In his letters and essays Chandler frequently made sharp comments about his colleagues and their literary output. He disliked and sharply criticized such famous crime writers like Eric Ambler, Nicholas Blake, W. R. Burnett, James M. Cain, John Dickson Carr, James Hadley Chase, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Mickey Spillane, Rex Stout, S. S. Van Dine, Edgar Wallace. A lot of Chandler’s criticism was negative, but he also esteemed some writers and books. So let’s see, which these are.

   A problem is that he sometimes had a mixed or even inconsistent opinion. When the positive aspects predominate the negative ones I have taken the writer or book on my list.

   The list follows the alphabetical order of the names of the mystery writers. Each name is combined with (only) one source (letter, essay) for Chandler’s statement. I refer to the following books: Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane, Columbia University Press 1981 (SL); Raymond Chandler Speaking, edited by Dorothy Gardiner & Kathrine Sorley Walker, University of California Press 1997 (RCS); The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction 1909 – 1959, edited by Tom Hiney & Frank MacShane, Penguin 2001 (RCP); “The Simple Art of Murder,” in: The Art of the Mystery Story, edited by Howard Haycraft, Carroll & Graf 1992.

   I am rather sure that the list is not complete: It does not include all available sources nor all possible writers and books.

         THE LIST:

Adams, Cleve, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (SL)

Anderson, Edward: Thieves Like Us, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Sep. 27, 1954 (SL)

Armstrong, Charlotte: Mischief, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)

Balchin, Nigel: The Small Back Room, letter to James Sandoe, Aug. 18, 1945 (SL)

Buchan, John: The 39 Steps, letter to James Sandoe, Dec. 28, 1949 (RCS)

Cheyney, Peter: Dark Duet, letter to James Sandoe, Oct. 14, 1949 (RCS)

Coxe, George Harmon, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)

Crofts, Freeman Wills, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)

Davis, Norbert, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (SL)

Faulkner, William: Intruder in the Dust, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Nov. 11, 1949 (SL)

Fearing, Kenneth: The Big Clock, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Mar. 12, 1949 (SL); The Dagger of the Mind, The Simple Art of Murder

Fleming, Ian, letter to Ian Fleming, Apr. 11, 1956 (SL)

Freeman, R. Austin: Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight; The Stoneware Monkey; Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke, letter to James Keddie, Sep. 29, 1950 (SL)

Gardner, Erle Stanley, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (but not as A. A. Fair, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939) (SL)

Gault, William, letter to William Gault, Apr. 1955 (SL)

Hammett, Dashiell, The Simple Art of Murder

Henderson, Donald: Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper, letter to fredeeric Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)

Holding , Elisabeth Sanxay: Net of Cobwebs, The Innocent Mrs. Duff, The Blank Wall, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Oct. 13, 1950 (RCS)

Hughes, Dorothy, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)

Irish, William (Cornell Woolrich): Phantom Lady, letter to Blanche Knopf, Oct. 22, 1942 (SL)

Krasner , William: Walk the Dark Streets, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)

Macdonald, Philip, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)

Macdonald, John Ross: The Moving Target, letter to James Sandoe, Apr. 14, 1949 (SL)

Maugham, Somerset: Ashenden, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Dec. 4, 1949 (SL)

Millar, Margaret: Wall of Eyes, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)

Nebel, Frederick, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)

O’Farrell, William: Thin Edge of Violence, letter to James Sandoe, Aug. 15, 1949 (SL)

Postgate, Raymond: Verdict of Twelve, The Simple Art of Murder

Ross, James: They don’t dance much, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Sep. 27, 1954 (SL)

Sale, Richard: Lazarus No. 7, The Simple Art of Murder

Smith, Shelley: The Woman in the Sea, letter to James Sandoe, Sep. 23, 1948 (SL)

Symons, Julian: The 31st of February, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)

Tey, Josephine: The Franchise Affair, letter to James Sandoe, Oct. 17, 1948 (RCS)

Waugh, Hillary: Last Seen Wearing, letter to Luther Nichols, Sep. 1958 (SL)

Whitfield, Raoul: letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)

Wilde, Percival: Inquest, The Simple Art of Murder.

  RUFUS KING – The Case of the Constant God. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1936. Popular Library #193, no date [1949].
    — The Case of the Dowager’s Etchings. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1944. Popular Library #362, 1951, as Never Walk Alone.

   Not only is Sigurd Repellen a nasty blackmailer in The Case of the Constant God, he is allergic to shrimp, both of which drawbacks cause a young lady to commit suicide. When Repellen presumably is accidentally killed by the young lady’s husband, the other family members who witness the death try to cover it up.

   They might have succeeded, but the blow on the head that caused Repellen’s seeming heart attack and death turns out, upon medical examination, to be a blow upon the head and a .22 bullet in the heart.

   The family’s transporting the dead man around New York doesn’t help any. This odd behavior comes to the attention of Lieutenant Valcour, who joins the group on a yacht too late to prevent another murder, though in time to capture the killer.

   Not quite fair play, but moderately amusing. And could someone tell me why King kept putting Valcour aboard yachts? For a New York City police detective, he spent a lot of time on the water.

   Feeling guilty about not helping in the war effort, Mrs. Chatterton Giles, who is the dowager in The Case of the Dowager’s Etchings and who is in her seventies, decides to rent rooms to defense-plant workers. The four rooms are taken quickly, by two men Mrs. Giles likes — well, one of them had bought her etching at an art show — one man who looks uncomfortably like Humphrey Bogart, and a young woman obviously no better than she should be.

   The night that several of the roomers move in, there is murder on the grounds of the Giles estate. What’s even worse, Mrs. Giles’s war-hero grandson appears to have been involved.

   Mrs. Giles is an interesting character, but the plot is lightweight. Not one of King’s better efforts.

THE SOLDIER AND THE LADY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1937. Anton Walbrook (debut), Elizabeth Allen, Akim Tamiroff, Margot Grahame, Fay Bainter (debut), Eric Blore, Edward Brophy, Paul Guilfoyle, Paul Harvey. Screenplay by Mortimer Offner, Anthony Veiller, Anne Morrison Chapin, based on Michael Strogoff Courier of the Tzar by Jules Verne. Directed by George Nichols Jr. as George Nicholls Jr.

   This remains one of the most faithful and well done of all Jules Verne’s books adapted to film, an epic portrayal of Verne’s novel about a heroic courier for Alexander II who brings down the Moslem Tartar rebellion of 1870 and saves Russia while finding love and facing one daunting task after another.

   Though Strogoff is another of Verne’s naturalist romantic heroes in the line of Ned Land from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Nik Dek from Castle Carpathian, he has also been rightfully called a 19th century James Bond.

      The splendid cast is the first great asset of this film. Anton Walbrook made his American film debut as Strogoff, and proves a fine swashbuckler more adept than most at the dramatic scenes (or melodramatic in this case). It isn’t as subtle as many of his fine later films, but then it isn’t supposed to be, and he more than suggests the characters nobility and courage.

   Elizabeth Allen (wife of Robert Montgomery and mother of Elizabeth) is the heroine Nadia, beautiful, aristocratic and innocent; Margot Grahame the femme fatale Zangarra with a heart that can be melted by a noble hero; and Fay Bainter in her strong film debut is Michael’s mother. Eric Blore and Edward Brophy are English and American war correspondents for comedy relief, and Paul Harvey the Tzar.

   But the film is stolen to a great extent by Akim Tamiroff as the perfectly named Ivan Ogareff, the traitorous, brutal, sly, cunning, and sadistic Tartar agent plotting to use the uprising to grab power and wealth. It’s Tamiroff at his scenery chewing best as a thorough going rotter, and audiences must have cheered when he meets his deserved end.

   The Tzar himself dispatches Strogoff as a courier to his brother in Irkutsk with instructions that will save him and the city from the Tartar’s treachery, adding for Michael not to even acknowledge his mother, Fay Bainter, whom he will see on his journey to the place of his birth.

   Things go bad quickly: the lovely Nadia is captured when the Tartar’s assault a barge she and Strogoff travel on looking for the courier they know the Tzar sent, and he is left for dead in the river. He escapes but is now afoot, and the Tartars are closing in. Finally he too is captured and Ogareff’s mistress Zangarra, Margot Grahame, who saw him in Moscow is to identify the courier, but she lies and Ogareff must threaten to torture the courier’s mother to bring Strogoff out.

   He comes forth of course, and confesses he destroyed the papers, and in one of the most brutal scenes in Verne’s works Ogareff blinds him with a torch, a crime so brutal that Strogoff’s mother’s heart fails at the horror. It’s pretty strong stuff here too, and unlike almost anything else in Verne’s fiction.

   Now Ogareff poses as the Tzar’s courier to deceive the Tzar’s brother, and Strogoff and Nadia struggle to reach Irkutsk in time.

   Ogareff hasn’t calculated on one thing — Strogoff isn’t blind — the tears he wept saying goodbye to his mother kept the flames from burning his eyes. He slays Ogareff, the city is saved, the rebellion put down with its leader dead, and Stogoff is given a medal by the Tzar and promoted to Colonel as the Tzar praises his heroic mother’s sacrifice.

   Walbrook had starred in the 1936 French version of the story so RKO wisely chose him in the role so they could use the sweeping scenes of battle and marching armies filmed for it. It proved a wise choice and the film was a major hit. Granted it might have been better from one of the bigger studios like Warners or MGM with a director better suited to epics, but it is still a fine swashbuckler very close to Verne’s novel.

   This was remade in the 1960‘s in Germany with Curt Jurgens as Strogoff (known both as Michael Strogoff and Soldier and a Lady) in color, and not a bad film itself, though difficult to find.

   But it’s this version that is the standout, a handsome adaptation of the classic novel with a fine cast and many sweeping scenes from the French original. From the look of things it is clear the French version beats them both, but as far as I know it is lost, so like the scenes of the silent Gold included in The Magnetic Monster, this is all we have.

SADDLE THE WIND. MGM, 1958. Robert Taylor, Julie London, John Cassavetes, Donald Crisp, Charles McGraw, Royal Dano. Screenplay: Rod Serling, based on a story by Thomas Thompson. Music by Elmer Bernstein. Directors: Robert Parrish & John Sturges, the latter uncredited, according to IMDb.

   Saddle The Wind is a Western set on the frontier in the post-Civil War era. Veteran actor Robert Taylor and a youthful John Cassevetes, the latter in one of his earliest film roles, portray brothers Steve and Tony Sinclair, respectively. The two men are irreparably divided over the necessity and propriety of violence. Joining them on their journey into fatal conflict is singer/actress Julie London who portrays Tony Sinclair’s mysterious love interest, Joan Blake.

   The film is as much a Greek tragedy set in the American West as it is a traditional Western. The themes of personal fate, hubris, and historical inevitability all feature strongly in both the film’s text and subtext.

   The philosophical question of whether a man is born bad or goes bad because of his environment — the age-old question of nature versus nurture — is both explicitly and implicitly touched upon throughout the film. Saddle The Wind also explores the effects and ramifications of violence on men and women, and societies more generally.

   The film begins with a depiction of frontier aggression and violence. Larry Venables (a mean-looking Charles McGraw) enters a tavern, demands service, and aggressively queries for the whereabouts of Confederate veteran Steve Sinclair (Taylor). But it’s not Steve with whom Venables ends up doing battle. Rather, it is younger brother Tony, whom Steve always believed had something wrong with him when it came to violence, who engages in a standoff with Venables.

   Tony shoots and kills Venable, setting off a chain of events that spin out of his control. The sick thrill of murdering a man, even if it were justified, goes to Tony’s head. With liquor, his wildness only increases. Soon Tony and a friend are out making trouble for what they perceive to be gathering of local squatters. Leading the group is Clay Ellison (Royal Dano), a Union veteran from Pennsylvania who has a deed to the land.

   It’s not long until Tony Sinclair is angry at — and violent toward — almost anyone who crosses his path, including the local patriarch and landowner, Dennis Dineen (Donald Crisp). This turns out to be a big mistake, and it ends up with older brother Steve having to put an end to his younger brother’s reign of terror. The film culminates in a final, violent showdown between the Brothers Sinclair. The camera work, particularly the angles at which the actors are captured on film, and the music leading up to this crucial event are memorable.

   Without giving away the ending, let’s just say that you may slightly caught off guard. (I watched it a second time just to make sure I understood it correctly.) I wasn’t expecting the film’s main conflict to resolve itself in the manner that it did, but if one does consider it to be a Greek tragedy set in the West, rather than a Western, it all makes perfect sense.

   The film’s biggest flaw, ironically, may have been in casting Julie London for the role of Joan Blake. While London is certainly captivating and her singing of the movie’s eponymous title song has its saccharine charm, her character just comes across as somewhat inauthentic.

   It’s hinted that she’s running from a violent past. Nevertheless, would a woman of her looks and her presumed social status really have joined up so quickly with an obvious immature hothead like Tony Sinclair after knowing him for less than a week? It strains credulity.

   In many ways, Joan Blake is extraneous to the overall taut plot; the conflict between the sober, elder brother Steve and the reckless, younger brother Tony would have likely come to a head even without her presence in their midst. By not further developing the sole significant female character in the film, Serling weakened his overall solid script and made London’s contributions to Saddle The Wind less impressive than they could have been.

   Although Saddle The Wind is unquestionably a Western, there is something very noir about the film, with Cassavetes’s character increasingly spiraling into a hellish realm of senseless violence, all of which culminates in his inevitable doom. None of the characters are remotely happy, at least not for very long.

   The closest we see to true happiness is at the beginning of the film, when Tony Sinclair returns home and is reunited with his brother. From then on, no one really is remotely cheerful, at least not in any normal sense.

   All the characters seem more resigned to their places in the world than particularly happy with them. Violence, death, loneliness, and struggle rule the land. It’s a bleak land, and one does one’s best to make the most of a less than optimal situation. Perhaps this was Rod Serling’s view of the American West?

   In conclusion, Saddle The Wind is a unique film, somewhat distinct from the typical Western narratives of the era. In many ways, it’s a film about a loser rather than one about a hero. But it’s very much worth watching. With solid acting, great scenery, and a beautiful soundtrack composed by Elmer Bernstein, it’s a film that you won’t soon forget, particularly if you really consider what’s really going on with all the characters under their tough Western exteriors.

ANTHONY ABBOT – About the Murder of a Man Afraid of Women. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1937. No paperback edition.

   A writer who was once tremendously popular, Anthony Abbot, is no longer read today. That is unfortunate because a recent reading (or in some cases rereading) of his books, published between 1930 and 1943, shows them to be still quite readable. In addition to a nostalgic look at New York in the past, there are plots far more imaginative than many conceived today.

   The general caliber of writing is not good, but there are some touches that are surprisingly effective. For example, in the book reviewed below, Abbot describes a police lab, drawing an analogy to the medieval attempts to turn baser metals into gold. “Here, instead, men sought to turn human flesh and blood into grand jury indictments.”

   Abbot, the pseudonym of Fulton Oursler, author of the best seller The Greatest Story Ever Told, is usually lumped with another pseudonymous writer, his contemporary, S. S. Van Dine. There are definite similarities, although Oursler eschewed the erudition and footnotes which caused Ogden Nash to threaten to kick Van Dine’s creation [Philo Vance in the pants]. Abbot’s Thatcher Colt, like Philo Vance, is larger than life, but he is easier to take. Both authors have “Watsons” whose names are the author’s pseudonyms and who record the adventures of their employers. Each series has a somewhat dense District Attorney.

   Another similarity is the use of real murder cases for many of the novels. There was a time when mystery novelists like Van Dine, Patrick Quentin, Anthony Boucher, John Dickson arr, and Abbot were very knowledgeable about the great true crimes of the past. In the first Thatcher Colt book, Abbot has the detective, who owns a library of 15,000 true crime books, ask, Ïf our criminals plagiarize from the past, why not our detectives?

   Much has been written about Abbot’s second mystery, About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress (1932) and its basis in the Hall-Mills case of 1922. I do not recall anyone pointing out that a lesser-known Abbot, About the Murder of a Man Afraid of Women (1937) is based on the William Desmond Taylor case, subject of two recent popular nonfiction books, though it clearly is.

   Man Afraid of Women has Thatcher Colt due to get married in a few days and frustrated by such problems as auto deaths, lack of adequate gun control, and pervasiveness of drugs in New York City. There is also a reference to air pollution. (Sound familiar?) Of historical interest is the attitude of the characters toward blacks, an outrageous racism as prevalent as the anti-Semitism found in British novels of the period between the wars.

   Colt’s fiancee sends him the problem of a secretary with a missing boyfriend, and that soon leads to the titular murder victim. The puzzle is a difficult one, and while the solution is not totally satisfactory, there is some real misdirection along the way and an exciting, albeit melodramatic, ending.

   Sometimes the writing is overheated, as when Abbot refers to this case as “the greatest of crime problems.” It’s not, but it’s a good puzzle nonetheless.

   Besides plot surprises, there is some dialogue that we would not expect. Coitus interruptus in a mystery written in the 1930s! Colt’s “Watson,”Anthony Abbot, is upset by Colt’s impending marriage and retirement. He asks his wife, Betty, “Why had a woman come back into the life of the greatest detective of all time?” Abbot’s wife claims he is jealous and sits on his knee. We read, “I spanked her and took her to bed. And then came one of life’s embarrassing moments, for shortly thereafter the telephone rang. Thatcher Colt was at the other end of the wire.”

NOTE:   For Mike Nevins’ review of About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress earlier on this blog, go here.

ROBERT B. PARKER – Perchance to Dream. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1991. Berkley, paperback, 1993.

   I know I should have boned up on Raymond Chandler before tackling Perchance to Dream, Robert B. Parker’s sequel to Chandler’s The Big Sleep. But I didn’t, and my reading of Chandler was so long ago I can make no comparisons. I can say that, on its own, I found Perchance a wholly delightful treat.

   Philip Marlowe is called back to the Sternwood mansion. General has died, but Vivian Sternwood still lives there. And her psychopathic sister Carmen, tucked away among the white coats in Sleep, has gone missing from Resthaven Sanitorium. So Marlowe goes looking.

   Resthaven is run by a sleazeball doctor named Bonsentir, who is so well connected that police bow and scrape and wag their tails. Vivian has a gangster bedmate named Eddie Mars, and he’s mixed up in this as well. Marlowe is not easy to discourage, though various folks try in their own nasty ways, and he’s likely either to get dead or to the bottom of what’s going on…

   Smooth of action, full of good lines and sharp images, this went down in one satisfying gulp.

  JAMES R. LANGHAM – Sing a Song of Homicide. Simon and Schuster, hardcover, 1940. Popular Library #63, paperback, no date [1945]. Film: Paramount, 1942, as A Night in New Orleans (with Preston Foster & Patricia Morison; screenwriter: Jonathan Latimer; director: William Clemens).

   Gun in hand and chuckling, Samuel Grace Abbott is standing by the recently deceased Harvey Wallace. Wallace is so recently deceased that the three bullet holes around his heart are still bubbling. A blackmailer, Wallace made at least one mistake: He tried to extort money from Abbott’s wife, Ethel. In addition, he was generally just not a nice person.

   As an investigator in the district attorney’s office, Abbott is assigned to aid the police in solving Wallace’s murder. Obscuring his involvement, planting evidence to mislead the police, and staying a step, sometimes two, ahead of the authorities and some crooks that he encounters along the way require nimble brain work. Abbott’s stratagems are most entertaining.

   Perhaps the best part of the book is Ethel, a delightful young lady. Yet if there is a weak point, it is the assumption that Ethel was capable of writing letters containing material that could be employed for blackmail.

   Langham says that once he knew he could do something, it stopped being fun. Though he contends on the back wrapper of the paperback edition of this novel that “writing is still fun,” he wrote just one other mystery. It, too, features the Abbotts, who should not be confused, as I unwittingly did, with Francis Crane’s Pat and Jean Abbott. Langham’s second novel is A Pocket Full of Clues; if it is as good as this one, you should start looking for both of them.

TALBOT MUNDY – The Mystery of Khufu’s Tomb. First published as “Khufu’s Real Tomb” in Adventure magazine, October 10, 1922. First book edition: Hutchinson & Co., UK, hardcover, 1933. First US edition: D. Appleton-Century Co., hardcover, 1935. Several other reprint editions exist. (Follow the link to an online edition of the pulp magazine version.)

   Talbot Mundy’s career was as strange as anything he wrote, and that is no small statement. A con man and adventurer in India he came to the United States, nearly died, saw the light, and reformed by becoming a writer, almost immediately penning a number of classics such as Rung Ho!, The Eye of Zeitoon, and Hira Singh. He shot to the top of the list of Haggard and Kipling successors and stayed there until his death, his work a staple in the pulps, particularly the grand old pulp icon, Adventure.

   His King of the Khyber Rifles was twice filmed, a bestseller, and even adapted by Classics Illustrated, and his novel Jimgrim, or King of the World is considered by many, myself included, the greatest achievement of the adventure pulps.

   Jimgrim featured one of Mundy’s series heroes (Tros of Samothrace, the Greek trader and opponent of Caesar and Cleopatra, is his other great creation), the American Captain James Schyler Grim, in the service of His Majesty’s Secret Service in the Middle and Near East. With his ally and friend Jeff Ramsden, his Sikh friend Naryan Singh, his Indian Secret Agent companion Chulander Ghose, and a small army of Mundy’s other heroes (Athleston King and Cottswold Ommony among them) he battles to keep the Middle East, Palestine in particular, from exploding.

   All of that fairly standard British Raj rah rah rah save for one fact: Talbot Mundy was no admirer of the Empire and stood for self-rule in India and the Middle East. It was a unique view of the world for an adventure story writer in that era. There is little racism or jingoism in Mundy.

   Later in life Mundy became obsessed with the philosophy of Theosophy, a semi-mystical religious movement out of Madame Blatavasky and the Golden Dawn. That would have ruined a lesser writer. In Mundy’s case it inspired his finest novels and most loved tales, Om: The Secret of Ahrbor Valley, The Nine Unknown, The Devil’s Guard, Full Moon, and Jimgrim.

   The change in his work showed first in the Jimgrim tales in Adventure, where Grim and company left the British Army and Secret Service behind and took up with American millionaire Meldrum Strange who financed their adventures from there on. And what adventures they were, a search for what happened to all the coins minted in the ancient world (they were hidden beneath the Ganges by the Nine Unknown), a war of good and evil on the roof of the world where the Black Lodge is challenged by the White, and the final novel of the series, Jimgrim, in which the world must be saved from a fanatical madman, leading to a finale that still stuns the unsuspecting reader today and never fails to bring a tear to my eye.

   In the transition period from the heyday of the series to the later deeper novels Mundy’s best is the Jimgrim adventure The Mystery of Khufu’s Tomb.

   It begins when engineer Jeff Ramsden is nearly run off a road on the Geiger Trail near Virginia City by Joan Angela Leich, the kind of headstrong heiress who was common in fiction of the time. Joan and Jeff are old friends though, and she has nearly gotten him killed before.

   That’s Joan all over, and a welcome breath of femininity she is in Mundy’s masculine world. She is also guaranteed trouble, and here is no exception. This time she has gotten involved with one Mrs. Isobel Aintree, a fatale femme with a cobra’s bite that Ramsden and Grim have battled before. Joan needs help concerning a purchase made while in Egypt during a revolution (the more things change …) where she “…went and bought a lot of land that everybody said was no good because it was too far from the Nile.”

   Now a man called Moustapha Pasha (“…there are men of all creeds and colours, who can mouth morality like machines printing paper money, but who you know at the first glance have only one rule, and that an automatic, self-adjusting, expanding and collapsing one, that adapts itself to every circumstance and always in the user’s favour. This man was clearly one of those.”) wants the land and won’t take no for an answer, but Joan is too stubborn to ever yield.

   Just what is on that land that Mrs. Aintree wants it and Moustapha Pasha is willing to bribe Ramsden to betray Joan to the tune of one million dollars (1920‘s dollars at that)? Mrs. Aintree wants it so bad she marries Moustapha Pasha. The answer must be in Egypt, and anywhere east of the Pillars of Hercules there is no better man to have on your side than Jimgrim, so Joan hires Meldrum Strange’s team to help her.

   As usual Grim knows more than might be expected:

   Two billion dollars and the fate of Egypt, just the sort of thing Grim lives for.

And they are off with the help of a Chinese astronomer, Chu Chi Ying, and it is no real mystery what lies beneath Joan’s land.

   So if Khufu, Cheops, money is not in the Great Pyramid of Giseh, where is it? Want to hazard a guess?

   Our band of heroes must deal with enemies on all sides and excavate the treasure that Khufu flooded under Joan’s land without drawing too much attention. Mundy never made things easy for his heroes. You may even wish he had, because the danger, sweat, set backs, short-lived victories, and sheer impossibility of the task will leave the reader almost as stretched as the heroes.

   And it can only get worse, as Grim battles the forces of Moustapha Pasha and Mrs. Aintree above ground while Jeff and Joan are trapped underground avoiding death traps laid by the determined Khufu, and up against blind mutated giant albino crocodiles.

   Long before Indiana Jones, Clive Cussler, and James Rollins Mundy’s heroes were knee deep in the kind of adventures readers today savor. Today’s heroes rely on relentless action though, and while there is no shortage of action and movement, Mundy’s heroes use their brains first, then their brawn.

   That is one reason Mundy remains not only readable, but fresh and entertaining to read when so many others have been passed by. It isn’t hard to see the influence he had on Robert E. Howard, Philip Jose Farmer, and Fritz Leiber as well as a generation of adventure writers. His name still triggers images of exotic locales and high adventure in the wild places as much as Rider Haggard before him.

   I’ll give Mundy, via Ramsden, the last perfect words:

   I don’t see that adventure today is in any better hands.

ARMORED CAR ROBBERY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1950. Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Douglas Fowley, Steve Brodie, Don McGuire, Don Haggerty. Director: Richard Fleischer.

   Armored Car Robbery is a heist film/film noir directed by Richard Fleischer (Fantastic Voyage, The Vikings). Filmed on location in Los Angeles, the film stars Charles McGraw (The Narrow Margin, Spartacus) as Lt. Jim Cordell. He’s tasked with tracking down a gang of four criminals responsible for a fatal armored car robbery. While the film’s acting isn’t particularly memorable, it benefits considerably from a solid plot, believable criminal characters, and its postwar Los Angeles setting.

   William Talman (Perry Mason) portrays Dave Purvis, a greedy and ruthless piece of work who isn’t above murdering anyone who gets in his way. Early in the film, Purvis convinces the down on his luck Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley) to join him in an armored car job. McBride is still very much in love with his burlesque dancer wife, Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens). Problem is: she’s not in love with him. In fact, she’s carrying on a dalliance with Purvis.

   Purvis and McBride, along with two other men, Al Mapes (Steve Brodie) and William “Ace” Foster (Gene Evans) hold up an armored car outside Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field, a baseball stadium. Of course, things don’t go as planned. The timing of the operation is off and the cops arrive on the scene too soon. Lt. Cordell’s partner is killed and McBride is wounded.

   The four ill-fated criminals flee the scene by automobile, driving past the Los Angeles oil fields and toward the harbor. Tensions between the men reach a boiling point. Funny thing: newly, and illicitly, acquired cash seems to do that to a certain class of criminals. Unsurprisingly, Purvis ends up shooting and killing the already wounded McBride. After all, Purvis not only after McBride’s share of the loot; he’s after his cheating wife.

   Soon after, Lt. Cordell and the police arrive at the harbor and begin their extensive manhunt for the criminals responsible for the heist. For a good portion of the rest of the film, we see Cordell and his new rookie partner in pursuit of an increasingly reckless Purvis. This cat-and-mouse chase culminates in an impressive, tension filled showdown at an airfield where the doomed ringleader forgets to look both ways before he runs across a runway.

   Although it’s a relatively short film, running just over an hour, there’s more than enough action and suspense to keep one engaged throughout the film. The Los Angeles settings are spectacular. From the ballpark to the oil fields, from the harbor near the San Pedro to a motor lodge, one feels transported back in time to 1950 Southern California.

   The weakest part of the film is the dialogue. There just aren’t all that many memorable lines in the film, at least none that will stay with you for any considerable amount of time. But then again, one does not watch movies such as Armored Car Robbery primarily for the acting or for the dialogue.

   In conclusion, though, Armored Car Robbery is a real gem. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s definitely worth consideration. If you’ve seen it long ago, it’s worth a second look. It’s definitely a lesser-known film, but it’s one that stands up to the test of time. Armored Car Robbery may not be a classic, but it’s still a perfectly good heist film and one of Fleischer’s earlier works that doesn’t get nearly as much appreciation as it deserves.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Winter Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1939, with introduction and “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” Reprint editions include: Otto Penzler Books, paperback, 1993.

   According to the introduction by an anonymous editor, Van Dine went through three stages with a novel — a 10,000-word synopsis of the plot, a second, longer development of the novel, and then the final, full-length version.

   Published posthumously, Winter had reached only the second stage. Thus, the footnotes, furbelows, and elaboration of character and incident one expects from Van Dine are missing here. So, too, I would contend, is anything but a rudimentary plot.

   As a Van Dine admirer, ostensibly one of the few extant, I was embarrassed for him by the publication of The Gracie Allen Murder Case. This one adds to my embarrassment. For Philo Vance completists only.

Editorial Comment:   Those wishing to read this book and decide for themselves may find an e-version online here.