DIAMOND MEN. Lions Gate, 2000. Robert Forster, Donnie Wahlberg, Bess Armstrong, Jasmine Guy. Screenwriter-director: Dan Cohen.

   This a movie with a lot of facets to it, and I can’t think of a better word to use. What it is at the beginning, is a road film. After having had a heart attack and no longer insurable, a long time diamond salesman by the name of Eddie Miller (Robert Forster) is forced to show his replacement, Bobby Walker, the ropes (Donnie Wahlberg).

   It does not go well. Forster is in his mid-50s, laid back, likes jazz and quiet motels at night. Bobby is young, brash (ultra brash) and likes a lot of night life (girls picked up in bars).

   But then, not too surprisingly, it turns into a buddy film. If two men sit next to each other in the front seat of a car for miles on end, taking the same sales route through central Pennsylvania over and over again, they begin to talk to each other and reveal things about themselves, no matter how opposite in personality they are. Things they certainly wouldn’t bring up on their first day together, which goes disastrously bad.

   Eddie’s wife died several years ago. They had a happy marriage, and Eddie has not had a date with a woman since. Bobby decides to do something about that. This does not go well, but Bobby persists, and the film now transforms itself from a raunchy-ish sex film to a romantic one. What Eddie does not know, though, is that Katie (Bess Armstrong), the woman Bobby has found for him has a — shall we say — past.

   At which point the movie decides to go in a totally different direction, one that I won’t tell you about because I have to leave something for you to see on your own. And while this is a very minor film, by Hollywood blockbuster standards, I think you should. See it yourself, that is.

   And one of the major reasons why is the presence of Robert Forster in this film. He has one of those faces that looks lived in, with the ability to make you know what he’s thinking by simply watching his face, maybe even more than by the words he’s saying. I don’t know how it does it, but he does.

   Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile has been around for a while — her first album came out in 2005 — but while she’s had critical success, only a small number of dedicated fans have been following her career. That all changed last Friday when she was nominated for six Grammy awards in 2019.

   Here she is in May of last year, live at the Boston Calling Music Festival at Harvard University. I’m convinced. She’s going to sell a lot of her music from now on. See what you think.

ROBERT GALBRAITH – Lethal White. Cormoran Strike #4. Mulholland Books, hardcover, September 2018.

   That’s the question Robin Ellacott, secretary and operative of Cormoran Strike’s small detective agency asks herself on her wedding night when she learns her former boss wants her back after they have made national news capturing the Shakewell Ripper in the previous novel, Career of Evil.

   Her relationship with her wounded war veteran boss, Strike, is complicated at best, the two a team reliant on each other, but dancing around the other issues coming from their relationship, him dealing with his missing leg and painful stump and she with anxiety attacks after nearly being killed by the Shakewell Ripper.

   A year later things are still at loggerheads when an emotionally and mentally disturbed boy named Billy shows up in Strike’s office with a story of a crime he witnessed as a child: “Ages, I was a kid … Little Girl it was, but after they said it was a little boy. Jimmy was there, he says I never saw it, but I did. I saw him do it, Strangled. I saw it.”. Billy’s memory is inexact, but Strike believes him and takes up the case.

   His new found fame makes it harder to keep a low profile though. People expect him to be delving into something major and clam up. Meanwhile he and Robin, the latter only a year into a marriage she still questions, have to navigate their increasingly difficult relationship and her less than perfect marriage.

   The unlikely murder of a little girl, or was it a little boy, takes Strike and Robin from the back streets of London to the secret sanctums of Parliament, to a grand manor house in the country, with one obstruction and red herring after another thrown in their path as they try to uncover the truth behind a confused boy’s memory of a crime no one believes he witnessed and a tie to a priceless painting hiding in plain sight and worth killing for.

    Lethal White is a long book, in fact, it weighs in at over six hundred pages, but then it is written by someone known for writing densely plotted long books readers plunge into willingly. Perhaps the remarkable thing about this series and Galbraith (which has inspired television adaptations, too) is that you won’t find a single mention in the hardcover edition of this book that Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of one of the most popular and successful writers of the last few decades, J. K, Rowiling of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts fame.

   Fairly compared to the best of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Peter Robinson, Robert Galbraith deserves all the attention and accolades even without knowing who lies behind the pseudonym. Cormoran Strike and Robin are believable characters, flawed and human, and among the most attractive and intriguing sleuths currently around.

   I know many of you aren’t great fans of these dense long books and wonder how the writer can call anything that long suspense or maintain the mystery element, but I can only say in this one case it feels effortless, and unlike many writers who work at this length, the attractive detectives are on stage for all the action, always at the center of things, in a book that mixes hard-boiled, classical, satire, and romance in a heady mix.

   Writing like that makes taking on six hundred plus pages a pleasure.

  ALFRED COPPEL “The Last Two Alive!” Short novel. First published in Planet Stories, November 1950. Reprinted with Out of Time’s Abyss, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, as half of Armchair Fiction Double Novel #D-169, paperback, 2015.

   If you all you want is a whopping good old-fashioned space opera story without a lot of either depth or characterization, this may be the story for you. Aram Jerrold is accused and convicted of conspiring against the ruling Tetarchy of the Thirty Suns, based on the testimony of Deve Jennet, a girl Aram thought he had a future with.

   But once sent to the prison planet Atmion IV for execution, Aram is pleasantly surprised (to say the least) to find that Deve is a member of group of rebels against both the Tetarchy and Satane, the despot ruler of the Kaidor planetary system. Planning to revolt and take over the Tetarchy, the latter has developed a biological weapon that wipes out the memories of its victims and turns them into howling beasts.

   Well, sir, what can a band of only a handful of rebels do — the one Aram is now a member of? They do their best, and realistically, the outcome is all but inevitable. The story is told in picturesque fashion, however, and it doesn’t slow down for a minute, exactly how you’d expect from a tale first published in a magazine called Planet Stories.

   [WARNING: PLOT ALERT AHEAD] As it so happens, this is one of those big-scale stories in which humanity completely wipes itself out, leaving only two survivors. Aram [Jerrold] and Deve [Jennet] become the progenitors of a new human race, and over the years, their names become corrupted to … can you guess?

A. A. FAIR – The Bigger They Come. Donald Lam & Bertha Cool #1. William Morrow, hardcover, 1939. Pocket #228, paperback; 1st printing, September 1943.

   In this, the first book Erle Stanley Gardner wrote under this name, we learn the following: how Donald Lam happened to get hired by the Bertha Cool Detective Agency, that that may or may not be his real name, some details about Bertha’s life with the late Mr. Cool …

   And how to commit a murder and not be punished for it. If this is not a hard-boiled novel, it is the toughest next thing to it. You can also always count on legal shenanigans in a Gardner book — and more puzzle in the plot than in all of the mysteries written last year, combined.

VIGILANTES OF BOOMTOWN. Republic, 1947. Alan Lane (as Red Ryder), Robert Blake, Roy Barcroft, Peggy Stewart, George Cheseboro, Ted Adams and John Dehner. Screenplay by Earl Snell, based on characters created by Fred Harman. Directed by R.G. Springsteen.

CITY OF BAD MEN Fox, 1953. Jeanne Crain, Dale Robertson, Richard Boone, Lloyd Bridges, Rodolfo Acosta, John Doucette, Frank Ferguson, Percy Helton, Leo Gordon, Harry Hines and Don Haggerty. Writtten by George W. George and George Slavin. Directed by Harmon Jones.

   Something prompted me to watch a double bill of VIGILANTES OF BOOMTOWN (Republic, 1947) and CITY OF BAD MEN (Fox,1953) two undistinguished but very enjoyable B-westerns centered around the Corbett-Fitzsimmons prizefight in Carson City Nevada in 1897.

   VIGILANTES is a classic Red Ryder flick from Republic, with Alan Lane as the cowboy hero deputized to keep order in Carson City during the fight, young Robert Blake as Little Beaver, his Indian pal (and alleged comic relief) veteran Nasty Roy Barcroft as – well – as the veteran nasty who means to steal the gate receipts, and John Dehner, of all people, as Fitzsimmons. It’s a modest time-killer, but fast and unpretentious enough to make it fun.

   Republic was losing interest in Red Ryder about this time, and it shows. Crowd scenes are sparse, sets are familiar, and the action, while up to Republic’s usual high standard, somehow seems a bit blasé. What carries it through is the novelty of the idea and the professionalism of the players. Alan Lane, on the verge of getting his own series, is as stoically heroic as ever, Roy Barcroft flashes his evil grin with practiced malevolence, and when they square off for yet another fight, it’s with all the enthusiasm of yet another battle between Right and Wrong.

   CITY OF BAD MEN is slightly more ambitious, filmed in color with lots of extras and a characters a bit more shaded: Dale Robertson as an embittered soldier of fortune, deputized to keep order in Carson City during the fight, a young Lloyd Bridges (looking eerily like Randy Quaid!) as his edgy kid brother, and aspiring nasty Richard Boone as Johnny Ringo, who means to steal the gate receipts. I will also call attention here to Don Haggerty, an actor who had a long and mostly-uncredited career, as another rival owlhoot; the script doesn’t give him much to do, but he does it well.

   Again, it’s all pretty fast-paced and helped along considerably by Charles G. Clarke’s photography. Clarke was an old hand around Hollywood, whose credits include TARZAN AND HIS MATE, and he makes the thing very pleasing to the eye. Harmon Jones keeps things moving swiftly, with a sure hand on the action scenes.

   Both films, though, overlooked a ploy I would have thought almost obligatory: they both feature a struggle between the hero and the heavy while the prizefight is in progress, but apparently neither director thought to inter-cut the good-guys/bad-guys battle in the dust with the prize-fighters in the ring.

   Or maybe they did, and just figured it’d be too obvious. Whatever the case, both movies got along just fine without my help.

  ROBERT J. RANDISI – Stand-Up. Miles Jacoby #6. Walker, hardcover, 1994. Perfect Crime, softcover, 2012.

   Miles Jacoby is at a crossroads in his PI career. One of the best PI’s in New York is offering him a partnership, and he’s tempted. Before he can finalize a decision, though, two cases pop us. One involves a stand-up comedian who thinks someone has stolen all his jokes, and the other a strongarm friend who’s involved in some way in a gangster’s murder. Jacoby finds himself bouncing back and forth between them, and both of them generate bodies and blood.

   Before I say anything more, let me say this: I wish to hell that crime writers would either quit trying to use microcomputers as part of their plots, or get someone who knows something about them to check the manuscripts. I am so tired of their fuck-ups I could just scream. Don’t they realize that there are enough people out there now who are computer-literate that they can’t get away with it? Pfui. Bah.

   Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I can say that this was a typical Randisi book — breezy, facile, competent, lots of snappy dialogue, fast-moving. I like Jacoby as a character, and the supporting cast too. The plot has a pulpy feel to it this time; not that that’s necessarily bad, you understand, but I seem to remember earlier books having a little more depth.

   Easy, pleasant reading, but it’s nothing you’ll remember a week later. I always have the feeling Randisi could do a lot better if he’s just take the time.

      The Miles Jacoby novels —

Eye in the Ring (1982)
The Steinway Collection (1983)
Full Contact (1984)
Separate Cases (1990)
Hard Look (1993)
Stand Up (1994)

THE TERROR WITHIN. Concorde Pictures, 1989. George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff, Terri Treas, John LaFayette, Tommy Hinckley. Director: Thierry Notz.

   Is this low-budget exploitation schlock, a wry homage to David Cronenberg and body horror cinema, or something that was deliberately made so it could be marketed for the late 1980s VHS market? Maybe it’s all three. For that’s the best way in which to describe The Terror Within. A movie that, at its core, is an unmistakably derivative post-apocalyptic science fiction/horror mash-up and that shamelessly borrows from such notable horror movies as Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). At its best, it attempts to channel those films’ main themes in a manner that’s at least vaguely entertaining.

   Both of these aforementioned films notably involved scenarios in which otherworldly — and decidedly unwelcome — beings ensconced themselves within human hosts’ bodies. Because that’s the main thrust of what happens in this Roger Corman-produced feature that had only a limited theatrical release.

   Set in the Mojave Desert after a biological weapons catastrophe that has wiped out the vast majority of humanity, the film follows the efforts of a small group of scientists holed up in an underground bunker while busy researching the effects the catastrophe had on their ecosystem. As you might well imagine, all is not well in this depopulated wasteland. The fallout has created a new race of mutants commonly referred to as gargoyles.

    Not only are they hideous, with the obligatory sharp teeth and guttural sounds, but they also have the capacity to impregnate human female hosts. It’s when a pregnant female survivor makes her way to the scientists’ bunker that the real trouble begins. I don’t think I’m giving away that much of what follows when I say that a mutant child is born and that little bugger grows up real fast. Judging the way it behaves in the bunker, you would think it had been raised by wolves.

M. McDONNELL BODKIN “The Hidden Violin.” Short story. PI Dora Myrl. First appeared in Dora Myrl, the Lady Detective (Chatto, UK, hardcover, 1900). Reprinted in The Big Book of Female Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Black Lizard, US, 2018).

   This very short story was probably not the lead one in the collection it first appeared in (see above), since it gets right down to business with no discussion at all as to how Dora Myrl got started as a professional detective way back in the year 1900.

   And the business at hand is an “impossible” crime: how it is that a stolen Stradivarius violin can be heard being played in a locked room, but when anyone knocks and is invited in, there is no violin to be found, no matter how diligent the search.

   The solution is simple but nonetheless rather clever, and what’s more, clues for readers to solve the case on their own are all there to be discovered. Nicely done!

Bio-Bibliographic notes:   The author, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1850-1933), was an Irish nationalist politician as well as a noted author, journalist and newspaper editor, and barrister. (Follow the link above to his Wikipedia page.)

   Besides the collection of a dozen stories that “The Hidden Violin” appears in, Dora Myrl also shared top billing in the novel The Capture of Paul Beck (Unwin, 1909) and makes a cameo appearance in the collection Young Beck (Unwin, 1911).

   What is most assuredly a first, if indeed not unique in the annals of PI fiction, when Dora finds herself in competition with another detective by the name of Paul Beck in solving the case they are both working on. The book was the aforementioned The Capture of Paul Beck, and in it they end up falling in love and getting married.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE writing as RICHARD STARK – The Seventh. Parker #7. Avon, paperback; 1985. First published by Pocket (#50244) as a paperback original, 1966. Reprinted as The Split (Gold Medal D1997, circa 1968). Also reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, trade paperback, 2009, under its original title. Film: MGM, 1968, as The Split, with Jim Brown as McClain (not “Parker”).

   This is the first solo Parker novel that I’ve read in a long time, perhaps as long as 40 years. The one I read back then was OK but not great. To put it as succinctly and honestly as I can, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to. I think it was simply too terse, too hard-boiled, with no joy to it and absolutely np characterization to speak of.

   I’m quite a bit older now, but it didn’t make much of a difference. When I read The Seventh earlier this week, I found I had exactly the same problems with as I did with that earlier one. Some thoughts follow, some fully formed, but others I’m still thinking about. (I won’t tell you which are which.)

   First of all, I think that Parker’s adventures need someone like Alan Grofield, his sometimes companion in crime, in them go given them some much needed balance. The love of Grofield’s life is actually the stage, but what he also is is a devout thief. What he has that Parker doesn’t is personality. Enough to make his own capers go down very very smoothly, and his pair-ups with Parker a lot more fun to read. One note sambas may be fine with some people, but they’re not for me.

   We may as well take The Seventh as an example of Parker on his own. This is a heist story with a bit of a twist. The heist goes off just fine. It’s the aftermath that the book is all about. It begins with Parker in desperate need for some ready cash, and thus agrees to work with six other men to steal a small fortune from a football game’s box office while the game is going on.

   Each of the seven hole up for a while, some in pairs, some alone. Parker, who is holding all of the money, is one of the latter, save for a steady bed partner (female) he has picked up somewhere.

   After a few days, he goes out for cigarettes. He comes back and finds the girl dead, pinned to the headboard of their bed with a sword. And — you guessed it — the money is gone. Did the killer just happen to find the money by chance, or was he after the money and the girl was only collateral damage? Both are likely possibilities. Either way, Parker is sore, and the killer — perhaps one of the other members of the makeshift gang? — had better beware.

   Things do not turn out well, to put it mildly. This is a very short book, only 144 pages in the Avon edition and maybe even shorter in the original Pocket printing. Even so, a lot of people don’t manage to survive it, and ypu can easily conclude that one big huge mistake on Parker’s part is the reason why.

   Westlake has all of the writing chops you could ask for, but I think I’d have rather he hadn’t revealed the killer as early as he did. My interest in what happened after that flagged considerably, nor is Parker is the kind of guy you’d ever like to meet, and I find him too one-dimensional to care about his exploits either.

   On the other hand, another possibility occurs to me. Was Westlake playing games with his readers when he wrote the Parker books? Was he trying to make his “hero” as blunt and hard-boiled for his readers as he could without going way over the top with him?

   One last thing, and these are facts, not opinions or speculations. The movie The Split that was based on the book has a terrific top-notch cast: Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, James Whitmore, Donald Sutherland and Joyce Jameson. I’ve never seen it, and I know they changed the story line considerably, but could you find a better bunch of heist movie actors than this?