MAX BRAND – Valley Thieves. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted many times, including Pocket #668, paperback, January 1950. First serialized in Western Story Magazine, Oct 28–Nov 25, 1933.

   Jim Silver, also known as Silvertip, so called for the small tufts of gray hair up above his temples, comes on the scene relatively late in this tale, but the story’s a doozie from page one on. A newcomer to the West, a bold braggadocio of a man, but likeable for all that, tells a woman who has quickly caught his fancy that he can bring her Jim Silver’s horse for her to ride, but not only that, but the wolf who is the man’s constant companion.

   No one, of course, believes him, but lo and behold, that is exactly what he does. But then disaster happens, as both horse and wolf are stolen from him. It seems that Barry Christian, Silver’s mortal enemy, recently escaped from prison, may have had a hand in it, but no matter who the thief may be, it is essential that both Parade and Frosty must be found and returned to their master.

   When it comes to the Silvertip series, Max Brand was not just writing westerns, he was writing legend. He was writing mythology. Jim Silver is the purest, the most honest man you could ever hope to know, and if he is on your trail, you had best never sleep at night.

   The result, the book at hand, is one with the substance of cotton candy, and as enjoyable. To allow the series to continue, or so my sense of the matter is, the tale ends both a little abruptly and predictably, but until then, it’s a mile a minute through some of well-designed Western prose you’ll ever read, bar none.

       The Silvertip series —

1. Silvertip, 1941.
2. The Man from Mustang, 1942.
3. Silvertip’s Strike, 1942.
4. Silvertip’s Roundup, 1943.
5. Silvertip’s Trap, 1943.
6. The Fighting Four, 1944.
7. Silvertip’s Chase, 1944.
8. Silvertip’s Search, 1945.
9. The Stolen Stallion, 1945.
10. Valley Thieves, 1946.
11. Mountain Riders, 1946.
12. The Valley of Vanishing Men, 1947.
13. The False Rider, 1947.

   This list is tentative and subject to verification. Publication dates are of those of the hardcover editions, not the prior magazine versions.

THE 13th MAN. Monogram Pictures, 1937. Weldon Heyburn, Inez Courtney, Selmer Jackson, Matty Fain, Milburn Stone, Grace Durkin, Robert Homans, Eadie Adams. Director: William Nigh.

   When it comes to the movie The 13th Man, there seems to be a large disconnect between me and the rest of the IMDb film-watching universe. The latter has given this rather turgid mystery melodrama an accumulated 5.9 stars, and I would be hard pressed to give it two.

   The basic premise is not bad. The current District Attorney, with a highly contested election coming up, reminds his radio audience that he has put 12 major crime figures behind bards so far, and on the next day he will be starting indictment proceeding on a 13th major underworld figure in the city. Which well-deserved individual will it be? This is the kind of city where there are any number of candidates.

   But will the D.A. survive till the next morning? You can answer that at once. He dies at ringside that same evening with a curare dart found in his neck. Investigating the case one step ahead of the police are radio reporter Swifty Taylor (Weldon Heyburn) and his secretary (who is secretly in love with him), Julie Walters (Inez Courtney). Swifty, it seems, is not all that swift.

   But from this point on, the story and the no-name cast go absolutely nowhere. It is one of those movies that make your eyeballs ache just watching it, but sometimes an investment of 20 minutes into a movie makes you want to keep watching it, just in case something interesting happens.

   There is one twist that I probably should have seen coming, but I didn’t. I can’t tell you what it is, just in case you decide to ignore these comments of mine. Perhaps the no-name cast has more of a name than I realize, but the only two actors who show any enthusiasm for being in this movie are Milburn Stone (then a mere 33 years old), playing Swifty’s assistant, and considerably more elderly Robert Homans, who often had small roles as policemen in his movie-making career, and so he was once again in this one.

   The real culprit is intended as a surprise, but not quite picking a name from a hat, he (or she) was exactly who I suspected all along.

LINDA BARNES – Bitter Finish. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1983. Fawcett, paperback, 1985. Dell, paperback, 1994.

   Michael Spraggue is falling down a flight of steps, the voice of his stunt instructor screaming at him to use his thighs and hips to break the impact of the sharp cement. As the star of Hollywood’s latest private-eye melodrama, shooting on location in Boston, Spraggue leaves the car chases to the pros, but the light stunts he likes to do himself.

   An independently wealthy ex-private investigator turned actor, he’s quit the business because he’s “mostly dug up dirt everybody would have been better off not knowing.” But an emergency phone call summons him back to California’s Napa Valley, where Kate Holloway, his not quite ex-lover and longtime business partner in the Holloway Hills Winery, is in jail as a material witness to murder.

   Kicking and screaming (he really does hate being a private eye), Michael flies to the rescue. The victim is Holloway Hills’ flamboyant Hungarian winemaker — the second in what the papers are calling the “car trunk murders.” Kate is notorious in the valley — she’s six feet tall, gorgeous, and makes as good a wine as many male vintners — and the not-so-bright deputy sheriff is certain she’s a killer as well. Michael seems to be the only person on the scene smart enough to figure out who stashed those cadavers in the trunks of cars, and the deputy sheriff, of course, won’t talk to him.

   The complicated love situation between Spraggue and Kate is probably the most interesting part of this story, although Barnes does give us a lovely picture of the Napa Valley at harvest time and lots of detail on the wine making industry. The action moves well, the clues are nicely hidden, and the reader isn’t bored — but neither is the reader glued to the edge of his seat.

   Spraggue ends up, predictably, all by his lonesome with a crazed killer in a deserted winery at the end of a rarely traveled road. The writing is light, entertaining, and stylistically sound; and hopefully as Linda Barnes matures as a writer, so will Spraggue and company.

   Michael Spraggue also appears in Dead Heat (1984).

———
   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.

Bibliographic Notes:   Spraggue’s first appearance was in Blood Will Have Blood (1982). A fourth and final book in the series was Cities Of The Dead, published in 1986. In 1987 Linda Barnes switched series characters and wrote A Trouble of Fools, the first of twelve novels featuring cab-driving PI Carlotta Carlyle, based in Boston.

MILDRED PIERCE. Warner Brothers, 1945. Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg. Screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain. Director: Michael Curtiz.

   I recently saw Mildred Pierce and came away just dumbfounded that anyone – even a Movie Critic – could watch this movie and fail to notice the strong, even idiosyncratic, hand of director Michael Curtiz at work. Take the opening: A mildly-surprised-looking Zachary Scott, seen in a mirror, shuddering under the impact of bullets hitting his frame, even as the mirror splinters and shatters, just as he hits the floor and rolls into full close-up before our eyes. In terms of screen time, it’s only a few seconds, but visually, it’s an incredibly complex blend of deft mise-en-scene and seamless editing, knowingly orchestrated by a master of the form.

   Surprisingly enough, Curtiz manages to steer the film from this dizzy beginning through a palpaceous plot of Mother Love, Teenage Lust and Middle-aged Greed without once letting the pace falter. He keeps it right at the hungry edge of violence, like an addict staring at a needle, for nearly two hours’ fast-paced running time, and gets deft performances along the way from the likes of Bruce Bennett, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blythe and — inevitably — Joan Crawford.

   Ah yes, Joan Crawford. In the role that revived her career. The cult of her personality, I fear, has always obscured the virtues of this remarkable film, just as Bogart’s cult “obscured” Casablanca: by shining so much Star Power on it that it ceased to be a film, and became instead a shrine, whence the Faithful are called several times a year to bask their idols in adoration.

   Which offers a clue to Curtiz’ critical neglect: He was so good at enshrining major personalities (including Flynn, Cagney, Bette Davis and even Boris Karloff) that their fans always tended to overlook him — forgetting that gods do not exist until someone builds temples to them – and critics never noticed the consistent stylistic complexity that he lavished on even his minor films. Thus he became an “anonymous” director to folks who just wasn’t looking.

   Getting back to Mildred Pierce, though, it’s a lavish blend of Mystery, Soap Opera and even pre-feminist rhetoric, and though the icons who populate this particular temple have remained somewhat critically unfashionable, the showcase itself deserves a fresh look.

PASSENGER 57. Warner Brothers, 1992. Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Sizemore, Alex Datcher, Bruce Greenwood, Robert Hooks, Elizabeth Hurley. Director: Kevin Hooks.

   I don’t know how you can live as long as I have and still be able to say that this is the first movie starring Wesley Snipes that I have even seen, but it is so. I see from his resume on IMDb that over his career he has made quite a few action thriller movies like this one, and as of 2014, he was still making them, if The Expendables 3 is the kind of movie I think it is.

   This one has to do with a notorious terrorist and a gang of equally vicious followers with the same carefree attitude toward killing that he has. To help rescue their leader from the FBI, they take over a passenger jet that Snipes’ character, a newly promoted chief of security, just happens to be a passenger on.

   I don’t think the movie is as good as those in the “Diehard” series, say, but I enjoyed it. There is a light touch to the movie that makes all of the gunfire, martial arts fighting, explosions and every other means of organized chaos all the more bearable, such as when one elderly female passenger mistakenly takes Snipes’ character to be Arsenio Hall.

   The ladies in the cast are, unfortunately, the weakest links, in my opinion, but all of the men are consummate pros at this sort of thing, especially the primary villain (Bruce Payne), who seems to be having a great time playing pure evil incarnate, and with his glowering presence, taking over every scene he’s in.

   But here’s the question. Would I watch another Wesley Snipes movie? Based on this sample of size one, I see no reason why not.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Kennel Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1933. Reprinted many times, including Bantam #60, paperback, 1946. Film: 1933, with William Powell as Vance.

   The circumstances of the death of Archer Coe indicate suicide. He was, after all, in a room locked on the inside, with the revolver with which he was shot still in his hand. Fortunately, Philo Vance is asked to observe the scene, and he claims it was murder — but not caused by the bullet.

   One of the clues is a badly hurt Scottish terrier found in the house. The reader learns a lot about terriers and show dogs as Vance lectures on the animals. At the end, the dog leads, in a manner of speaking, Vance to the murderer.

   In my opinion, Van Dine is undeservedly maligned. What’s wrong with a highbrow mystery containing occasional and intentional amusement and fair, albeit far-fetched, play? That’s what we have here, and I think it’s most enjoyable.

From Beyond is a 1986 film based on the story of the same name by H. P. Lovecraft. Richard Band wrote the film score.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB. Hammer Films, UK, 1964. Columbia Pictures, US, 1964. Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark, Jeanne Roland,George Pastell, Jack Gwillim, John Paul, Dickie Owen. Screenwriter-director: Michael Carreras.

   Directed, written (under the credited name “Henry Younger”), and produced by Michael Carreras, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb is a Hammer film about well … you guessed it, an archaeological expedition that unearths a mummy’s tomb and becomes the object of the mummy’s revenge.

   Ronald Howard, perhaps best known for starring in the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series, portrays John Bray, a Cambridge archaeologist who seeks to unravel the mysteries of the ancient Egyptian past. After his French colleague is murdered in the desert, he and his would-be betrothed, Annette Dubois (Jeanne Roland) make their way by boat up the Nile with the intention of returning to London.

   It is on that fateful trip that they encounter Adam Beauchamp (Terence Morgan), a mysterious Englishmen who inserts himself into their lives and knows far more about ancient Egyptian history than it first appears. But who is he and what does he want with Annette? That’s the crux of the story.

   When compared with Hammer’s The Mummy (1959) that I reviewed here, this later film comes across as a rather tepid and an uninspiring attempt to capitalize upon the former’s aesthetic, narrative, and musical genius. Indeed, without Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, the movie just isn’t all that memorable in terms of its actors and their stage presence. But that doesn’t mean that one should completely write off this admittedly clunky mid-1960s horror film as purely derivative and as having no particular intrinsic value as a film onto itself.

   Although this is not a particularly well-crafted film, it’s actually significantly better than its harshest critics would suggest. True, often the art design leaves a lot to be desired and the supposedly ancient Egyptian artifacts look cheap and plastic. And yes, the story takes a well to fully coalesce into a coherent narrative. That said, however, the film does compensate for these flaws by introducing a few new elements and surprises into the mummy film corpus.

   These include a subplot with an inherent critique as to how mummies were often used in the West for cheap thrills and entertainment purposes and (Spoiler Alert) the finale in which it is revealed in which the film’s nominal villain is the mummy’s brother, who is revealed to be Beauchamp (Morgan).

    Due to a curse, he has been condemned to everlasting life as a mortal human being roaming the Earth alone for thousands of years. It’s a curious little twist, one that’s just enough to rescue The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb from the obscurity it that would have befallen it had merely been a weak reworking of the brilliant Hammer original.

KAREN KIJEWSKI – Copy Kat. Kat Colorado #4. Doubleday, hardcover, 1992. Bantam, paperback, 1993.

   I think that Karen Kijewski (pronounced, I am told, Kee-you-skee) is rapidly moving into the class of Muller, Grafton, and Paretsky in terms of quality, if not of sales.

   In this case, Kat Colorado is hired to investigate the murder of a Grass Valley, California, bartender-owner by the victim’s crusty godfather. Though reluctant to get involved in an open case, Kat agrees to go undercover and work at her old profession, bartending, to try and find what really happened. Though there is no evidence, the police and many town members suspect the dead lady’s husband, who has been left with their small child. He hires Kat as a bartender, and the hunt is joined.

   The book is as much about Kat’s own problems with guilt from a killing in a previous case as anything; she is being crippled by recurring nightmares. The opportunity to change identities weighs strongly in her decision to accept the case. Missing from this book are her egregiously imposing “best friend,” and her adopted grandmother, for which I am grateful; earlier books have suffered greatly, to me, from Kat’s allowing herself to be sorely put upon by these two.

   Kijewski’s writing is powerful, and Colorado has emerged as an appealing and well realized character. Some of the other cast members were not as believable, or perhaps there were just too many neuroses/psychoses in one plot. All in all, though, this was an excellent and moving story.

       The Kat Colorado series —

Katwalk (1988)
Katapult (1990)

Kat’s Cradle (1992)
Copy Kat (1992)
Wild Kat (1994)

Alley Kat Blues (1995)
Honky Tonk Kat (1996)
Kat Scratch Fever (1997)
Stray Kat Waltz (1998)

SUE GRAFTON – X.   G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, August 2015; paperback “premium edition,” August 2016.

    Going back to read my review of W Is for Wasted, I see some significant signs of how Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series was progressing back then, and to my mind, the answer is not well.

    First of all, I said, “The case itself is not all that interesting…,” then I said:

    “I’m also not sure why Grafton has Kinsey relate everything she does, down to the minutest bit of minutia possible, whether it be meals, areas of town she drives through, or the GNP of the nation.”

    In X, the case is even less interesting than in W, with much of the the story dealing with loose threads left behind from the earlier one, and Grafton’s penchant to spell out in detail everything Kinsey does, from preparing breakfast, dealing with her landlord Henry’s cat, to delineating every turn along the way, complete with street names, whenever she drives from one place in the fictional town of Santa Teresa to another, seems to have gotten worse.

    Half of what happens in the first 192 pages is banal and uninteresting (see above). The other half, dealing with one of the two cases she seems to be on (they may yet be connected), something to do with a lawsuit that took place years and years ago, as well as a coded list of names of women connected with it, is even less compelling.

    And this is as far as I got. There are still 240 pages to go, and I see no promise of improvement. If reviewers are not supposed to review books they haven’t finished, I will promise to do better next time.