PATRICIA PONDER – Murder for Charity. Manor 15281, paperback original, 1977.

   Contradicting the ultra-macho image projected by the front cover, which shows the Cajun detective Louis Breaux being very protective of the cuddlesome Diana, this is in fact a detective story most reminiscent of the old-fashioned golden age of mystery fiction, complete with a country club overflowing with clues and suspects.

   When Diana Parnell’s aunt is murdered while she’s running an antique show for charity, it’s Diana who’s suspected. The mysterious behavior of a friend caused her to be alone at the very moment for which an alibi is needed, but to her rescue comes Louis Breaux, convinced of her innocence even though they’ve only just met, and together they set off on the killer’s trail.

   It must be remembered that most of the books of the golden age have been forgotten, with good reason. Only the Christie’s and the Queen’s still survive, and they’re the models that other writers of pure detective fiction must strive to equal. Here’s another that doesn’t measure up. When the clues are as falsely represented or slighted over as they are here, it may be playing fair with the reader in a technical sense, but the edges of an otherwise pleasing performance are curdled.

   Nevertheless, flaws and all, it was a nice surprise to find this. Mildly recommended for those who are nostalgic for this sort of thing.

Rating: C.

[Note to bibliographers: Besides the haphazard proofreading system employed by Manor throughout the book, on the title page the author’s name is given as Patricia Maxwell.]

[UPDATE] Additional bibliographic notes: Patrica Ponder was indeed a pen name of Patricia Maxwell (1942- ). Under that name she also wrote Haven of Fear for Manor, 1977, but it is doubtful that Louis Breaux ever made another appearance.

   Under her own name, Patricia Maxwell has seven entries in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, all apparently gothics or novels of romantic suspense. (The line between them is often blurry.) There is also one entry for her there as Elizabeth Trehearne, another gothic. She is best known to readers of romance fiction, however, as Jennifer Blake, with 50 or 60 titles in that genre, and still counting.

GARY MADDEROM – The Jewels That Got Away. Curtis 07311, paperback original, 1973.

   As a mystery or crime fiction writer, Gary Madderom has one other book listed in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, that one being The Four Chambered Villain, which was published in hardcover by Macmillan in 1971 before being reprinted in paperback, also by Curtis. According to an online obituary, he worked for a while for Warren Publishing, well known for putting out such magazines as Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Vampirella.

   The book at hand, which as usual for Curtis, fell apart as I read it, is the story of a jewel heist which, as usual, the plan for which unravels (falls apart) almost as soon as it’s put into motion. Even a second attempt fails, and that one even more so than the first.

   Coerced by financial circumstances (he has no money) and coaxed along by his cousin’s beautifully stacked secretary, would-be actor Rocco Agnello reluctantly lets Frank (reputedly connected with the Mafia) talk him into the plan. It is somewhat amazing that it takes 190 pages to tell the story, but to Madderom’s credit as a writer, it does so, and in a very self-assured fashion.

   One might wish for more depth in the characters as well, but one can’t have everything. Call this one average, no more.

ROB KANTNER – The Quick and the Dead. Ben Perkins #7. Harper, paperback original, 1992.

   Thanks to Leonard, Estleman, Jackson, and Kantner, Detroit has become one of the better-known cities on the hardboiled map. The city, its makeup and its history, are an important part of each author’s approach to his story, though the focus of each of course varies. Kantner’s for the seventh Ben Perkins is the world of Detroit Catholicism.

    Perkins, the sometime private eye, full time maintenance head of a large apartment complex, is currently enjoying the benefits of an interesting life. His boss would like to fire him, a mafia don wants some incriminating material Perkins has, and an ex-lover is about to have their child.

   Now a local judge who is in a position to both help and harm him wants him to take on a job for St. Angela’s parish — for no pay. The ex-priest of the church is being considered for canonization during an upcoming visit by the Pope. The problem is that when his body was dug up to be examined, it wasn’t there; the coffin was filled with bricks. Perkins’ job: find it, and find out why it is missing.

   I’ve generally enjoyed Kantner’s novels. Perkins, and ex-factory worker and ex-union enforcer, is a well-realized bluecollar type of PI, and Kantner tells a good story in very good prose. The books don’t make me want to start babbling about “transcending the genre,” but then again they rarely bring on one of my tirades about foolish people and foolish plots. This one is no exception. It won’t make you forget Chandler, but it’s a solid example of the hardboiled type.

       The Ben Perkins series —

1. The Back-Door Man (1986)

2. The Harder They Hit (1987)
3. Dirty Work (1988)
4. Hell’s Only Half Full (1989)
5. Made in Detroit (1990)
6. The Thousand Yard Stare (1991)

7. The Quick and the Dead (1992)
8. The Red, White and Blues (1993)
9. Concrete Hero (1994)
10. Trouble is What I Do (story collection; 2005)
11. Final Fling (2007)     ADDED LATER (see comments)

THE KILLING. United Artists, 1956. Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Ted DeCorsia, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Joe Sawyer. Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, with additional dialogue by Jim Thompson; based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. Director: Stanley Kubrick.

   A revolutionary heist film in many regards, and considered by many viewers as a classic. (It has an 8.0 rating on IMDb.) Not Kubrick’s first film, but while it’s one that while it didn’t make a lot of money at the box office, what it did do was to make film critics sit up and take notice of a new guy in town.

   The story is a old one by now, and maybe it was even then: The theft of $2,000,000 in cash from a race track is meticulously planned, and everything goes as smooth as silk when all of a sudden, it doesn’t. What’s distinctive about this film is that it’s shown in non-linear fashion, and I’m willing to wager that in 1956 audiences were not ready for stories told that way, even with some (studio required) voiceover narration to help them out.

   One problem I personally have with this film is that I do not believe for one second that Marie Windsor’s character would stay married to Elisha Cook for five minutes, much less than five years. I only wish she had had more screen time. What a femme fatale she was in almost every movie she made, and she was never more fatale than she is in this one.

   It is the ending that makes this movie pure noir. When he’s forced to improvise, Sterling Hayden, the mastermind of the plot that he sees disintegrating around him, he starts to make mistakes that he might not otherwise. All that effort — and all that money — [SPOILER ALERT] just blowing away in the wind.

SHE. RKO Radio Pictures, 1935. Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott, Helen Mack, Nigel Bruce. Based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Directors: Lansing C. Holden & Irving Pichel.

   Herewith my reconsideration of She, bringing, I hope, a close to my rediscovery (thanks to your astute reviewers) of my earlier review.

   I watched first the b&w version of She, then a few sections of the colorized version.

   No, Nigel Bruce’s role is not a “throw-away,” although he’s very clearly a supporting player and is best used in the sections that lead up to the discovery of Kor.

   I’m not generally fond of colorizing films, but the process is rather tastefully used in She, and is especially effective in the Hall of Kings segment. Harryhausen and James V. D’Arc both compare the musical accompaniment to the dances in the Hall of Kings to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” which is certainly stretching it quite a bit.

   I have CDs of both the original score and its restoration and recording with William Stromberg conducting the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. I don’t find it musically as compelling as the score for King Kong, but it’s an impressive record of Steiner’s musical genius. His scores for the two Merian C. Cooper fantasy productions are at the top of my favorites among his film scores, as are Rozsa’s scores for The Jungle Book and The Thief of Baghdad among his numerous film scores.

   Helen Gahagan is not conventionally attractive, but her imperious manner contrasts very effectively with Helen Mack’s performance, two roles that are the strong emotional underpinnings of the film.

   And the production design and special effects are outstanding.

   I must say that I’ve enjoyed returning to the film after three decades and I appreciate the comments about my earlier review that prompted this voyage — dare I say it? — of discovery.

TREASURY MEN IN ACTION “The Case of the Deadly Dilemma.” ABC, 24 March 1955. (Season 5, Episode 25.) Series shown in syndication as Federal Men. Walter Greaza (as The Chief), Charles Bronson, Lewis Charles, Lillian Buyeff, Ralph Moody. Director: Leigh Jason.

   Information on this series, which ran for five years on ABC, NBC then back to ABC, is scarce. (Even the information in that first sentence may be wrong.) But it ran for quite a while, so in my opinion, it doesn’t really deserve to have been forgotten for so long, which I think it has been.

   The chief, who introduces and narrates this episode, is this time around the head of the Secret Service. I do not know, but I do not believe that that was always the case. Counterfeiting, in particular, is the crime, and it is Charles Bronson’s character who is assigned to go undercover to get the goods on the big shot who’s the head of the gang.

   To prove himself, though, he’s asked to kill an old man whose wife has gotten tired of him. This is where the dilemma of the title comes in. Bronson is really on the spot, up on the roof with the old man and the head of the gang, the latter with a gun on him. It’s kill, or be killed.

   It’s a tough situation, and to this point, a rather good story. Too bad both the screenwriter’s creative imagination ran out, as did the running time for this episode, no more than 25 minutes long.

POWER OF THE PRESS. Columbia Pictures, 1943. Guy Kibbee, Lee Tracy, Gloria Dickson, Otto Kruger, Victor Jory. Based on a story by Samuel Fuller. Director: Lew Landers.

   I’d be lying to you if I said that Power of the Press was anything resembling a great movie. In fact, it’s an extraordinarily dated flag-waving programmer from the Second World War, one that has dialogue at moments that is so artificial, preachy, and stale that it is almost cringe worthy.

   So why did I continue to watch until the very end?

   First of all, so you don’t have to! Second, at a running time of just over an hour, it’s really not that big a time commitment. More importantly, there are actually some good names attached to the project, not the least of which is Samuel Fuller who, under the name “Sam Fuller” is credited with the story, albeit not the screenplay.

   Furthermore, the cast includes two well-known character actors from the era: Guy Kibbee, who portrays a wholesome small town newspaper publisher who takes over a New York City newspaper and Otto Kruger, his nemesis who has been abusing the power of the press to push an isolationist, America First agenda.

   As I said before, it’s overall not a particularly good film, but with solid craftsmanship from director Lew Landers, Power of the Press is worth watching as a history lesson, if for no other particular reason. Not every wartime film was nearly as iconic as Casablanca (1942); some were just little programmers like this one meant to rally the American public against fascism. Of interest in that regard is the fact that, after writing the story for this film, Fuller served overseas in the U.S. Army, taking part in beach landings as well as the liberation of a concentration camp.

GAVIN LYALL – Judas Country. Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1975. Viking, US, hardcover, 1975. Ballantine, US, paperback, 1976.

   Planning to meet his partner in the flying business in Cyprus, for a small fee, pilot Roy Case agrees to bring along a planeload of champagne to a hotel there. But the hotel has gone bankrupt, there is no money, and the cases of champagne turn out to be filled with an equal weight of small arms and ammo.

   The good news? His partner, recently released from an Israeli prison, plans to meet a fellow jailmate, a professor of archaeology with a dubious reputation. The latter, as it happens, claims to know where a sword once belonging to Richard the Lion-Hearted may be found. Unfortunately the not-so-good professor seems to have committed suicide before he can reveal what he may or may not know.

   The man’s daughter is staying at the hotel with him, but she claims to know little. Also a major player in this Middle-Eastern drama of a world hidden to ordinary tourists is a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both female and very good-looking. One does not need to have a suspicious mind to notice that she seems to arrive on the scene very quickly.

   Lots of murders and attempted murders ensue, and lots of double dealing as well, as the trail leads to Beirut, back to Cyprus, then to Israel again. Lyall tends to tend his story by telling as little as the he thinks the reader needs to know, but that same reader had better pay close attention, or the ending, where all of the players come together again (or at least those who have survived), will become a dizzying swirl of twists and turns and sudden double — if not triple — crosses.

   There’s also a little too much detail about flying small airplanes, especially in bad weather, to suit me, but I can otherwise recommend this novel to fans of adventure fiction, in the good old-fashioned British way, with nary another qualm.

JAMES PATTERSON – The Season of the Machete. Ballantine 27105, paperback original, 1977. Warner Books, hardcover, 1995.

   For reasons never made overly clear, the Mafia and the CIA combine forces to instigate a bloody revolution in the peaceful Caribbean Island of San Dominica. Well, there are some indications of what it’s all about, and it certainly is bloody, but this is not what you might call the entertainment of the year.

   Piles of dismembered bodies grow as eye witness Peter Macdonald tries to tell someone he saw a blond Englishman near the scene of the first murder. It is not the black revolutionary Colonel Dred who’s responsible, but the crack assassination team of Carrie and Damien Rose, and they seem to fear a double-cross.

   Although it’s not very appealing, there is a sense in which this is a gripping story. The narration is heavy-handed, however. Too much is revealed in advance, and worse, there’s nothing to clean up the mess afterward.

Rating: C plus.

Bibliographic Note: This was Patterson’s second book. The first was The Thomas Berryman Number (Little Brown, 1976), which I also remember reading. To say that he has written quite a few since then would be the understatement of the month.

FRANCES & RICHARD LOCKRIDGE – The Judge Is Reversed. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1960. Pocket, paperback, 1983.

   With the period of mourning for Pete, the Norths’ first cat, nearing its end, it was time for Pam to have another cat to talk to. At a cat show she finds a judge being criticized harshly. Attending a tennis tournament later, she and Jerry discover that same judge being criticized harshly.

   Still, despite his flaws as a judge, did someone have to hit him a killing blow in the back of the head, maybe with a cat’s scratching post? Did a cat breeder do it? The foot-faulting tennis player? Or the chairman of the committee against cruelty to animals who tries to kick cats?

   Not a great mystery as such, but Pam North always amazes and amuses, particularly when she is looking for a Siamese whose face doesn’t come to a point.