her life. We then follow the unlicensed eye as he methodically gathers information, learning much about various people whose lives touched one or the other of the youthful dead. Finally he connects the dots to form a picture radically at odds with what seems to have happened.

   “The Scudder series was conceived as a series and contracted for as a series,” Block told interviewer Ernie Bulow, adding that the first three novels about the character were written “in ’74 or ’75—or maybe they were all in ’74, I’m not sure.” Ross Macdonald was still alive at the time but near the end of his career, and Dell, the original publisher of the series, promoted Block’s protagonist as “New York’s answer to Lew Archer.”

   The comparison makes some sense. Both Macdonald in his later novels and Block in his first Scudder novel deal centrally with dysfunctional families, and both the early Scudder and the late Archer are in some sense psychiatrists manqués. But as we follow Scudder’s information-gathering we’re also reminded of Hammett, especially of the longer Continental Op stories like “The Girl with the Silver Eyes.”

   There is, however, a huge difference. The Op’s step-by-step investigations tend to morph into violent action scenes whereas, at least in The Sins of the Fathers , there’s no shadowy “player on the other side” determined to prevent the protagonist from learning the truth and therefore no violence, except for the scene in Chapter 12 where Scudder momentarily becomes a Mike Hammer figure, breaking the fingers of a teen-age mugger’s right hand.

   The scene is irrelevant to the plot and may have been inserted simply because Block or the publisher decided there had to be violence somewhere in the book.

   That would explain the violence but wouldn’t account for the pervasive element that makes The Sins of the Fathers all but unique in PI fiction: religion. The title comes from a number of Biblical verses—Deuteronomy 5:9-10, Exodus 20:5-6, Numbers 14:18—on the theme that the fathers’ sins are visited upon the children.

   Then in the book’s first paragraph we find: “[T]he full effect of his face was as a blank stone tablet waiting for someone to scratch commandments on it.” In the same scene Scudder reminds us that “Cain said he wasn’t Abel’s keeper” and proceeds to explain to his potential client why he quit the NYPD after fifteen years.

   As he explains a few pages later, his quitting had nothing to do with religion:

   Why then did Block throw in that religious reference? Obviously because it was meaningful to him.

   At the end of the chapter Scudder shares with us one of the habits he picked up since leaving the force: ;

   Later, when he interviews the minister who was the dead boy’s father, their dialogue is filled with religious allusions:

   In Chapter 14, near the end of the novel, Scudder picks up a Lives of the Saints book he keeps in his hotel room—name one other PI in fiction who’d be likely to have that sort of volume handy!—and recounts for us the story of St. Maria Goretti, who chose to be stabbed to death rather than submit to rape, and of her killer who after 27 years in prison knelt beside the girl’s mother to receive Communion. “I always find something interesting in that book,” he says, although its relevance to the plot remains, dare I say it, a mystery.

    Just one page later, sipping bourbon-laced coffee in a bar, he reflects on the start of the chain of events he’s become involved in. “Maybe it was Eve’s fault, messing around with apples. Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil….” In Chapter 15, just before exposing the murderer, he tells the story of the akedah, Abraham’s obedience to God’s demand that he offer his only son Isaac as a human sacrifice, an allusion that is definitely relevant. And, just before the end of the novel, Scudder tells his adversary, whose suicide he’s about to enable, that he regards suicide as a sin:

   For one who has no religion, Scudder certainly has a lot to say about the subject. The religious dimension is less important in the later novels about him, although he continues his tithing habit and also makes a practice of attending the so-called Butchers’ Mass with his friend the stone killer Mick Ballou.

   But religion is only one fascinating aspect of The Sins of the Fathers . Another is alcohol. Clearly Scudder has a drinking problem, precipitated by the same incident that caused him to leave the NYPD and his wife and young sons and burrow into a shell. But he’s not an alcoholic. We have his word for it:

   Eventually he’ll identify as an alcoholic and join AA, which figures as prominently in some later Scudders as religion does in this one.

   And there’s yet a third recurring theme: vigilantism. In Chapter 14, right after telling us about Maria Goretti, Scudder is discussing his present case with Trina, his barmaid buddy and casual sex partner, when he suddenly changes the subject to a crime he’d investigated back in his days as a cop, the rape and brutal murder of a 20-year-old woman.

   Scudder and his partner knew instinctively who was guilty but he’d covered himself too well. “…[W]e knew he did it, see, and it was driving us crazy.” Scudder’s partner wanted to “kill him and set him in cement and drop him somewhere in the Hudson.” Scudder, however, “thought of something better.” He framed the murderer as a major heroin dealer and had him put away for 10 to 20 years. In the third year of his sentence “he got in a grudge fight with another inmate and got stabbed to death.”

   Instantly, if we know our Cornell Woolrich, we’re reminded of one of his darkest Noir Cop stories, “Three Kills for One” (Black Mask, July 1942; collected in Night and Fear, 2004). Whether Block was familiar with this story remains unknown but, if he wasn’t, he reinvented it, especially in his Edgar-winning story “By the Dawn’s Early Light” (Playboy, August 1984; collected in Some Days You Get the Bear, 1993), which he later expanded into the Scudder novel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986).

   Far more often than most other private eyes, except of course for Mike Hammer and his pedissequi (which means followers in another’s footsteps. God how I love that word!), Scudder goes outside the law to obtain justice or revenge or closure or whatever you want to call it. In some of the later Scudder novels we find Block turning handsprings as he works out new ways for his protagonist to exact private vengeance. William Ruehlmann’s Saint with a Gun came out in 1974, two years or so before Scudder’s debut, but if the book had been published in the late Seventies or the Eighties it would certainly have taken account of Block’s protagonist as one of the more serious specimens of what Ruehlmann called “the unlawful American private eye.”

   I was planning to cover all three of the earliest Scudders in a single column but, having gotten carried away by the first, I’ll need to reserve the other two for next month. Please join me then. And if you’re going to the Bouchercon in Dallas, feel free to say hello to me. I’ll be the old bum with the cane.

NICHOLAS FREELING – Lady Macbeth. Henri Castang #10. Andre Deutsch Ltd, UK, hardcover, 1988. No US edition.

   I’ll be honest, I am now, and have been since his first book, a Nicholas Freeling fan. I devoured the Van der Valk novels, one of my favorite modern mystery novels is King of the Rainy Country, mourned when he killed off Van der Valk, took solace in the two books about Arlette, Van der Valk’s French widow, and was doubtful when he returned with French cop Henri Castang (“A cop, you know, shouldn’t allow himself to think much.”) of the national Police Judiciaire.

   After all, Castang’s artist wife Vera was a Czech, just as Dutch Van der Valk’s wife had been a fish out of water Frenchwoman in the Netherlands. Castang was another good cop of a certain age, and perhaps only the presence of his mentor Richards really differentiated that much from Van der Valk. Why had he bothered to kill off Van der Valk for a slightly younger clone?

   It took about three books before I began to see why. Castang freed Freeling in the same ways Van der Valk had begun to limit him. Even late in the series, with Europe changing and Castang and the PJ now part of the European Union it was obvious he was a better and deeper character, if he never quite got the credit for it.

   Lady MacBeth not only gives us another fine mystery, it also gives us Castang as part time narrator of the novel, not just the focal point, a welcome chance to hear his voice directly for long time fans. And it adds a bonus.

   The plot begins with the most ordinary of events. Friends of Castang ask his help when the female member of a seemingly perfect couple goes missing, and the friends in question are Arthur and Arlette Davidson (He’s nice; like his wife; I like them both. They’re both a pest. She, particularly.), yes, that Arlette, whose taste for solving mysteries hasn’t faded. She and Arthur are among the other narrators.

   Castang sort of meets Van der Valk. (*)

   Forgive a brief geek out.

   Back to our story, Guy and Sibillle are neighbors and friends of the Davidsons. They seemed a perfect couple, he extremely nice, she strong and smart (Sibille was a fiercely proud woman. Also ambitious, tenacious, hard if you like and self-willed.). On vacation to the Voges, a mountainous district where the impoverished castle Sibille grew up in was, the two argued and Sibillle, according to Guy, demanded he stop, got out of the car, walked into the trees, and has not been seen since. He returned home expecting her return. Time has passed and she has not shown up. Arlette suspects murder.

   Castang, now Commissaire Castang, suspects a domestic quarrel and a stubborn wife, but agrees to pacify Arthur and Arlette (Arthur is certainly meant to be Freeling himself) by making a few inquiries. After all it could be murder.

   Or something much much worse.

   Mysteries often begin with small seemingly unimportant matters. Not with murders of great import, but some small matter like an unresolved quarrel and haughty wife who may just have walked out despite of all the outward appearances. Castang, Arlette, neither of them can imagine where this simple domestic drama is going to lead.

   Granted Freeling does not write direct simple to the point prose. He ambles around the point a bit, takes seemingly unrelated tangents, indulges in stream of consciousness styling here and there, notes small details of life, and somehow manages to make all that painfully suspenseful always steering you back on course to revelations you never expected, to violence that comes from human frailty, but is no less shocking for it when it involves someone caught up in what one Freeling character calls “awful moral righteousness.”

      Subtly, and with great skill as a writer, and as a master at misdirection, he carries you along in the narrative to the shocking ending, to something much more than domestic violence, and much darker and closer to today’s headlines, always in the capable human and humanistic hands of the likes of Castang and Arlette, not triumphant in unraveling the mystery, merely lost in the complexity of human needs.

      —

(*)   Van der Valk and Patricia Moyes’ Henry and Emily Tibbet exchanged crossovers back in their series.

C. FRASER-SIMSON – Footsteps in the Night. Methuen, UK, hardcover. 1926,. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1927. Film: ATP, 1931; released in the UK as A Honeymoon Adventure (with Benita Hume and Peter Hannen, co-screenwriter: John Paddy Carstairs).

   My first thought when I picked this off the shelf to read was that that the title sounded familiar. The same as one of the early Hardy Boys adventures I read when I was young, maybe? I also did not recognize the name of the author, nor do I imagine that many of you reading this do either. (But I’ve been wrong in making statements such as this before, and to my regret, and I should stop making them.)

   It turns out that the author was the second wife (nee Cicely Devenish) of English composer Harold Fraser-Simson, noted for his many works of light music, including musical comedies, and setting children poems to music, especially those of A. A. Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame).

   There is not a lot of mystery involved in this book. It is an out-and-out thriller from beginning to end, one in which the villain is known to Peter Martin, one of the book’s two young married protagonists, almost as soon as his villainy begins.

   When a book begins with a husband being chided by his wife, in this case, the boyishly beautiful Eve Martin, for shutting her completely out of his professional affairs, you just know that something is going to happen to prove how right she is, and how wrong he was.

   They are vacationing in Scotland before Peter has to present some essential papers to a conference in London, when he is unexpectedly called away, leaving her alone is their rather large manor home. Due to a mixup, he does not have the papers with him, and when his abductors discover that he does not have them, they realize that it is Eve who is their real target.

   Hence the tale, told alternately between the predicaments and perils our intrepid married couple fall into, all of which constitute the entirety of the book. I enjoy these kind of stories, maybe more than I really ought to, but even I had to cringe a bit when one especially narrow escape for Peter occurs when the carriage is riding in with his captors crashes and overturns, allowing him, as the only one conscious, to make his way to a final reunion with Eve,

   I apologize if I’ve given too much away. I hope it won’t spoil too much of your pleasure in reading this, if indeed it is your cup of tea and if it ever finds its way into your hands.