FELIX FRANCIS – Dick Francis’s Refusal. Putnam, hardcover, September 2013. Berkley, softcover, July 2014.

   First Sentence: “No,” I said.

   Sid Halley is married, a father, and six years retired from doing investigative work. Sir Richard Stewart approaches him asking that Sid look into race results that seem wrong. Although Sid is curious, he refuses but agrees to look over the information. However, the next day Sir Richard is found dead in his car of an apparent suicide and Sid receives a phone call, followed by escalating threats, demanding he sign a report of no wrong-doing … or else.

   Having read every book written by Dick Francis, I knew I was starting with a bias. However, even distancing myself from that and trying to view this as a book from a completely different author, it did not help.

   There were several major problems with this book. First, the characters. The two best characters were Charles and Chico. Sid’s wife was very poorly written. Even as a mother, worried about her child, she was overly strident and annoying. She did not convey as the type of woman Sid would have married.

   Sid may have been retired for six years, but he came across as soft and insecure. Francis’s protagonists were known for their determination and doggedness. They didn’t give up, they never whined and they certainly would never have considered asking a policeman to break the law, or committing murder or blackmail.

   The dialogue lacked a natural flow. I don’t know whether this was due to this being an “American” version — why do they do that? — rather than U.K, but it was choppy and somewhat painful.

   On the plus side, there was fascinating information on the technological advancements in limb replacement, both with mechanical, and now, actual limb transplants. The plot did have some very good twists. Even when you think Francis has made an error, it’s lovely to discover he hasn’t.

   Refusal isn’t a dreadful book, but it’s just not a very good one either. The biggest mistake was probably to resurrect Sid Halley, a character so well known and well loved by Dick Francis fans. I suspect that had one not read previous books, one would enjoy this far better than did I.

Rating:   Poor.

THE PARSON AND THE OUTLAW. Columbia Pictures, 1957. Anthony Dexter, Sonny Tufts, Marie Windsor, Buddy Rogers, Bob Steel(e). Director: Oliver Drake.

   Yet another fictional distortion of the legend of Billy the Kid, but one in which I have to admit a really neat twist takes place. It seems that what really happened was this: Pat Garrett and Billy got together on a plot that would leave Billy “dead” and buried, free to begin a new life, one without the need to constantly prove himself to every new gunfighter in town.

   This all takes place in the first ten minutes, so I’m not telling you all that I could, but unfortunately, it is the most interesting ten minutes of the movie — as maybe you could tell from just a single glance at the cast.

   Marie Windsor excepted, of course.

   As Billy the Kid, Anthony Dexter has no acting ability, no looks, and is minus 30 on the standard Sonny Tufts charisma scale. (Which means that Sonny Tufts has 30 times the charm and charisma of Anthony Dexter, as displayed in this movie.)

   On the other hand, no movie with Marie Windsor in it is ever a complete waste of time, but a few of them come close, and even fewer of them come closer than this.

   And what other movie can you think of would have the parson, a man of the cloth, begging Billy to put his guns back on, for the sake of the town. (It works out even worse than you might think.)

STELLA ALLAN – An Inside Job. Avon, US, paperback, 1980. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1978; Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1978.

   Most of the mainstream critics who commented on the recent movie Body Heat compared it, not illogically, to the works of James M, Cain. Those of us in the know (as we’re prone to say) will also say that here was the closest adaptation of an old Gold Medal paperback novel that’s ever been made.

   Consider the theme: an unwary male victim is caught up in the temptations of a beautiful woman’s lush afterglow, sinking him deeper and deeper into a never-ending web of crime and deceit. Raiders of the Lost Ark notwithstanding, Body Heat certainly got my vote for the movie of the year. It simply sizzled.

   But back to the tale at hand. This nifty little novel of murder and retribution neatly reverses the theme of all those sultry paperback novels of the 50’s. This time around a feminist it is, rising to the top of the business world, who finds herself putty in the hands of her best friend’s husband.

   Times have changed, and the roles have been reversed. The ensuing death of Sheila Pettit’s employer and long-time mentor causes her no feeling of sorrow or regret. And this could be the greatest problem you will find with this book. None of the people involved could be described as even half-way appealing. The futures they cut out for themselves no one could possibly conclude are other than what they most richly deserve.

Rating:   B minus

  WILLIAM P. McGIVERN – But Death Runs Faster. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1948; Pocket #693, 1950, as The Whispering Corpse. Berkley, paperback, 1988, under original title.

   Tone-Bailey Publishing Company hires Steve Blake, mystery writer and author of Nor Live So Long among other novels, to edit a new pulp magazine, Modern Detective. (Little did they know that the handwriting was on the wall and that it approximated mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.)

   Blake lacks editing experience, so he hires as assistant editor Byron Crofield, a young man who has editing experience and who has written some not-very-good books. Crofield turns out to be an absolute bounder, who probably also has no talent. Crofield dabbles in blackmail for the pleasure of distressing people, and he takes great delight in antagonizing his co-workers, including his employer.

   When Crofield is murdered after a party to which he has invited all those who had reason to thoroughly dislike him, the suspects are not scarce.

   Blake’s secretary, a young lady who was raped when very young and is both shy and fearful of men, receives a calI from Crofield short!y before his death telling her that Blake is at Crofield’s apartment, is drunk, and is threatening him with bodily harm. She then hears Crofield say, “Christ, Steve, don’t,” followed by two shots. Of course, this very timorous person immediate!y rushes to the apartment and finds Crofield dead.

   If you can tolerate that extreme unlikelihood, all else should be acceptable, including Blake’s blurting out over the phone without being aware to whom he was talking information that causes another killing.

   Blake, in my opinion, shares some of the less pleasant aspects of the murdered bounder, although he is not aware of it and I doubt that the author intended it. Thus, he is not a particularly sympathetic character. On the other hand, the information about pulp magazines, along with some of the discussions by pulp writers, whom McGivern does not treat very kindly, makes this an interesting novel from that aspect.

B. M. BOWER – The Quirt. Little Brown, hardcover, 1920. Thrilling Novels #15, digest-sized paperback, [1948]. Also available in several Print on Demand editions; a free ebook edition can be downloaded here.

   This story of the cow country concerns the efforts of the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who number their cattle by the tens of thousands, to eliminate the smaller outfits around.

   Al Woodruff, the evil eye of the Sawtooth, is efficient in his particular line of work, which is the reason why Brit Hunter of the Quirt ranch calls life in the Sawtooth country “extra hazardous.”

   Hunter’s daughter Loraine, a city-bred girl, whose ideas of the Wild West have been obtained in the movies, arrives for a visit just in time to witness an incident of real tragedy, and in her ignorance of conditions she talks enough to arouse the ire of Al Woodruff and thus brings upon her father the neecessity of making a fight for his ranch and his life.

   Action and adventure there are a-plenty.

THE BIG HEAT. Columbia Pictures, 1953. Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Peter Whitney. Based on the novel by William P. McGivern. Director: Fritz Lang.

   This one preceded Human Desire, which came out in 1954, with the same two stars (Ford and Grahame), the same director, and if you were to ask me which one I like better, I’m not sure I can tell you.

   This is the one that’s freshest in my mind, however, so right now I’d probably give it the edge. While The Big Heat is not a movie without flaws, it has a lot of things going for it: atmosphere (crime and corruption in a big city), a plot that takes some interesting twists and turns, and some good performances, especially by Gloria Grahame as a gangster’s girl who dies in the end, with Glenn Ford playing the homicide detective who’s trying to run the city’s crime boss to earth.

   Lee Marvin, in what must have been an early film for him, also makes a strong impression as the sadistic hoodlum who takes great pleasure in burning and tormenting women. Surprisingly, its Glenn Ford himself who seems rather innocuous and bland, as if to say there is nothing interesting to say about knights in white armor.

   Villains, or at least those with pasts they are trying vaguely to shed (such as Gloria Grahame’s character) turn out, as often as not, to be the ones that stories revolve around. Ford’s character, while suffering a great deal of anguish and pain, as long as he’s as incorruptible as he is here, really doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

FREDRIC BROWN – The Murderers. Dutton, hardcover, 1961. Bantam J2587, paperback, 1963.
       — Knock Three-One-Two. Dutton, hardcover, 1959.Bantam A2135, paperback, 1960.

   I’ve had a couple Fredric Brown’s on my shelf since Hubin-knows-when, but when I glanced at the covers the other day I couldn’t for the life of me remember reading them.

   The Murderers is pleasantly amoral right up to the cop-out ending. Two unemployed actors find their careers stymied by different adverse circumstances and decide to solve their problems by swapping murders. Everything goes along smoothy and even enjoyably until … well, as I aid, the ending’s a disappointment, but it doesn’t come until late in the book, which is mostly slick and much fun.

   Knock Three-One-Two is just as contrived and just as enjoyable. Ray Fleck, the hero of the piece is a two-bit, two-timing, half-smart chiseler and gambling addict (though the term was unknown back then) looking to score the Big One that will wipe out his debts and get him back in the Game.

   Knock is the account of his night-long unlucky odyssey to that elusive home, set against the backdrop of a city plagued by an elusive serial killer.

   It’s something to the credit of Brown’s writing that the extraordinary contrivances of this thing don’t seem all that apparent until you set it down and start thinking about it.

             SPOILER ALERT — PLOT DETAILS AHEAD!

   Every bet that Ray makes he loses, every ploy he tries backfires, every turn he takes is wrong one, right up to the end, when he gets the chance to score several thousand dollars of insurance money — by steering the Serial Killer to his wife.

                END OF WARNING.

   The resolution is unsurprising, but Brown delivers the package neatly enough that it’s a pleasure reading it.

ERIC AMBLER – The Light of Day. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1963. Reprint paperback editions include: Bantam, 1964; Signet, 1968; Ballantine, 1978; Berkley, 1985; Carroll & Graf, 1992.

   This Edgar-winning novel is the story of Arthur Simpson, a roguish con man, petty thief, and sometime pornographer who, as the novel opens, is driving a car-for-hire in Athens. He makes his first mistake when he attempts to rob his client of some traveler’s checks and is caught; the man is no ordinary tourist, but an accomplished criminal, and he quickly blackmails Simpson into driving a Lincoln Continental to Istanbul.

   Simpson’s second and third mistakes are not searching the car thoroughly and not having a valid passport. (He is half English, half Egyptian, and the problem of his citizenship is a thread that runs through the narrative.)

   The border authorities search the Lincoln and discover weapons inside the doors. When Simpson finally admits how he was coerced into driving the car into Turkey, the Turkish police in turn coerce him into getting at the source of the weapons smuggling. Simpson delivers the car, finagles himself a job as guide for the three men and one woman to whom it seems to belong, then spends several tense days trying to find out what they have planned.

   As it turns out, all plans go awry — Simpson’s, the authorities’, and the smugglers’. Soon Simpson finds himself enlisted on both sides, in an even worse predicament than he could ever have imagined.

   This novel is Ambler at his best, full as it is of double-dealings and harrowing scenes. Arthur Simpson is a likable rogue and a finely drawn character. The reader can get a second glimpse of him in Dirt Story (1967).

   A film of this novel, called Topkapi, was made in 1964; starring Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, and Peter Ustinov, it is colorful and entertaining and contains riveting scenes during which viewers who are afraid of heights would be well advised to keep their eyes shut. A paperback edition of the novel, also published that year, bears the same title as the film.

   Ambler carries out his theme of an innocent man caught up in a web of deceit and intrigue in other novels, notably Background to Danger (1937), Cause for Alarm (1939), and Epitaph for a Spy (1952).

         ———
   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.

   In the micro-fiction story that follows, I incorporate the Lovecraftian themes of forbidden knowledge, inner psychic turmoil, and gothic horror, but within a distinct historical and political context.

   This will be last the world hears from me. Nevertheless, it will soon enough learn a most terrible secret, one that has stained my family name for generations.

   My only loyalists are the gargoyles. The magenta rays of the fading sun may portray their ashen faces in a grotesque light, but those grey stone carvings are the most loyal of sentries. They perch on the ledge of my citadel, leering skyward with impure eyes. Mocking my enemies with tongues grossly distorted, repulsed by the taste of sedition.

   Distortions of animal form, worn by the steady march of time, they dwell just meters from the disintegrating tapestries adorning my vestibule walls. But how much do these inanimate creatures know of their true masters? They appear to steady themselves, in preparation for the struggle ahead. For who else remains to shield my body, let alone my mind, from the gathering maelstrom.

   Those who obeyed my regency, who respected the authority of my stentorian voice, now betray me. They turned their backs and take solace in knaves who abjure the natural order of things. I hear stories of one of their self-appointed leaders and of his fealty to his own lust for power. A champion of the people, he styles himself. A ringleader of fools, he is. I have heard tales of guillotines, desecrated castles, new ways of signifying the world.

   I am told that the agitators gather their strength from the forbidden philosophers, seekers, and questioners. The very thought of those sophists and their torturous logic sets my blood on fire. Oh, how I should have cast their elephantine volumes into the flames!

   If only the mob that gathers outside these castle walls knew the abhorrent truth of this haunted terrain. Their impish rebellion will destroy us all. I may be a ruler, but I too am ruled.

   My masters are of an ancient race. Not of this world.

   When I was a boy, whispers suggested that they came from the stars centuries ago and struck a hellish bargain with my ancestors, the details of which I to this day remain unaware. The ancient ones dwell in subterranean mausoleums on the castle grounds. The rebels will surely disturb their slumber. An early awakening—a most unholy dawn—will summon horrors dwarfing the mere foibles of earthly politics.

   I smell the unkempt masses below. A breeze sweeps past the gargoyles and into my room, further unsettling me. I look to my gargoyles for solace and protection, but it is in vain. My eyes bear witness, for they dare not deceive. The gargoyles are breaking free from their terrestrial moorings, soaring ever upward in the clear night sky, casting hideous shadows in the solemn moonlight. I hear their hideous, unearthly laughter, monstrous cackles. Betrayal is the most discordant of tunes.

   My turncoat sentries aloft, I remain earthbound, hostage to forbidden knowledge, myself the last remaining nobleman of a cruel and ancient regime, but one that had no choice but to govern as we did.

   I hear the bounding of footsteps and the dissonant symphony of conspiring voices. The oxblood drapery separating my antechamber from the hallway sways to and fro.

   Something lies behind it, hidden.

   I stand, captive to fear and to what I thought I knew. My hands unsteady at my sides, I reach for my steel blade. It brings me no comfort.

   I am the last of the noblemen. I must be brave. But I am not brave. I tremble, sick to the core of my being, wondering what dwells out of sight, behind the curtain.

DONALD HAMILTON – The Menacers. Gold Medal d1884, paperback original, 1968. Several later printings.

   This is Number 11 in the long-running Matt Helm series, and while any of them will do, this is a fine example of why Donald Hamilton made a lot of money for Gold Medal books over his long career. Matt (known as Eric to his superiors) is in Mexico for this installment, chasing down rumors of flying saucers, which in 1968 was still a hot topic to build a spy adventure around. (I haven’t heard much about them recently.)

   It seems as though whoever is aboard the saucers has been attacking anyone who comes across them, and with US insignia plastered all over them, they’re (in the process) making it seem as though the US is behind the attacks. Hidden agenda: causing an international (south of the border) crisis.

   Before you start thinking it would make a fine vehicle (hmm) for a Dean Martin movie, well, no. This is serious espionage business, and Hamilton as an author is as hard-boiled as they come. Quoting from page 156:

   There are a number of women in the story, many many different varieties of them, and who this one happens to be, I will leave you to discover. Some of these ladies are good, some are bad, some very bad, and some are in-between. Here’s a description of the first one he encounters, his initial contact in Mexico:

   So, OK, reading a Donald Hamilton book is not like picking up the latest by Le Carré, but you do have to keep thinking, and I mean all of the time. Matt Helm tells the story, but he won’t tell you everything, or at least not right away. He will give you the facts, and it’s up to you to make of them what you will.

   The middle of the this one sags a little, and Hamilton is a little vague about patching a couple of seams together, but the ending certainly makes up for it.